Halloweens And Politicking Deal With Dark News Clips

Election day, November 5, is mighty few days away. The airwaves have long been filled with everything that can be said before the election. Portions of news have been spun every which way and then some. The time to do better has passed. A calmer topic is Halloween, which has had its own dark spells with the news.

The proximity of these two traditions—Halloween and election day—brings factors to consider. Halloween costumes and masks make for a sense of unreal. Masked wording and varied theatrics make campaign debates unreal. The nature of news per se needs to be recognized.

Halloweens changed in the 1970s when national news about Halloween took a dark turn. Accounts of poison treats and razor blades in apples at Halloween made news across the land. A few reports said these stories were highly exaggerated and many were outright hoaxes. Later, news said the worst risk from trick-or-treating was the much higher rates of pedestrian deaths that occur on Halloween night. Big news survives on excitement, which had masked the main danger of trick-or-treating. That gap in the truth prevailed for decades.

News comes in dribs and drabs, that is to say, piecemeal. A noted American journalist and war correspondent of  WWI knew the effect. He said: “Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.” The natural way we get major news—a shred at a time, stretched over years—changed Halloweens.

From the jigsaw of news, candidates learn how to nullify meaningful debate on issues. Ugly means that involve both parties are widespread:

• Both parties separately and both together often draft “hybrid” bills in Congress—that is, bills with a mix of rival policies. A possible hybrid bill would be a bill that provides spending for the military and spending for abortions in the military. Such hybrid bills give all legislators plenty of room to take credit and/or cast blame on virtually any issue raised in a debate or election. Likewise, votes on hybrid bills are jointly used as “proof” of who is lying about their votes in a debate or election.
• After elections, each member in Congress (and elsewhere) soon knows big-time pressures to vote the party line. This tactic by each party leaves legislators having to defend votes they made against their will. Still worse, each party seeks the monopolistic powers in Congress that both parties have agreed come with a majority of one or more in the house or senate. These anti-democratic powers amplify the need for both parties to pressure their members to toe the party line.
• Candidates display no doubt about their strengths. Each one stands foursquare behind their own predictions and the mirror images. A simple example is: “We are confident we will win and the race is so close we need everyone’s help.” A complicated example is: “If I am elected, X will happen. If they are elected, Y will happen.”

In U.S. history, our most valuable leaders have had the best skills for dealing with mixed truths.

Mixed truths can be valuable or awful:

• The term honors public discourse that is alive to pros and cons, which is the lifeblood of democracy.  Better to root out problems than to keep some in the dark.
• The term extends to exaggerations, which proliferate like hoaxes on social media. 
• Exaggerations metastasize into lies, which pervade the election parade.

Beware the scary nature of news, and how we see it.