The Politics of Style over Substance

The most stunning aspect of the current American presidential election is that one of the major candidates has no experience whatsoever for the job, has repeatedly failed in his business ventures, boasts about his best-selling book, which he did not write, and continually flip flops on virtually all of his major policies. The stream-of-consciousness rhetoric of this candidate, exhibits a grade 6 vocabulary with a stunningly shallow understanding of the issues, and includes demonstrably false assertions.

How is it possible that this presidential candidate is consistently running at about 40% in the national presidential election polls?

For those of us who value facts and logic, it is incomprehensible. However, that is our failing, we don’t understand the emotional pull of this candidate. We don’t understand the politics of style over substance. We don’t understand why fear and reaction-ism are so important in recognizing what is going on. We don’t understand why presenting the facts, as a countervailing measure to this candidacy, is about as useful as shooting ping pong balls at a grizzly bear.

The line between “reality” tv and reality has been blurred. So blurred, that his followers don’t seem to know the difference. In this unreal reality, the rhetoric of this candidate is the “truth” because he is actually saying what he believes, even if his beliefs are based on ignorance, prejudice and fear and at times are outright lies!

His mystified opponents have done their best to quash this candidate, but have failed to impact his base. They have presented considerable information, and repeatedly demonstrated  the flaws and failings of this candidate, but with little effect.

To us a medical analogy, it is very hard to treat a disease if you don’t understand its root cause.

When you attempt to attack an image, it is like attacking a ghost, nothing sticks.

This candidacy is a facade; like a movie set, it looks good, but there is very little behind it.

This candidate is like the wizard of oz, who appeared big and sounded impressive, but lurking behind the curtain was just some pathetic old man.

Time to show the world the pathetic old man this candidate is; forget about the facts and pull back the curtain.