Deceptive Politics

This 2008-2009 presidential election is a very close and competitive one. It seems as if the United States of America is torn two ways. We will either have the first woman become Vice President or we will have the first black man become president. I know a lot of people who feel very torn about this election. The fact of the matter is, we are being fed a bunch of garbage from the candidates’ campaigning parties and the media, especially.

Ever since the beginning of democracy in fifth century BC Greece, corruption and deception have rooted into the hearts of people. The media distorts the facts and twists them into whichever way they please. My English teacher taught us about fallacies. A fallacy is a deceptive, misleading, or false notion. The most popular fallacy I have come across in the political campaigns is ad hominem. This is when someone attacks the person rather than the argument.

Joe Klein uses ad hominem in his Time Magazine article, “Anger Versus Steadiness in the Crisis,” to blatantly attack John McCain. Klein says, “When was the last time Americans elected an angry president?” Joe Klein has no right to attack McCain’s personality. An election should be based on policies and platforms, not the degree of niceness and self-control. This is just one of thousands of incidents that have occurred during this election.

Even though we are a democracy, people do not hear all the facts and the raw truth. Americans are being led through a dark tunnel without a flashlight by none other than the beloved media. Sadly, this will never change. Politics and the media will never come together as one to give the truth to the people. We have to make our own decisions about what appears to be true and what is not.