Every election cycle provides us with non-stop mind-numbing advertising campaigns by the major party candidates.  A torrent of print and television ads are directed at the public featuring claims and counterclaims, charges and rebuttals, promises and reassuring agendas.  Voters cannot avoid being exposed to at least some portion of this political onslaught.  How they are affected by all of this is not readily apparent or sufficiently understood.  Commentators and journalists do make an effort to sort things out, to evaluate claims, scrutinize candidate’s records and analyze the relevance and likely consequences of their proposals.

What rarely attracts attention are the photos opposing camps employ along with their messaging.  It’s time we took note of their crude, almost comical efforts to disparage opposition candidates.  Both sides manage to present the most unflattering pictures they can discover, the more bizarre and unattractive the photo the less likely voters, so the thinking goes, will respond favorably to his or her candidacy.  These pictures have probably not been altered, but amidst the vast numbers available, surely there’ll be those suitably distorted to serve the sinister purposes of each side.

So, expect to see an array of scowls, sneers, grimaces, bland, mug-like expressions conveying either anger, indifference, mockery or gullibility – images distinctly at variances with the confident, reassuring and friendly demeanor we’ve come to expect from politicians.

No one knows how the public reacts to these distorted images, whether they negatively impact perceptions or produce an opposite wave of sympathy in response to their transparent efforts to smear.  But with negative campaigning a fixture of our politics these pictorial efforts to distort and demean will no doubt remain.

Those in power rarely welcome dissenting voices or overt opposition out of a conviction that their own policies and goals embody what’s best for all.  And because enjoying a monopoly of power comes with notable personal benefits and privileges.  Accordingly they are quick to dismiss the opposition and move to isolate, discredit and delegitimize it (a response that may at times be fully warranted).  I was reminded of this not long ago when demonstrations broke out across Turkey, stemming it seems from broad dissatisfaction among elements of the population with the direction leadership was taking the nation.  Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, however, denied that any fault could be found in his government, nor any substance to the claims and demands of the protestors.  They were, he declared, merely “looters” and “bums”, disreputable elements his police forces were ordered to suppress.

How familiar this all sounds.  Time and again we’ve witnessed reactions of this sort.  The terms employed may differ slightly but the intention clearly is to undermine opposition forces, label them as frivolous, sinister, destructive outcasts, altogether unworthy of a respectful hearing.  Russian authorities have, over the years, repeatedly dismissed dissenters there as “hooligans”.  In the United States protestors were frequently portrayed as “anarchists” or “Communists” or “un-American” elements.  More recently in Syria, the Assad regime has blamed the violence and upheaval upon “foreign agents”.  Elsewhere we’ve heard repeated references to “criminal elements”, “malcontents” and “agitators”, “provocateurs”, and “spies”.  This dismissive strategy will forever be employed so long as those in power believe that their authority is best maintained by both minimizing and marginalizing opponents.

People on the right are quick to condemn leftist “extremists” who, if they had their way would, they claim, destroy American society and replace it with a Socialist, Communist or Fascist State, or even worse, bring on anarchy.  Accordingly, vigilance must be constant lest these powerful forces gain a secure foothold, initiate a takeover of the government and transform our free society.  Such fears are of long-standing and unlikely to go away.  The difficulty I have with this is that the liberal left tends to concede these points to the right, acknowledging that within their own ranks are “crazies” spouting destructive ideas and itching to do their mischief.  Accordingly, these people and their policies must be repudiated so that serious and workable proposals can be advanced within the political arena.

I don’t get it.  Look across the political landscape and identify for me, if you can, some of these outrageous lefty schemers.  The mainstream media certainly gives them no credence or air time (of course not, they’re part of the conspiracy) – never mentions any of them.  Rather, what receives attention are extreme conservative beliefs, some even presented as middle of the road policy prescriptions.   They offer us those who believe climate change to be a hoax, a liberal plot that will kill jobs, undermine energy companies and shift investment dollars into untested and inadequate green power sources.  Many are quoted who insist that Evolution is merely a theory and should be taught in concert with Creationism as presented in the Bible.  We are, other reports tell us, a Christian nation that must allow prayers in our schools, religious symbols in our public spaces and facilities and ensure that religious sensitivities are everywhere respected and protected.  Virtually unlimited gun distribution and possession cannot be restricted is what we hear from Second Amendment defenders.  Guns, after all, are essential for protecting civilians against lawless elements lurking everywhere and against government eager to erode our freedoms.  The free market is indispensable, nearly all commentators proclaim, to maintaining individual freedom.  Government efforts to intervene and regulate private transactions are certain to be heavy handed and will inevitably stifle innovation as well as economic progress.  Labor unions, moreover, threaten harm by artificially inflating wages and insisting upon outdated and restrictive work rules which stand in the way of greater efficiency and more robust profits.  The foregoing merely scratches the surface of the right wing conversation.  These positions are not just think-tank speculations but represent serious legislative proposals which in many instances have been enacted into law.

I’m at a loss.  Do liberals really have a “crazy” left out at the margins hawking policies many would classify as bizarre and well outside the mainstream?  You do hear calls for single payer health insurance systems, for scaling back military expenditures substantially, for vigorous support of alternative energy, for taxing the wealthy at the same rate that lesser folk pay, for reining in banks considered “too big to fail” and other stuff as well, but where are the sinister proposals?  Will the architects of anarchy with their “loony bin” proposals that would undermine America and all that it stands for please step forward.  I imagine that somewhere out in the blogosphere are sprinklings of anarchists, pacifists, man-child love advocates, supporters of communes and worker co-ops and unilateral disarmament types, but I doubt whether the average American hears anything about them.

No!  The fact is that political discussion in America has shifted decidedly to the right which exerts considerable pressure on liberals, who in an effort to be “fair and balanced” feel they must acknowledge certain unnamed “unsavory” characters in their midst, admit to having black sheep in the family.  These sheep, however, are either well-disguised or have long ago been consigned to the slaughterhouse.

I attended a local meeting the other night convened in response to a county plan to restructure the police department.  Speakers on both sides weighed in with their talking points, their remarks liberally sprinkled with numbers and statistics.  How many cops would now be out on patrol?  How many special police units have been eliminated?  Is crime trending higher?  At one point this guy in the audience gets up and says, “Forget the numbers:  no one believes them anyway.”

That got me thinking that it wasn’t too long ago that numbers seemed authoritative, commanded respect, settled disputes.  Arguments and debates formerly advanced with generalizations and impressionistic evidence could gain traction once numbers were brought to bear.  Numbers counted:  it was powerful stuff.  Arguing that a crime wave was underway meant presenting sets of numbers about murder rates, felonies, arrests and prison populations.  To demonstrate the war was being won in Viet Nam or later in Afghanistan you introduced enemy casualty figures emphasizing the number of high ranking commanders blasted to bits.  For almost any argument in sports – who was the most productive hitter ever – the most valuable player – the most durable performers – statistics came flooding in to support various contenders.

But lately it seems we’ve wised up, come to an understanding of the numbers game, recognized that the old chestnut regarding “Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics” represents the height of wisdom (as does “figures don’t lie, but liars use figures”).  All sides now come armed with numbers, and so, because they’re everywhere, they’ve lost their power to persuade.

We’ve also become aware that numbers reflect predetermined patterns of selection.  We’re presented with monthly cost-of-living figures, but then are informed that food and energy prices are excluded because of their volatility.  We’re given unemployment numbers, but are told that these exclude people who’ve stopped looking for jobs.  We’re inundated by polling numbers which seem to yield hard data, but we also observe how small the sampling and how tendentious often is the wording of the questions.  And back to our crime statistics.  Numbers are always present, but there’s little discussion about the under reporting of crimes and the deliberate reclassification of many offenses.

It’s clear then that numbers have been overused and misused, and that the public has grown skeptical.  Numbers will not, however, go out of fashion, but those deploying them had better realize that they will need to muster other means of persuasion.  Otherwise, their number may be up!