The conduct being exhibited in the current presidential campaign reveals as much about the voters as it does about the candidates.

As a nation we claim an enduring love for our Constitution, and the democratic principles and religious ethos on which it was founded, a claim most consider the hallmark of patriotism.

(I omit mention of military service as an indicator. Too many of our political notables who successfully trumpet their patriotism used every available exception to avoid donning a uniform.)

If one judges by what the candidates say and do in pursuing the presidency, and the public’s indifference with respect thereto, claims of enduring love for the Constitution lose credibility.

Given the public’s toleration — often embracement — of the flood of political ads marked by lies and distortions of fact, one could reasonably conclude the “land of the free” has become the land of the ill-informed, who don’t know they are being taken, and of the well-informed, who know but don’t care.

Following the lies and distortions, “love of country” and the preservation of “American values” are the clinchers of the typical political stump speech.

Given the candidates’ practiced deception, it is clear that the moral lesson impressed upon us since childhood — “it is not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game”—has been dropped from their list of values.

A political process so thoroughly corrupted by the candidates and their super-PAC funders of slanders and lies is a disgrace and a mockery of the notion that ours is a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

Continued toleration of that process will lead us from democracy to oligarchy.

As to our religious ethos claim, perhaps all of us could benefit from some serious introspection. Certainly the candidates could.

Tom Tidd

Pinehurst