winner/loser

I was unfriended yesterday on FB by someone who is sick of political posts. It's not the first time I've been unfriended, well the first time for this reason, but it was very sudden and, I feel, a little harsh. It was a short association, made through a high school group page that I found myself added to a while back but I enjoyed our little correspondences, a friendly person even though I have no clear memories of him from back then.

I made a post about, well, here was my post:

I don't understand why everyone says Romney won the debate. What is that based on, being aggressive and running rough shod over the moderator? Why does that make him the winner, because he talked louder, more forcefully while he was lying about his policies? Sheesh. How about honesty for a benchmark. How about not telling a bunch of lies and contradicting everything else you had said in your campaign previously as a mark for who wins? Calmly stating your policies and how they have helped raise the country from the cesspool he inherited (even with some exaggerations) means you lose? There is something seriously wrong with this country and I'm not talking about the politics.

While this seems on the surface to be about politics, it really wasn't. The politics was just the arena that this little act played out in. Yes, I support the imperfect, stretching the truth Obama and yes I did represent Romney as lying and contradicting all his previous policy statements, but I didn't make that up. It's been fact checked and in the news and even his campaign people had to make a correction to some of what he said.  But really, I could just as well have said Bozo 1 and Bozo 2.

Because what I was really trying to get at was the criteria upon which Romney was declared the winner of the debate. My point was directed more to what our culture considers a 'winner', that demeanor was more important than content.

The debate was framed as some sort of contest where there must be a clear winner and a loser. Why, first of all, does there have to be a winner or a loser instead of two people talking about their positions, making their cases, when the winning or losing will be determined by the election.

It seemed to me that the winner was declared the winner not because his arguments were better, his politics were better, but because he was more aggressive and forceful and I think that is a cultural condition, perhaps even a human condition, deeper that Dem vs Rep. It might be one reason why this nation is always at war, has been at war with few exceptions, since it's conception.

And we have, you know. We have been involved in one war or another and many times more than one at a time for nearly every year of our existence. You can look that up. We have the largest military, spend the most on warfare, have armed forces stationed in over 150 countries.

And that's what I think is wrong. The aggressive forceful guy, the bully if you will, gets called the winner over the thoughtful calm guy. Apparently, right or wrong, truth or falsehood, doesn't enter into it.

Content doesn't enter into it.