Pearls: Please, no more junk-text-peddling

EDITORIAL MUG: Matt Pearl

Warning: The following remarks may offend some politicians. Reader discretion is advised.

My least favorite part of the August Primary has been by far the amount of political text messages I have received.

I understand well that the days of my cell phone number being semi-private are over. I know that some company somewhere has found it so irresistible to sell my phone information to the groups running these political campaigns that it has put my private information up for the highest bid. And every other bid.

But this is fair warning to any politician reading this column: If you send me a junk text during a political campaign – or any other time – my reaction will be a negative one.

Firstly, I will not vote for you. I am keeping track, and if you blasted me with a junk text, then I know for a certainty that you have signed up with one of the political ‘booster clubs’ out there, the folks manipulating our perceptions and pushing their choices of candidates on the rest of us. Your cronies can lobby in Jefferson City if they want, or Washington D.C. If they choose – but stay off my phone.

Secondly, I swipe left and report every one of these texts as ‘Junk.’ Because it’s exactly that – junk. I doubt reporting it does anything meaningful in the long term, but I still do it for every single political text I receive.

Campaigning has always happened on the surface – it has been about sales and popularity, and the substance of a candidate’s actions or affiliations gets lost. The masterminds putting these candidates before our eyes learned long ago that image is powerful, and it is often the only piece of information voters are interested in taking with them into the booth on election day.

The two major parties at their higher levels – namely, state and national – are preoccupied only with continuation and proliferation of power: to keep the offices they hold, to gain the offices they don’t. I am not an idealist: I understand that power is the game, and gaining and retaining it the sole objectives of politics.

But we sometimes mistake their fervor to get elected/reelected for genuine desire to serve the people. I hope never to become cynical, but too often I feel like I’m watching politicians squirming and scheming to keep their seats – and the associated power, influence, money and opportunities – when election season rolls around.

It’s an understandable behavior, but it’s not the spirit of public service. The intent of running for office, as well as for any subsequent reelection bids, should be to serve the electorate. It should be a sober task, like enlisting in the armed services – perhaps somewhat uncomfortable, but undertaken out of a sense of duty.

When public office becomes an opportunity to advance oneself financially, as it has become in this country, then we see the results: public servants who align themselves to vague, party-ordered agendas that advance the cause of the left or right, and who continue to fight to keep their lucrative seats until they term out, lose to another campaign operating on the same premise, or become unable to hold the office.

We have the best politicians money can buy. But with inflation as it is, I guess you can’t buy as nice of a Washington D.C. As you could a few years back.

To end my remarks, I feel it necessary for me to add a softer note for a few of my friends and acquaintances locally who have pursued service a the city, county or regional levels. While there certainly can be corruption in local politics, the rewards are usually significantly smaller, and the individuals who run for their lower-profile seats tend to have nobler motivations. I think highly of small-town public servants, with very few exceptions.

But junk-text-peddling, lobbyist puppet politicians can disappear as far as I’m concerned.

Matt Pearl owns and operates The Tri-County Ledger.