About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the 21st century.
It is political season. The time for town meetings and local elections. Tip O’Neill said, “All politics are local.” Would that they still were, but all over America, our local candidates are mimicking the new national politics, using language to obscure and strategies to frighten and agitate.
Language
How do you use language to obscure? Easy; just use the same language as the opposition. For example: Every candidate in every Berkshire city, town, and village is for reasonable growth. What could sound more reasonable? Well, nothing, but does it mean anything?
Candidates from every point along the growth spectrum — from no growth to achieving urban density in the Berkshire Hills — call it reasonable. Here’s why: Somewhere someone took a poll and discovered reasonable growth sounded good to a majority of voters. Therefore, everyone who wants a majority of the votes, uses the term. Reasonable growth continues to sound great, and all of a sudden, means nothing.
Another example is misusing language purposefully to obfuscate. For example, using the phrase “open space residential” to describe a bylaw that will allow and support mixed-use commercial. Now that’s not fair, but it may work.
Take a planning board anywhere in Berkshire County. At one time or another, all the members ran on reasonable growth. Now they are suggesting a bylaw that will impact a majority of the land mass. That doesn’t sound reasonable; it sounds like radical change. It sounds as if that planning board were writing an Olly-olly-oxen-free for developers. If the voters catch on, they won’t vote for it, but what if they don’t?
Words matter, but words can be used to confuse. When everyone on every side of an issue uses the same language, they are not using words to honestly describe their position. How, then, do you, the voter, know how to vote? You may not.
Strategies
Wait, there’s more. We have new approaches to getting votes that are equally as unfair as tricky language. Let’s call the new strategies the emergency shuffle and the power of being weak. Both sound counterintuitive, both are far from transparent, and neither may be strictly honest. However, anyone can play.
The emergency
First, you invent an emergency. Do not be too specific or someone might call your bluff. Just a general “something evil this way comes” will do. Don’t worry too much about facts, it’s the drama of the thing. Now cast your drama. Obviously, the candidate fashioning the emergency is the good guy and will save you. Naturally, his opponent is bad. That opponent, if not responsible for the evil approaching, will, at bare minimum, let it pass, and possibly hold the door open as it enters.
Why propose an emergency? It demands people act quickly to ward off disaster. Demanding haste stops slow, reasonable thought. It is best to press for action because too much thought and voters will realize there is no emergency. “Be afraid, be very afraid” is more motivating than “it’s all good.”
The power of weakness is also called victim politics. My Granny said Yankees are hard as hickory nuts, so the power of weakness may be difficult to understand. Nonetheless, if one can’t win elections by boo-hooing, you can certainly raise money on a good cry.
How does all of this victim stuff work? You have a bunch of incompetents who want a second term. One voter says to another, “OK, X didn’t do a good job but don’t be mean, X has a lot of troubles.” Or didn’t get a fair shake or really tried.
“So, you want me to vote for someone who can’t do the job so as not to hurt X’s feelings?”
“Sure, yeah, maybe, why not?”
The press
The media — the press and local news — could straighten it all out for the voters. Translate the words by showing the actions of the candidate or comparing campaign words to words spoken before the candidate was running. The press could research and report if there is an actual emergency, could suggest if the best recourse to aid someone suffering is to waste a vote or to send a card and flowers. Some candidates put so much time and effort into hiding, harbor so sharp a desire for power, that they don’t want anyone to shine a light. They attack the press.
In Berkshire, they use the term “misinformation” rather than “fake news.” Misinformation is so much more “New England” than the crasser “fake news.” The result is the same. If the candidates are using language to obscure their real positions and tactics to muddy your thought processes, the next step is to separate you from facts and information. Brand reports as misinformation. Brand reporters as political. The ones harmed are not the reporters or the newspaper. The losers are the people. Soon they don’t know what to believe.
We are a Representative Democracy. Our elected officials are meant to represent us. President Biden reminds us of that almost daily. That is why he redefined bipartisan. He doesn’t mean elected officials from both sides of the aisle voting for a bill. He means elected officials supporting what a majority of the American people want regardless of their party affiliation. We deserve representatives who do represent us. We deserve to know if they will — not just mouth the words to get the vote, but act on the words if they get the job.
Tip O’Neill said, “All politics are local.” Would that they were. Would that they remain so. We are better than these tawdry tactics. We deserve better.
