I hate it when politicians are found covering up a scandal far after the truth makes its way into the news. A classic example I have in mind is the infamous "I did not have sexual relations with that woman... Ms. Lewinski." What the heck was Clinton thinking? That Starr, et al. would shrug their collective shoulders and say "Oh... well ok then. Our mistake."!? Of course not. Flat-out denying any involvement with Monica just fueled the already growing flames and gave Clinton the fast track to impeachment. That is not to say, however, that it hurt his popularity, but the moral decay of America is something for another blog post.
Less than a decade after Clinton, we have an administration declaring "...no really, they DID have weapons of mass destruction. We just can't find them." What the heck? We're the most advanced military force in the world and we can't find the WMD that our uber-cool espionage equipment told us was most definately there? Wow. What does it say about us when we can prove something exists with our clandestine operations and can't see it at all when we land on the ground? I bought the whole "mobile WMD moved into Syria" thing as a possibility for awhile, but then the Bush administration just sort of dropped that idea when the media pushed them on it.
This phenomenon of suckage in covering up stupid lies is not by any means limited to our nation or time, either. I am sure that more than one Caesar held a public policy that everyone knew to be a farce. There have been three father-son duos to be pope (think that one over). The underlying theme in every instance of the governmental coverup is the idea that with power comes the ability to define reality for the public. This has never been more false than in the post-Watergate world, where the media has made itself a sort of profit-mongering watchdog to the government.
So I conclude in saying that honesty, it turns out, is the best policy. Go figure.
Interesting, isn't it, that as much as the wonderous US of A turned on Clinton and hated him during that scandal, now his wife is planning on running for president and only 48% (yes, only) of the states hate her (survey they showed on ABC the other night,more specifically the poll was "Would never trust/vote her" but I translate that to hate). And now we have Bush, like father like son. GB Sr. was quite the Pres there for awhile, good economy, good popularity rating, then all of a sudden, nothing. Now, we have GB Jr. who was semi-soaring (if you just count electoral college votes...) and fairly liked. He's turned into a lame-duck two years pre-election. Awesome. He should have just taken out the middle east as soon as we got over there. If we never bombed Heroshima (sp?) we never would have won WWII, so how do people expect to win in the middle east? Especially when its a land full of men trained simply to point and shoot! Argh... if they have WMDs and we "saw them" why don't we just drop one of ours on wherever we "saw theirs," make theirs go off and kill two birds with one stone. It might be a little over-kill (get it...over kill...haha..) but such as life (or death...hahaha two in a row). Well, enough of my rant, I actually liked GB Jr. for awhile. Still do... he just needs to get his head screwed on straight again.
ReplyDeleteOh, and another thing. If the United States is so wonderful and so great (don't get me wrong I love the USA, I'm as "proud to be an American" as the next guy, maybe even a little more) But why is it that the rest of the world hates us? I got reemed out for being an American in Norton... less than two hours away from the border. Seriously, what is with that.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, I know - its because we don't like to BE killed, so in turn, we kill. Yet, I still want to bomb the middle east. My American pride must be greater than my need to feel loved from complete strangers. Although (slightly random) I like what that guy on West Wing said when we watched it in soc, "Muslim is to terrorism as Christianity is to KKK."
ReplyDeleteum, that was my train of thought because terrorists couldn't care less about complete strangers let alone their own families it seems, so they kill them. To each his own.
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