Feel the Love

I first noticed it with the Democrats.  Hillary Clinton used it on more than one interview and public address, including her DNC acceptance speech. It was always preceded by the slightest little accenting pause. Now I’ve heard it emanating from, of all places, the muck fashioned lips of Donald Trump. I’m referring to the use of the term love.  What’s going on here?

It’s worth a thought. I struggle to remember any past politicians using the term love as an image to support their candidacy. Yet here we are, entering the final leg of perhaps the most unsophisticated and insolent Presidential contests in modern times and we hear the call to love.

Granted, the candidates do introduce the love from different directions, essentially from opposite corners.

Clinton and her surrogates have used it as a representation of what we need to add to our national consciousness in order to bring about the changes they advocate, especially regarding the treatment of illegal aliens.  Not really like singing the Beatles tune All You Need is Love, rather more like Mary Poppins suggesting we need to add Just a Spoon Full of Sugar.

Trump, on the other hand, is not advocating that love is missing from our collective body politic, quite the contrary.  He promotes the idea that the American people are just fine (at least the ones packing his rallies), but it’s those pesky fir-ah-ners wanting to get into this Country that need the love.  He actually implies the need for a love test (along with blood and religion, I assume) proving that they “love us”.

I suppose for Donald it would be perfectly fitting to have Cuba Gooding at the immigration line shouting “SHOW..ME..THE LOVE”, as he did with “money” in Jerry McGuire.  To the extent the applicants fist-bumped or high fived before they proceeded to their faith examination might be test enough.

Using love within in the context of rhetoric that more simply asks “vote for me” may be a metaphor for a darker side of these Presidential campaigns.

The Trump side is easy to see.  His authoritarian demand that immigrants to the US “love us” flies in the face of one of the dearest siren songs for Conservatives…Freedom.  It is precisely that we don’t demand to be loved that makes a free society so compelling, even if that freedom carries with it a potential for conflict. 

Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers is ostracized by “freedom loving” Conservatives as a personal affront to their patriotism, yet they fail to reflect an iota on the free part of freedom, which they should take pride in.  I’m guessing he wouldn’t gain admission to a Trump Nation regardless how well he threw a football.

Note that the absence of love is not hate; however the paradox is that the more you demand love the more potential there is to generate hate.

Clinton’s misappropriation of love is more subtle. The underlying theme when she suggests that love is a missing ingredient to the well being of Americans is a call to be better citizens, as if a tasteless cake that has been served up by our Government bakery is missing a touch of salt. She’s selling her own Progressive siren song that self-interest needs to be supplanted by compassion.

Although feeling the love may be a Progressive motivator and land on a few signs at a Bernie rally, it can be counter-productive to objective governance. The fact is that love, a strong and important driver of human behavior, is essentially another form of self-interest and can be used to undermine the freedom not to love.

The very fact that these candidates have chosen to include love in their arsenal of attack tools is a testimony to the rancor that has been this political season to date.

The great American experiment to create a secular nation of agreed upon laws that everyone can love without it (the Nation) demanding to be loved is not furthered by politicians advocating their candidacy as a call to devotion…for Americans or those who want to be.