The Messenger

While most of us quietly, or in my case, not so quietly live our lives, the messenger is at work trying to figure out how to manipulate us.

He polls us, phones us, puts us on trending charts and watches how we respond to issues of the day. All this information is used to help the messenger create just the right message to grab our attention pull at our heartstrings and get our vote.

I’ve been in meetings over the last few years and listened to the messenger as he determines what we’ll buy into. The messenger lives on both sides of the isle. The goal is the same, to win.

The messenger feeds off money. The more you have the bigger, better message you can create. The more money you have the more you can air the message. And the more the message airs, the more the public hears it and the more likely the public is to buy it.

Repetition has a way of creating it’s own truth. What is truly frightening about all of this is in some cases the messenger understands what we want to hear, what we want to believe, what we want to think, more than we do.

The messenger has time to study, create, maneuver and manipulate information, time you and I spend doing our jobs, taking care of our families and taking out the trash.

The truth can be a frightening thing. The messenger knows he doesn’t have to be that far off the mark and still claim his message as the truth. If it sounds good, if it sounds close and if we hear it enough chances are we’ll believe it.

As we head into the General Election the messenger is hard at work. He’s watching us, prying away at our thoughts and working his magic to create his message.

It may be time for the voters to stop listening to created truth and start figuring out what we really want in leaders. Do we want to hear what we want to hear or someone who will truly lead? Do we know who really holds the strings to the money, and what that means to the messenger and his message? Are we willing to hand the shovel and its contents back to the messenger and do some digging of our own?

Right now, those reading this may think yes, that’s what I want to do. But unfortunately the messenger understands something about human nature that we think is unchangeable. The messenger understands that we don’t have or won’t take the time to critically think through the issues and in the end will buy the message.

There is a lot at stake in Oregon this year and we had all better be watching carefully.

So the election really becomes, who has the best message and how good was the messenger at figuring you out.