Friday, June 10, 2011

Strange Expectations

Most people have jobs that afford them a couple of days off each week to do with as they please, and with little or no attention from most people, but at the same time, most people seem to hold elected individuals to a higher-than-human standard of behavior. Basically anyone in a position of leadership must, for the term of their position, wear blinders, mittens on their hands, and sequester their genitals.

There are standards of social behavior we must teach children so they don't have babies they cannot afford to support, or contract incurable diseases through activities that involve physical contact with the bodily fluids of other people.

Entertainment media creates adult scenarios that make such behaviors seem harmless and manageable, because when you are an adult and understand the proper procedures for protecting yourself, those scenarios are manageable and safe. Censorship rules require that the entertainment media not teach methods of protection to avoid the consequences of bad behavior, but they allow scenarios to play out as though the protection was in place.

So children are left to imitate the same behavior, but unfortunately, reap the consequences of not knowing the proper methods of protection. Children will repeat the behavior they see, it is in their nature to do so as biological beings. Parents watch in horror as their daughters come home at three o'clock in the morning, mascara and lipstick smeared, shaking, clothing torn, missing a sock, only to discover some days later she is pregnant, or has genital Herpes, or AIDS.

Because elected officials appear in the entertainment medium of television and the Internet, they are expected to avoid the risky behavior because the audience has a personal investment in them. Parents can't stand to see politicians behaving the same way fictional television characters behave, because the audience believes that the politicians will suffer the consequences of their own children who don't know better.

The most fearful and outspoken against politicians behaving like real human beings are people who are the farthest removed from knowledge about the nature of human behavior, and the farthest removed from knowledge about the proper protections available for navigating such risky behavior.

It is the naive, isolated, fundamentalist radical religious who put their own children at the most risk by denying them knowledge, yet they throw their hands up and proclaim "it was God's plan" when their daughters get pregnant at seventeen with their second child.

Politicians are human and can't be expected to not have human needs or eccentricities. They say as a parent you are only as good as your worst child, are you only as good as the worst politician for which you voted, or the worst preacher you followed?