Sometimes

Sometimes your heart lifts even as your head is telling you how stupid and cliched and ohmygod all that social baggage and co-optings of the gooey love beads so full of meanings they're now devoid of them, but you just can't help it. The marketers are tapping in to something real.

This evening on the walk from my house to my boss' I saw a rainbow. A real, live, because it was sprinkling but the sun was out on a pleasant spring evening, rainbow. It had been a long time, so long I'd forgotten how pretty and subtle they are. I couldn't take my eyes off of it. Even the boss' kids at 7, 6, and 3 weren't as impressed as I was.

Then we watched this really cool PBS Frontline documentary called the Persuaders about how marketers get inside your soul. And, beyond marketers, political consultants, which is what I'm masquerading as these days. The documentary painted us as even worse, but mostly talked about the conservative dude who ran the Contract with America campaign and conjured up the phrase "death tax."

So here's how I sleep at night. If up to now political manipulation has been just that - deception and confusion and noise - then there needs to be someone who finds the right words but gets at the truth. And if advertising wants to convince you their product can find you community, identity, spiritual enlightenment, but political issues, organizations, and involvement are our community, identity, and spirit, then I think we can take advantage of psycho devices to explain politics as it really is and as it should matter to everyone.

That sounds alright. As right as rain. Now I can sleep.