Reality TV: Bullying, lies and campaign funding

By Susana G. Baumann

What do bullying, lies and Citizens United have in common? They are killing our democracy. 

We are only three months away from the national elections, and the campaign trail has become a battle ground for bitter attacks and negative confrontation. Both candidates keep making accusations of using “distractive strategies” on one another but in reality both have something to hide and, apparently, little to offer. 

Bullying seems to be a leadership style chosen by Republicans, encouraged by a base that wants to see “blood.” No matter what the damage, the consequences, the long-term results, they want to impose their ideas by aggression because “tough people are needed to run society.”

Democrats, on the other hand, seem to have chosen the victim’s place, an innerving moderation used as a tactic for self-defense, not an organized party with real ideas and a strong political demeanor. 

And then there is the realm of lies. 

The ad campaigns launched by both parties and Super PACs are a string of sound bites and images more on personal attacks and less about political and economic strategies that will lead the country in the next four years. 

In that context, taking words out of context is just Campaign 101 material but there is also the distortion of ideas and facts, the rumors, the “through the rock and hide the hand” and the “lying to your face”  techniques. 

And then there is the media, seldom calling out any of these behaviors. 

Crowned with the largest amount of money spent in a general election to buy advertising time, we will get to November 2^nd with little idea of what will happen after November 3^rd. 

Yet, this is our reality show, the one we all take place in. As in any other reality show, many believe they are not scripted, that they are the real candidates with real lives, real families, and real emotions who “love America” and want the best for us. 

But in reality –to be redundant- the campaigns are a carefully designed strategy to “get” the opponent in their weaknesses and misery. Because, who wants to follow a “loser”? 

Feeding the viewers on negative emotions, fear, unhappiness and problems is anything but a political campaign. 

In the end, if true ideas, strategies and facts are not discussed, giving all of us the opportunity to freely choose our representatives such as it should be in a democratic society, it is because politicians are trying to “sell us” something; something we might not like once we “seal the deal” and we find out there was small print on the other side of the page.  

Illegal Americans

By Susana G. Baumann

George Lopez, the Mexican American comedian, is launching a new show called “It’s not me, it’s you.” As he explains in the prep scenes, -and I’m paraphrasing- we live in a society where we are used to finger pointing, looking for responsibilities and blaming on other people’s actions but never looking at our own behavior.

A few weeks ago, the national debate over the term “illegal” referring to “illegal immigrants” has taken a new level.

A new level of stupidity, I would add.

Debating about the term “illegal” might bring the beloved and sought out spotlight to journalists who love to masturbate with words. But this discussion is as useless for those who “carry” the label as it is for the legal system.

Moreover, Americans are not really divided between those who defend and abide by the law and those who don’t. Most people are somehow lenient about the grey areas of many laws and might even agree that most “Illegal” immigrants are hard-working people who are here for good reasons.

And then, of course, there are the others. The Brewers and the Arpaios, the MacDonnells and even the Rubios, and the many that bully, insult, and keep a self-righteous position about how “their families” came to this country legally.

I pity them because they have taken possession of a territory, a land, a philosophy of life, values and even an ideal that was born and meant to be shared, and they had trashed it to convert it in a trophy. We have what you can’t have, it’s ours and we will guard it.

They live in a country, as we all do, where immigrants, legal or illegal, do the many jobs that are menial, low-paid, disgusting, exhausting, working in conditions that most Americans would qualify as unacceptable and even degrading. They clean our bathrooms, farm our groceries, kill and process our meats, cook our meals, drive our children to schools, sew our clothes, and much, much more.

So from now on, I propose that we call those who eat at the restaurants immigrants work for, enjoy the landscaping they do for our yards, use the public bathrooms they clean, walk the streets and drive their cars on the roads they repair, rent them our properties with excessive profitability, hire them to work for cash under the table, accept their fake green-cards or social security cards to overwork them in 16-hour shifts under the sun, and all the other unlawful actions Americans carry on to take advantage of a cheap labor force, those should be called “illegal Americans.”

If we were law abiding citizens, no “illegal” immigrant should find a way to stay in this country. But of course, it’s not about us, it’s about them.