Here we come into the season of smokescreens and manipulation, otherwise known as the presidential election year. With each passing election, the question turns increasingly away from which candidate would make the best president and which policies would be best for the nation, and toward which campaign can do a better job manipulating public opinion in order to get their person elected. It's the season of guilt by innuendo or association, of character assassination, and of the absolute flouting of every principle of logic since Aristotle. Prepare to be snowed, buffaloed and bamboozled.

You're not a citizen, you're not even a voter, you're a demographic: a 'target audience' of a set of sophisticated mass-marketing techniques. They already know your 'buying habits' and they know what gets you fired up or turned off. They've been putting together their marketing campaign for years - long before they had a 'product' to offer you. They already know how n% of you are going to vote. They also know that they can increase their 'sales' by x% by using such-and-such a tactic. Isn't it nice to know that they can so accurately predict your behavior and, when they can't predict it, they can re-set your buying criteria at will by re-framing each question?

'Politics is a dirty business.' Why should it be that way? The answer, I think, was best formulated by Robert Moses, the designer of our contemporary urban setting (he had already conceived of the interstate highway system and showcased it in the transportation pavilion of the 1939 New York World's Fair), when he said, "If the end doesn't justify the means, then what does?" It probably never occurred to Mr. Moses that a good means doesn't needjustification.

Contrast, for the sake of argument, education with manipulation. Does an educated electorate need to be justified? Or, is its benefit evident in itself? Would you rather be given an accurate set of facts and have the opportunity to make your own informed judgment, or would you prefer to be kept in the dark and sold a bill of goods?

The unimaginable prevalence of conspiracy theories haunting us today - like the one that says that the issue of global warming is just an attempt by 'them' to subvert the American economy (for what possible reasons, I'll never guess) - provides ample proof that people have been so manipulated that they can no longer even recognize observable facts. Illogical emotionalism reigns supreme and, as the marketing experts are fond of teaching us, people are moved not by facts but by feelings.

What I'm talking about here doesn't only have to do with politicians and mass marketers. It applies just as much to you. Like it or not, we're all in the business of marketing. We have something valuable to offer others, and we have a right to expect to paid an honest price for the value of our product or service. Nobody will be able to take advantage of what we have to offer if they don't know about it. Marketing makes all the difference between an artisan and a business woman or man. With the obligation to market your products and services in order for others to gain the value you have to offer comes the responsibility to use the power of marketing ethically.

In business, as in politics, a good end (a valuable product or service) does not justify smokescreens and manipulation. There exists a fine line between persuasion and manipulation. That line is drawn between education and obfuscation. So long as you are promoting an educated consumer, you're on the ethical side; when you cross over into hiding, twisting, or misrepresenting the facts, you'll know that you're on the 'dark side'.

You can ask, "Is my potential consumer buying what I have to offer because they know all about my product or service, or because they don't know all the facts about it?" Or, "Are they buying it because they've made an honest comparison between what I have to offer and my competition, or between my product or service and the caricature that I've created of my competition?" As long as there has been human commerce, there have been unscrupulous marketers. Ask yourself now, "Are these the people I want to be in competition with?" The answer to all these questions will tell you a lot about your future prospects, a lot about your business and, ultimately, a lot about yourself.