Will treachery of political battlefield destroy us?

In the Steven Spielberg movie about Abraham Lincoln, there is a scene showing Lincoln slowly riding a horse through a horrific battlefield scene just after the conclusion of a bloody battle. All about are corpses and torn bodies of men who fought fiercely and unrelentingly to prove the worthiness of their cause. Little is actually proved as a result of this conflict, and the cost is hideously high. Friends and families have been irreparably torn apart, like the mangled bodies strewn through the field.

It could easily serve as an apt metaphor for the 2012 U.S. presidential election campaign.

If there has ever been a more negative, brutal attempt to personally destroy political opponents, it must have been during the American Civil War. In the present battle, money is unlimited and morality has no bounds, leading to an unquenchable blood lust in pursuit of something which will be called “victory” but will be as hollow and overpriced as the battlefield aftermath.

Will we drape the winners with honor? Will the losers forever suffer the smears of character assassination? Will the winners have been proved absolutely right; the losers completely wrong? And, whatever the outcome, will the cost, not merely in money but in humanity, even remotely be justified? If there is no land to rule but scorched earth and no tools but crippled institutions, how is the long march toward human enlightenment and progress advanced?

The political campaign of 2012 has opened a Pandora’s Box of treachery and open, senseless hatred (an obvious oxymoron.) The campaign was never about touting the superior abilities or talents of one contestant over the other. From the beginning, and even before, it has been solely about destroying one particular individual.   This was the announced goal of the House of “Representatives” and the all-out thrust of a Faustian coalition of the impotent remnants of a once proud political party with a rogue band of outlaws intent upon pulling the temple down around them.

As I write this, the result of the election is unknown. The outcome is far less important, however, than whether “the last best hope of man” can somehow find the will and competence to keep the flame of goodness and inclusion alive. If we no longer celebrate our common goals and our long held belief in “liberty and justice for all,” our present battlefields will be as tragic and forlorn as any ever fought over.