What are we really voting for?

Science and math now play major roles in the politics of democratic societies. The ability to measure, manipulate and predict voting outcomes has become a science used extensively by parties, super pacs, lobbiests and campaign managers. The actual beliefs, character and issue positions of canditates have become secondary to applied and controlled sets of carefully crafted image campaigns and prepared statements and responses. Candidates for political office have become created personas molded to get desired responses from carefully measured aspects of the voting public. The actual individuals, shaking hands and making speeches, have become disquised, coached and prepared images more than actual individuals. Candidates are chosen for recognizable names, public status, and their measured appeal to specific portions of the electorate. Carefully vetted candidates are more like actors on stage in front of elaborate backdrops than true individuals seeking a leadership role, and asking for our trust and approval. Election poles and results have begun to give all voters pause and make all of us question, not weather the election was rigged by manipulating vote counts, but, how much, each of us may have been manipulated by statistical analysis and slick advertising to make the selections we did in the voting booth. The same science that manipulates our politics is also used to manipulate our shopping, our social behavior and to insure trial outcomes by the careful selection of juries. The innate propensities for certain behaviors by individuals and groups of individuals has always been with us but, unmeasured, the outcomes of group decisions seemed random and somehow fair. Political candidates were real people asking for our vote, our choice of products was a thoughtful selection we assumed was of our own free will, and juries composed of random opinions was thought to meet out fair and imartial justice. These assumptions may have been naieve but we felt empowered by our freedom to choose and took pride in the expression of our individuality. Now, we leave the grocery store or the polling booth wondering if our chioces were really our own. Are we becoming sheep hearded subliminally by teams of wealthy big brother corporations or rich individuals? The uncertainty raised by the power of statistical analysis echos all around us and is making us suseptible to even more manipulations by those playing on the increasing tendancy to paranoia it brings on. Some of those playing on paranoia are simply unethical radio hosts using public uncertainty to increase their ratings and income, but others are pushing our emotional buttons to gain control and change the way our democracy works. Freedom is not simply freedom from big government, it is also freedom from the imposition of religion, freedom from manipulative political indoctrination, and the freedom to participate openly in a diverse cultural mix under the umbrella of a compasionate government that molifies extreems and recognizes everyone's contributions. The only way to keep the sheep herders at bay is think for youself. Question your emotional responses to political differences, they are probably the result of a long and persistant indoctrination by your family, your friends, your church, and the community you live in. Try reason instead of preprogramed emotions. You may find your opinions havent changed after hate and anger are removed from the equation but you can now vote from an informed position instead of as an angry pupet. Induced political paranoia serves no valuable purpose in a democracy. Become as independent in your thinking as a cat. No one has ever been able to herd cats.