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All these political attack ads, north and south of the border, are giving me the creeps.

After watching them I am filled with rage, despair and even fear.

First it was Stephen Harper's Conservatives, who have spent a year and a half mercilessly depicting Liberal leader Stéphane Dion as helpless, hapless and hopeless. A real loser.

Then it was Republican John McCain's anti-Obama ads in the United States, which are so distorted (one claims that Mr. Obama approved comprehensive sex-ed in kindergarten before kids can read) that even that Machiavellian maestro, GOP strategist Karl Rove, says they have gone too far.

And now political parties of every stripe have jumped aboard the hate-talk express.

What if every day of ordinary people's lives was one long string of attack ads?

How would we get up in the morning?

I can just imagine one about me.

Visual: A woman leaning against her kitchen counter, looking defeated. She opens the fridge and then closes it without taking anything out.

Voiceover: “Judith Timson promised her family she would make their favourite pasta dish last night.”

Next visual: Woman lying on the couch reading the New Yorker.

Voiceover: “But when it came time to deliver, Judith Timson said she was ‘too tired.'”

Next visual: A lone man, staring out the window, deep in thought.

Voiceover, this time with a sneer: “If Judith Timson is too tired to make a simple plate of pasta, what else is she too tired to do?”

Vicious!

Our modern culture, come to think of it, is one long string of attack ads – through YouTube videos, satirical Web pages and gotcha e-mails, we are constantly holding up our public figures, and even each other, to scathing ridicule and scorn.

Most times on the Internet we hide behind anonymity to do so. (Will the reader, for instance, who called me “patriarchy's handmaiden” please step forward? Just for a little chat.)

The truth is, even if we're not the ones on the attack, we're all complicit, quickly forwarding the best nasty e-mails or hurrying to YouTube to witness the next takedown. It doesn't say much for our collective humanity, does it, when during elections the political ads that work the best are the most vicious ones?

It's not that campaigns shouldn't say anything negative about each other – they have to explain in hard-hitting ways how and why their opponents are wrong, and how their own proposals are much better. And they have to be witty and entertaining to make an impact.

But some of the current attack ads lie outright. Why not? No one is stopping them.

This year, the media seem more ready to call out politicians who allow their campaigns to spread lies. Still, it's rare that the public discerns – or even cares about – the level of falsity or malevolence in those ads, and rarer still that moral fury results.

During the 1993 federal election, the Progressive Conservatives made fun of Jean Chrétien's speech problems and droopy lip brought on by Bell's palsy (the ad ran a picture of Mr. Chrétien's face with a comment, supposedly from a member of the public: “I would be very embarrassed if he became prime minister of Canada.”).

After outrage fanned by the Liberals, the Conservatives were forced to withdraw the ad less than 24 hours later, and Mr. Chrétien, who was handily elected to office (an inevitability anyway), delivered a barn burner of an emotional response (“God gave me a physical defect, I've accepted that since I was a kid.”). Mr. Chrétien said the Tory ad reminded him of childhood taunts.

That was apt because attack ads do something we have all experienced since kindergarten: They dehumanize others by magnifying one aspect of them – a physical flaw, a fragment of a sentence or even a belief – until all they are is that one characteristic.

Many of us remember exactly what it felt like in high school to be mocked for a bad haircut or a deficit in coolness, and the group snickers that followed. Now, of course, there are bullying programs and institutionalized responses to students who make such attacks. Kids supposedly come out of high school these days more prepared to deal with bullies, sneers, personal insults and falsehoods.

Good thing. It will help them if they ever want to run for high office. Or – here's a thought – it might even give them a sharper awareness of what's fair and what's ugly.We need to nurture a political and social culture that promotes witty, biting, but still civil debate.

I wouldn't want my life to be one long attack ad, and I'm sure you wouldn't either. Just think what they could do with my personal style.

Visual: A woman trudging down a street filled with upscale clothing stores. Voiceover: “Judith Timson goes shopping all the time. Yet she never seems to have anything to wear.”

Next visual: Woman in her favourite, faded black yoga pants, buying a coffee at her local café. Voiceover: “If Judith Timson can't dress for success, why does she think she deserves it?”

Cruel. Very, very cruel.