Do You Want Me To Lie to You?

Every four years, Americans go to the polls and pick someone to lead them for the next four years. Every four years, representatives from America's two dominant parties come up with all sorts of catchy phrases and cool buzz words to attract American voters. During the campaign season little, if anything that is said, is expected to come true. In fact we Americans seem to expect and welcome our politicians to lie to us. To quote "A Few Good Men", "We can't handle the truth". So we happily sit by and watch as politicians lie to us, fill us full of hope, and try to convince us that they are both competent to lead us, and that their word actually means something.

These politicians go to great lengths to create a sense of trust. They work hard to make sure that “We The People” are willing to put our trust in them to fix our problems. They want us to put our faith in them to lead us and make us prosperous. The problem as I see it is that this rarely if ever works. In fact most of the time these politicians break their promises, and do things both before and after the election to prove how untrustworthy they really are. The last few years have seen an election process that, for many Americans, is more of a choice between two evils, than a choice between two competent individuals. Additionally most Americans seem to prefer being lied to than to be told the truth.

My question to America is WHY? Why would we rather have someone tell us that life is rosy, and things are great, when they’re not? Why would we put our trust in someone we KNOW is lying to us? Why would we prefer a candidate who would say one thing and do another? Are we so apathetic that we’d rather put a pretty face on our problems and blame it on a bad president than to actually do something about it? The fact is that there are and always have been bad presidents. But a democratically elected president who does poorly is simply the result of a bad choice by his / her electors.

Let’s take this latest batch of would be leaders.

On the one hand you have a person who has been in Washington for quite some time. He is deeply ingrained in the system, he knows how to maneuver and manipulate the system. He is the system, yet he’s painted as a maverick, which is willing to buck the system. Prior to him becoming the party candidate he was blasted by his own party as being too liberal, not a real conservative, but now they all seem to have lined up like good little drones to support him. His big catch phrase is “Change you can believe in”, or some such nonsense. Do we really expect change from a man who has lived the Washington life for as long as John McCain has? Are Americans so naïve that we expect someone who is part of the problem to all of a sudden come up with a solution?

Next we have a new contender, new blood, someone with so little Washington experience that if this were a job interview for a high level position, the interviewer would probably put his resume on the reject pile. In fact his only real claim to fame is that he is a great speaker, and that he’s not part of the broken system. Let’s examine this a bit. His speeches all center on Hope, hope to fix our country, hope to repair a once great nation. Hope for the poor. Ok Really? How does he feel he can do these things? Simple he’s going to raise taxes cut military spending and invest in alternative energy, all while giving Americans socialized medicine. I don’t know about you but this seems like a pipe dream to me. Fist off to raise taxes in an economy where the people are crying broke, businesses are failing and banks are asking for handouts is just political suicide, never mind the prelude to a depression.

As you can see I’m not happy with either choice. The reason I’m not happy with either choice is simple, both parties want me to believe something that simply isn’t true. They want me to believe their lies, and put my hope in them for the next four years. For a candidate to win my vote he or she is going to have to tell me and America the brutal truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I prefer that politicans tell me the truth about what's wrong with this country, rather than tell me that everything is going to be ok if we hope it will.

You see I have yet to hear a politician tell the truth about the problems that plague us. All I hear is them offering solutions to bandaid the problem, but not fix the problem at the root. What exactly is the problem? Laziness, plain and simple. America has become lazy and in it's laziness has slowly given up and cheapened the American dream. This can be seen in our approach to everthing we do, from how and why we pay taxes to our work ethics, to the laws we allow to pass. So there you have it. This blog is about the truth, as I see it, but neverless the truth. I want to get to the bottom of what exactly it is that has turned this once great nation into a pale imitation of it's former self.