Crucified at the polls

Kinutil

Two opposite assertions always seem to arise in the course of election campaigns. One is that the country is going all to hell and we need change.

The second is that we are already getting better and we should therefore just stay on track. The first is the expected narrative of opposition candidates hoping to replace the establishment. The latter is the expected stand of administration candidates. Are elections decided, therefore, by the question of whether or not the country is really going all to hell?

But who can really tell? Is the country really going all to hell or moving away from it, away from the abyss, so to speak?

The two narratives hold their own as arguments. And there is a kind of inevitable subjectivity to the question: What does “going all to hell” really mean?

The planet itself is going all to hell, it seems like. Climates are drastically changing everywhere. Storms are getting stronger than ever, hitting even the most unlikely places. And yet, certain advocates of “change” are setting their campaigns on a path which does not even accept the reality of global warming and climate change.

This makes the “going all to hell” political narrative seem nothing if not ironic.

The irony is everywhere. In our own country, we hear political candidates speak against corruption even though they have standing cases of corruption filed against them that have yet to be resolved.

One cannot help but make the conclusion that the complete narrative here is that this particular candidate will or can stop corruption because he knows exactly how it is done. Principally because he has a whole personal history of doing it. But how would he ever want to end it if corruption is what put him into office in the first place?

The point is that the narrative “going all to hell” is not at all a simple one. It is quite complicated. It is at least as complicated as advocating the killing of criminals as the main solution to the country’s problem of rampant criminality.

But if any officer of government advocates killing criminals without giving them their due process in the law, then that officer of government has therefore declared himself a criminal. By the correct course of that logic, why shouldn’t he be killed first before any other criminal? Why is he even allowed to run for office?

Every political candidate has his or her own political narrative. And each one of these narratives are questionable at face value. They have to be. By their very nature they are simplifications of a complicated story.

And the story is defined more by what’s left out than by what’s placed in. And often, the most convincing stories with the electorate are the most outlandish and unbelievable.

The narratives often hide more than they reveal the truth. In the case of elections happening both here in the Philippines and the United States, the narratives are often fantastic.

But the funny thing is that we know they are. And yet, there is no universal way to react to it. We all react in our own peculiar way. One supposes that if Jesus Christ Himself or even perhaps Gautama Buddha were to run for public office either here or in the United States, they would have no chance at all of being elected.

Imagine Jesus Christ running for the GOP or Republican Party nomination on a platform of “loving you neighbor as yourself.” Could he win against Donald Trump’s proposal for a “Great Wall of Mexico” funded by the Mexicans themselves? If Jesus Christ proposed bombing with bread the war torn countries of the Middle East, would his proposal trump Trump’s proposal to bomb the hell out of the oil wells?

Could Christ even win the Christian vote of the Bible belt states?

One thinks not. Gautama would not fare any better. He would fare even worse. They both might possibly be laughed out of the race and declared nuisance candidates. And mostly by the people who think themselves more Christian than anyone else.

And if they ran here in the Philippines, how could they ever hope to win? The answer seems easy enough: They would have to buy votes. Imagine Christ multiplying votes instead of bread and fish. But why would they even think to do that? They would lose. They would be, in a word — crucified — at the polls.