Don't Lie To Me

I have to start by saying that I do not follow party lines when voting and I do not put forth any particular ideology. I vote for whom I think will do the best for this country and I strive to be fair in any assessment of politicians and entities that control them. I do not take issues lightly, nor do I strive to hold up an agenda, I want the truth plain and simple.

In 2008 at one of John McCain’s political rallies, a woman was caught on tape shouting into McCain’s microphone that Obama was an Arab, upon seeing where it was headed McCain pulled the microphone away and said, “That is not true, Mr. Obama is not an Arab, he is an American”.  Bravo! That one time someone actually stood up to the incredible political propaganda, but it was just for an instant. Just that one time in all the campaign stops a major player actually stood up to the ever increasing fibbing about opponents.  But righteousness and apparently the issues stopped there for McCain became someone he was not to appease the far right and his party, and it cost him the election.

John McCain was someone whom I could easily have voted for had he not run against Obama and I did vote for him over Bush in the 2000 election primary. He has often been credible in my view, but soon after that day he allowed his parties’ pick for Vice President, to go on and on with her little innuendos and white lies to cover her incredible lack of understanding, and coupled with McCain’s inability to control her, I became wary. Much of the country in 2002 was obviously turned off by the mean spirit in that camp so they gravitated to Obama who stayed on the issues. The rest is history in terms of that election anyway; or is it?

The little white lies never really died because Sarah had a taste of the celebrity and it became profitable for her to stoke the fire.  Fox, sensing that the lies were influencing some folks brought her on board, tutored her and paid her well to sell an ultra conservative agenda.  I never understood conservatives being attracted to character assassination for it is so not Christian like, but they are and in droves. John McCain never entered that game, but neither did he “refudiate” the mountain of fodder that was starting to ferment. McCain did as he was paid to do; he went back to work representing his country and his policy in the senate and stayed clear of the floating debris.

The noise did not stop with the end of the campaign; on the contrary it escalated. The two biggie political parties were scrambling for “Tea Party” votes for the mid-terms and there seemed to be no end to the rhetoric. Fox, seeing that fabricated propaganda had worked for Karl Rove and the Bush campaign against John Kerry, continued to funnel false information into the pipe.  They added to their over stuffed quiver, shameless talking heads that for the most part have zero credentials in journalism or education for that matter.  For nothing more than political reasons they have broken the sound barrier in “journalism”. They have rattled the windows and opened the doors for an anything goes, free-for-all when it comes to winning ratings and keeping their lobbyists happy. No one was arguing against it save for some folks at MSNBC and they came across too catty to sway the migration to the feeding frenzy.

How easily folks gravitated to them and their propaganda baffles me. People for some reason do not see the mind twisting even as it is hitting them between the eyes.  I am not “picking” on Fox as some would have you believe, it just happens to be the one network out there that consistently perpetuates the untruths. It spends hours repeating over and over again how they are the only ones who tell it to you straight. They dropped suggestion after suggestion that you were somehow not an American if you dared to think for yourself or gather other information. The very idea that I or one of my fellow Americans is a socialist because we happen to want some control of our health care cost is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard, yet I have personally been on the receiving end of that accusation by friends who watch Hannity. I was told by a friend of mine that I was beginning to sound “anti-American” because I felt that we were barking up a post in Iraq. It was my opinion that Bin Laden was the one we should be treeing and we had not even made much of an effort to get him. These friends of mine are not given to diving off the deep end and are rational Americans typically, but they have been sucked in by propaganda as regular converts to Fox Network. Karl Rove showed in 2000 how effective it could be when behind the scenes he cultivated the “Swift Boat” story telling all of us John Kerry was anti-American for his behavior in Vietnam.  In truth, John Kerry was decorated many times for his combat performance and his veteran comrades stand with him on his integrity. In the end the man had every right to be critical of the butcher machine he and others were caught in. In the name of fairness, I have to say at least he served his country unlike many slandering him or his golden boy opponent who skipped into the Air National Guard to avoid the draft.

 The propaganda machine has armed itself against folks who might question the lies by repeating the message that other “news” channels and anchors are biased, not telling the whole truth or at the very least, grossly misinformed.  Sure news companies have some bias, as do reporters, but by and large I have not heard them spend time telling me outright that everyone stinks but them; never.  Sarah Palin told audiences that only “real Americans” showed up at her rallies…so the rest of us are not American and the "real" ones are in some sort of exclusive club? I beg to differ; my family has been in this country since 1740 and like it or not, that makes me an American and a real one.

We have also been led to believe through innuendo lately that only Christians are Americans and the rest of the beliefs are marginal at best. Christianity is part of our heritage I agree, but what about the American Indian that trumps us all when it comes to America? The Latin Americans who occupied much of the southwest, California and Texas, what of them and their Peruvian and Inca heritage in this country that stretches back to at least the 1500’s? What about the Jews we invited to come here to escape the tyranny of Germany, or the Afro-Americans who were drug from their Muslim and tribal roots of Africa? We certainly use the services of some to clean our rooms and scrub the floors and in the 1940’s they designed our bombs. They are our athletes, our teachers, our politicians and our ministers… are they not credible Americans? Someone said to me once that we needed the Pledge of Allegiance back in schools because we were simply turning into anti-American socialists. It is interesting and amusing to me that a socialist minister back in the 1930’s wrote that pledge.

I have to pose a few more questions in response to some of the trumped up accusations and catchy phrases that are swimming around the cesspool…What is democracy if it is not opposing views and different ideas? Do you really want linear thinking in the United States? Should we follow one line of thinking and if so whose? What is the “real” America? And, finally do we really want any one religion running this country…wasn’t that why, in part that we left the UK in the 1600’s? Isn't that exactly what we are doing in the Middle East; fighting dictatorships?

I am baffled as to why we are letting this happen. We are turning against each other over propaganda provided by the very banks, big oil, business and insurance companies who are breaking this country or taking our jobs overseas. Why are we sitting night after night soaking up others agendas instead of learning the facts and making up our own minds and in support of the ones who will help us? The people pulling at us for attention have their hands out and their pockets open and will stop at nothing to fill them both.  They are often paid by big business or they are big business such as the case of Fox Network who owns about anything to do with media including a network in Saudi Arabia, or GE who is a major network owner. Talk about the ability to control our thinking. For some reason it is so easy to sway people these days and what better method than to pump it night after night on the talk shows disguised as news.  Or send out email lies that cover the world in two hours flat. I asked one of those aforementioned friends of mine if she actually believed the whole deal about all the shit supposedly hidden in the health care bill like death panels and such and she said, “Yes I do, because I have heard it too much.” ‘Whoa’ I thought, this is powerful stuff.

Powerful indeed…one Republican legislator even went so far on camera to say that college kids were incapable of voting because “they were idealistic” and “voted by emotion” and people were repeating him the next day on Facebook... “this is our country we are talking about", they cried! Good grief, don’t we all vote to some degree on emotion?  What we have here is not mental voting ineptness, rather college students often vote Democrat, so if the republicans can shut that down it helps them out. Political parties re-draw voting district boundaries all the time for the same reason. It will look mighty funny down the road when enrollment drops in the states who pander to this crap. My generation worked hard to get the right to vote at 18 years of age…they were sending us to Nam, we sure as hell ought to be able to vote and I for one will be crying foul if legislation like this is allowed to pass.

This is our country I am talking about and I am of the thinking that if you have a good product I will buy it and that includes your politics. You do not have to make stuff up about how rich you are or how real your hair is, just stick to the issues. Don't lie to me that your heritage is more credible than mine. Republican Bob Inglis lost his SC House seat in the midterm election of 2010 for refusing to lie along with some of his colleagues and heads of churches regarding Democrats in general, but particularly Obama. I applaud him for staying with the truth. He alluded to the pressure on him to go with the lies by saying, “I was always taught, ‘thou salt not bear false witness’.”

Whatever happened to folks wanting to know the truth and the issues anyway? Why are we not discussing policy instead of how straight you can shoot a gun or just how American you are?  Hell, I can shoot a gun pretty well; maybe I should run for President. Well maybe not, the media might pick on me.