The Red Menace Hits the Crimson Tide. Literature & Language Essay

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Moral Status of Matt's Fakery
1.0. Introduction
American political history is replete with conspiracies. Several conspiracies have resulted in the manipulation of sentiments in past (Zelinski). In a podcast titled as "The Red Menace Hits the Crimson Tide", an Alabamian young boy namely Matt is shown to have run a campaign in favor of a democratic candidate Douglas Jones for the US Senate Election 2017 where he had to contest republican candidate Roy Moor. Moor was hot favorite only until Matt teamed up with political supporters of Jones to unleash fakery that was aimed at deceptively manipulate the voters' sentiments. The fakery was mainly focused on creating a divide among republicans by disseminating fake manifestos and slogans by disguising as republicans (e.g. false flag propaganda) to form a public opinion against them. In the end, Jones succeeded by a margin of 22,000 votes (Calhoun). This conspiracy by Matt has a controversial ethical status while seen through a different ethical lens.
2.0. Assessing Matt's Story from Consequentialist Point of View
Consequentialism focuses more on consequences than the intentions attached to an act. This is to say that an act is not intrinsically good or bad. Each action and decision is to be judged by the nature and intensity of its results (Anonymous). There are several branches of consequentialism with each centered on the outcomes of acts as a measure of the ethical status of an action or decision.
In order to understand the moral sense of Matt's acts, it is important to refer to different theoretical stances relating to the consequence-based point of view. Without regard to any specific branch, it is hard to assess the worth of the consequences of his beguiling tactics. The end result was the victory of Jones by a margin of 22,000 votes. Besides, an amount of $100,000 was used up by the campaign (Calhoun). These consequences can neither be rated as good or bad without subscribing to a scale. Hence, from a general perspective, Matt's initiatives have a neutral ethical value.
One of the major branches of consequential literature is 'utilitarianism'. Advocates of utilitarianism believed that an act is morally acceptable and appreciable if it maximizes the utility. In other words, an act can end in a certain amount of gain and cost (Anonymous). If the total gain outweighs the total harm, it is ethically acceptable on the utilitarian scale and vice versa. While assessed from this perspective, the morality of Matt's acts can be assessed by weighing the total benefit of Jones' victory over Roy against its repercussions in short and long terms. Here, it is important to refer to the fact that the majority favored republican candidate and he was supposed to be the senator if Matt's campaign had not manipulated the results (Calhoun). This clearly implies that the majority of the Alabamian population was more satisfied with republican manifesto than that of Democratic. Therefore, this manipulation can be interpreted as the wrong formation of public opinion, which upon the discovery of facts could lead to disappointment for the majority. Similarly, it also means that the policies of Jones were unlikely to resonate with the ...