Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Mama, don't let your babies grow up in politics


The Prude is dispirited. Today was the day she was to finish up her Iowa Caucus series with Rick Santorum. She read the nastiness spewed about him and his family. Nastiness from other Americans who, because of disagreement over politics and personal views, use the Santorums for target practice with ammunition comprised of blobs of muck and shards of mockery.
She googled his name for the basic info. Basic info, according to Google, includes a vast number of nasty sites with a lot of nasty content making nasty comments about Mr. Santorum
Then she googled ‘Rick Santorum Family’. But did Rick Santorum’s actual family pop up? Or did The Duggar Family, who endorses him, pop up? Can you guess? It took till almost page 3 of the search before I got info on the Santorums. And it was nasty and mean-spirited info. 
She toyed with heading another, lighthearted direction and talk about the Santorum Italian roots, or link Roman politics to American politics. But there are nasty stereotypes about Italian Americans and Roman politics had a nasty bent.
Politics is a nasty business. It always has been. The ancient Romans were nasty. Parliament gets nasty. Research 200 plus years of campaigns in the US and you will find 200 plus years of smearing, name calling and family mocking.
We haven’t changed. We aren’t any nastier today than Brutus and Julius. But we can spread our muck and filth so much further and faster. We used to fear that one touch of a button could set off worldwide nuclear war. Now one click of a mouse sets off a chain of destruction that decimates another human’s name and reputation. Destroy enough people in this manner and our system is built on nothing but a shredded pile of mud-spattered names and principles.
Can we do better? Maybe, maybe not. But we surely can’t do much worse.

1 comment:

Lori Lipsky said...

Ah, Prude. The nastiness is too much sometimes, isn't it?

On a bright note, I like your new seasonal picture up at the top. I've loved them all and how you switch them up with the seasons.