Something to demand

This is not about politics. Yet, it is all about politics.

We have had some rough and tumble presidential campaigns in the past. Dirty tricks, sly innuendos and dishonesty have marked previous races for the White House.

This campaign has the same disagreeable elements, but it is also different.

There is one thing missing in this election that may have defined some others.

It is a simple thing. It is something that rarely takes the spotlight, and it is something that is not often discussed.

This simple thing is common decency.

Kurt Vonnegut, best selling author of the seventies and eighties, declared that there is not enough common decency in the world.

If alive, he would repeat his refrain, “Please a little less love, and a little more common decency.”

This campaign has too much “love” and too much blind passion. There is too much love of candidate, love of conflict and love of transitory ideas. The candidates and the tawdry platoons of candidate surrogates are so immersed in the campaign that their passion overshadows all else. It is combat to the personal destruction of the other.

All the rules have been cast aside. The campaigns are mired in hateful rhetoric. Civility has been lost.

Standards of common decency no longer have a hold on campaigners and passionate supporters. Its hold on previous campaigns may have been tenuous. It is all but forgotten this time around.

Say what you want. Say what you think. Bend the truth, if not ignore it completely. These are the new rules. Instead of digging deep into issues the campaigns are digging in the dirt.

Scaring, unnerving, offending, inciting violence, relentless personal assaults and attacks on the country’s institutions are not good for the country.

Are we to accept this current political tone as normal?

We have fallen so far that pessimists think we are irretrievable, but common decency is not too much to ask for and not too much to expect.

And, it is not too much to demand.

Gordon Forgey

Publisher