Ethics are generally seen as synonymous with morality, but I find morality to be more black and white than ethics. While people can have a set of morals that are static (ie stealing is wrong), ethics deals more situationally (ie is it right to steal from the rich to give to the needy), but both terms tend to be very subjective. People base their morality and ethicality on religion, their upbringing, zeitgeists, influential figures, and a variety of other sources. It also seems that politicians have a special code of ethics set aside solely for themselves. Many things we see in politics, the general population concedes to and at times are proponents of politicians doing things that if their neighbors did, they would see at the very least as nasty behavior if not downright unethical.
Every so often when I turn on the tv, I see a commercial produced by one candidate that simply say mean things about the other candidates, or skewing something to make the other candidate look insincere/like a liar/ etc etc. If anyone besides politicians gossiped on such a huge scale, everyone would hate them. However, just because of the people at stake, no one sees it as trivially as gossip. It doesn’t end there. Many politicians take it further to lie about the other candidates or intentionally trick people into thinking the candidate is something they’re not. Push-polling is one example of this. “Would you be more or less likely to support Obama if he was involved with Hamas?” was a question recently asked to a largely Jewish population by GOP pollsters. IF he was involved with Hamas, the answer would probably be ‘Less’ for a population larger than the Jewish. This statement is legal only because the IF is thrown in there. Anything can be said in these polls, even the most blatantly fallacious statements as long as the IF is there.
Even though this is legal to an extent, is it really right? I can find no way to justify the ethicality of strategies like push-polling. It leads me in fact to think that the candidate sending out these messages is the untruthful devious one, if not incredibly insecure. But as Allen Raymond says of persuading voters to think two candidates are involved in a scheme when he’s working for a third unnamed candidate, “There really is no right and wrong in politics. There’s legal and illegal…if you want to tell me it’s illegal, well, that’s up to you. But as far as my ethics? My ethics are fully intact.” Is he here then equating ethics, right and wrong, with legal and illegal? Politics is a tough game, but I feel like, out of anyone in the country, politicians are the ones I would want to be more concerned with right and wrong than with legal and illegal. Maybe if politicians actually cared more about ethics and morality, it would be easier for the lower and middle class to get a break on taxes. Yes, you may be able to justify it as ‘legal’ to give your millionaire friends higher tax breaks than the people who need it, but is that really right?
2 comments:
It was interesting to read your blog, and something I must comment on, is that what Allen Raymond is talking about has nothing to do with morals. Raymond, as far as I can tell from reading his book 'How to Rig an Election', never cared about "moral" nor "immoral." He cared about strategy and winning. His thinking is amoral.
When one is playing a game of chess, it is odd to hear a player exclaim, "I feel it is morally wrong to take out that knight, because he deserves to live and is just doing his duty." No. If I play chess (and if you play me you will likely be delighted by how easy it is to beat me), I will take out that knight if it suits the overall strategy and helps me to win. When Raymond mentions "legal" and "illegal," he is referring more to "staying in the game" and "getting disqualified." By keeping things legal, it allows one to keep on playing the game. Once one does something illegal, it just might be the end for such a player. Allen Raymond learned this the hard way, as he describes in his book.
Raymond also mentions in his book that he was so focused on getting his candidates elected, that he never actually considered that his candidates' philosophies and policies might actually affect real human beings, including himself, and that the candidates, too, are human beings. Here is the difference between a political campaign and a chess game, while both are strategic, the king left standing at the end of the chess game doesn't get to rule. He gets to see the inside of a wooden box until the next game. An elected official continues playing with increased power. (Although, Raymond does point out some of the Washington politics he witnessed and how a few key players and party politics tend to overshadow everyone else.)
While I must admire great strategic thinking, I also understand that people are not chess pieces and morals to play a role in our existence. We lose our humanity if we are reduced to chess pieces.
While I must admire great strategic thinking, I also understand that people are not chess pieces and morals *do play a role in our existence. We lose our humanity if we are reduced to chess pieces.
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