Countdown: 4 Days

Today is Friday, October 30. The election is on Tuesday, November 3. The election is four days away.

I see on the news that our democracy is under attack by our longtime adversaries. Russia is attacking and smearing the candidates, trying to make Americans question if democracy is working. China is doing the same thing. And so is Iran. When foreign powers attack our candidates, it's a bad thing. But the candidates have been attacking and smearing one another for months. It appears that when the candidates do it, it's a good thing. It's democracy in action. 

You can attack someone with the truth merely by telling a part of the truth. Tell people the candidate wants to raise taxes, but don't tell them he or she wants to raise taxes on the super-wealthy who have accountants and tax lawyers who specialize in avoiding the payment of taxes.

You can attack someone by repeating a story in the newspaper—a "tabloid" newspaper—a "newspaper" that prints stories about the space aliens who worship Oprah, or the fur coat that comes alive and bites its owner to death, or the second Pope, the mini-Pope, living under the Pope's hat. 

You can attack someone by telling the truth but putting your own spin on the story—your own interpretation. If you read Wikipedia's entry for Spin (propaganda) you can find many examples of spin. Governments and politicians use spin frequently to gin up support for their positions.The advertising industry uses spin frequently.

And then there are the obviously biased news sources that cater to one extreme group or the opposite extreme group. "But they tell the truth," people will say. Sure they do—they tell the part of the truth they want their listeners and readers to hear.

Constant exposure to these kinds of misinformation, if not outright lies, "programs" people. Constant exposure to one side of the story, one set of facts, can turn a population against a person or country, can gin up support for a war, can manipulate people into believing things that are really quite unbelievable.

I think everyone who reads this will agree, and yet half of those readers will be conservative Republicans and half will be liberal Democrats. They both will agree that the powers-that-be want to deceive us, and voters will agree, even as they cast the votes that they have been programmed to cast.

I don't doubt that the majority of American voters do not know the truth—the whole truth—but I also trust that they have the wisdom to know, at least, that there are people who are trying to deceive them.