Clowns and Sirens

Three theories to explain the apparent power of extreme negative advertising to sway the voting masses:

1.  The technology of political advertising is inherently dark and cynical.  These are the puppet-masters.  They shrewdly manipulate democracy and in doing so reveal its beastial nature.  This might be termed a Rabelaisian theory.  It implies that democracy never rises far from carnival.  Grotesquerie allows catharsis in the otherwise impotent act of the vote.

2. Human flaws are more credible than human virtue.  In the age of compulsive positivity we no longer believe the positive.  God is dead but Satan lives.  We can’t get a glimpse of the face of God but we see the devil’s everywhere. Hence we are happiest picking between the evils that we know.  In this theory politics becomes a kind of cheaply made pornography.  It exists as a fetish, false memory, and tease.  We are left to imagine the real evil, the real sex, the real politics, behind the lurid facade.

3.  Negative political ads are actually a strategy of revenge, enacted by the electorate against the political class.  By responding favorably to increasingly crass and fraudulent ads the electorate leads the politicians toward self-revelation and self-mockery.  They discredit themselves.  They deride themselves in the lurid mirror of their own performance.  Hence they become smaller and more impotent.  It is like the myth of the sirens, in which it is the electorate’s song of approval that beaches the lusting political class.  The more discredited our leaders, the safer we are.