Just look at US politics. Particularly at the national level, it is pretty much all about image.
Successful candidates are all tall, and, when they are women, well groomed and attractive-looking. The conventions at which they are nominated, like the one just held in Tampa, Florida to nominate Mitt Romney and his vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan, and the one coming up next week to renominate Barack Obama and his running mate Joe Biden, are professionally staged and choreographed entertainment events.
Romney's even featured a schlock cameo appearance by actor Clint Eastwood, shamelessly reprising his "Dirty Harry" role by leading the swooning delegates in a collective recitation of his famous line: "Go ahead, make my day!"
What actually was said at that convention was a pack of lies. Paul Ryan, who accepted his nomination as vice presidential nominee first, as is the tradition at these events, declared that President Obama had stolen $716 billion from Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, using it to fund his signature health care "reform" program, derogatively dubbed "Obamacare" by Republicans.
He said the president had allowed an auto plant in Ryan's hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin to shut down. He said Obama had "done nothing" to enact budget "reforms" proposed by a bi-partisan budget commission he had earlier created. He called the $831-billion economic stimulus package of federal spending and tax cuts promoted and enacted by Obama in his first months in office nothing but "cronyism" and "patronage" that had "left out" average Americans. All of these assertions were bald-faced lies, and had already been exposed as such when Ryan and other Republicans had first made them earlier in the campaign.
Comment: What we are seeing today in Syria - that is, ALL of the massacres and car bombs etc. - is the work of the 'Free Syrian Army' and it is precisely the same kind of tactic that has been playing out in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past 10 years. This is a NATO 'proxy Army', trained and funded by the intelligence agencies of NATO countries to sow chaos in the targeted nation as an alternative to a 'boots-on-the-ground' invasion by NATO country armies. Even in the case where an invasion takes place, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, this proxy army war takes over fairly quickly because such proxies can kill and maim with impunity whereas regular Western soldiers cannot do so to the same extent. There are two main benefits of such proxy army tactics:
1) In the case of Syria, they can be used to try and create such chaos that NATO countries can ultimately invade or start a bombing campaign for "humanitarian reasons".
2) In the case of Iraq, for example, they can be used to justify the continued occupation by NATO in order to fight these same proxy armies that NATO created.
See also: 'Free Syrian Army' aka 'al-Qaeda' aka US, Israeli and British Mercenaries, Use Syrian Man as 'Suicide Bomber'