Last time I wrote about different kinds of falsehoods, and how they applied to the politics in this country for the past 40 years. A lot of people believe what Romney and Ryan are saying - and I am appalled. I was more appalled by Bush 2, but I didn't have this blog then - and speaking out back then was certain to get me labeled anti-American (at the least, as I recall, Cheney and others were bandying the "traitor" label about a little), a reversion to the divisiveness of Vietnam.
As a cyclist, I have been following developments in the Armstrong saga. In this article: by David Walsh, about Lance Armstrong, Walsh describes a press conference where we now have irrefutable proof that Armstrong was lying through his teeth. Yet he was so convincing and reassuring. He said exactly the right things - "we will fight against doping with all our strength" - "I have done no doping, now or ever". All the people speaking out back then were just bitter, ugly, losers. And he said it so we would believe it.
Every politician has to lie sometime. It comes with the territory. The objective, at least for me, is to find the ones who manage to lie the least, and to live up to general Christian principles of society.
I haven't seen a Republican do that since Barry Goldwater. Nixon surely didn't - he intentionally kept the Vietnam war going, and got our soldiers killed - so he could get re-elected. Reagan had people swapping dope for arms. Not to mention his huge debt, when he had gotten elected on a smaller government platform. Reagan was a two-edged sword, I will say that. He did try to do something about the debt by using sleight-of-hand to raise taxes. But his changes made the rich richer, and the poor poorer. Bush 2 was a disaster. He took something that was working and ran it into a tree, head-on. And he got us into two wars. I think one was justifiable - Afghanistan. But he abandoned the Afghan front to go to Iraq, and the consequence was that the Taliban stepped in and took over, in large part because of the power vacuum WE left. We are still in Afghanistan because of the mess he left us.
Just like Lance Armstrong. They have lied, but they have done it so well, many of us are believing them.
As a cyclist, I have been following developments in the Armstrong saga. In this article: by David Walsh, about Lance Armstrong, Walsh describes a press conference where we now have irrefutable proof that Armstrong was lying through his teeth. Yet he was so convincing and reassuring. He said exactly the right things - "we will fight against doping with all our strength" - "I have done no doping, now or ever". All the people speaking out back then were just bitter, ugly, losers. And he said it so we would believe it.
Every politician has to lie sometime. It comes with the territory. The objective, at least for me, is to find the ones who manage to lie the least, and to live up to general Christian principles of society.
I haven't seen a Republican do that since Barry Goldwater. Nixon surely didn't - he intentionally kept the Vietnam war going, and got our soldiers killed - so he could get re-elected. Reagan had people swapping dope for arms. Not to mention his huge debt, when he had gotten elected on a smaller government platform. Reagan was a two-edged sword, I will say that. He did try to do something about the debt by using sleight-of-hand to raise taxes. But his changes made the rich richer, and the poor poorer. Bush 2 was a disaster. He took something that was working and ran it into a tree, head-on. And he got us into two wars. I think one was justifiable - Afghanistan. But he abandoned the Afghan front to go to Iraq, and the consequence was that the Taliban stepped in and took over, in large part because of the power vacuum WE left. We are still in Afghanistan because of the mess he left us.
Just like Lance Armstrong. They have lied, but they have done it so well, many of us are believing them.
