Thursday, August 9, 2012

Unbecoming . . .

The incumbent president is currently allowing a political ad to run that is absolutely untrue. It has even hit the liberal media stations as being completely false. It accuses Governor Romney of 'murdering' a woman through his actions as a CEO. A very little research shows that the timeline doesn't work. This has been brought to the attention of the administration but they continue to run the ad? Why? Because many people will take it at face value and vote according to the lie presented to them.

I noticed this gullibility during the 2008 election. I questioned a woman's challenge to me about my vote and returned the favor to ask why she was voting as she indicated. She exclaimed, "Because I want change!" When I asked her exactly what this change would be, she had no answer. She is a representative of the problem. She heard a word she liked and voted accordingly. She didn't look past the glitz and show to find out what issues that would apply to her could evolve out of this vote.

This ad will probably do the same for her and many others. They will see it on television so it must be correct, right? How can they possibly consider voting for a murderer, right? With a well-place lie, the election could be won once more and I hate to see how the country will fare by 2016.

If people would bother to research their choices, they might be surprised. Most of them have access to the Internet. However, from the constant urban myths that keep getting passed on to me, research isn't part of their computer experience. Even when people are presented the truth, they don't want to acknowledge they might have made an error in judgment. Someone at my parish challenged me to prove that our current president was greatly in favor of abortion. I took up her challenge and printed out his voting record during his very short time in the Senate and what he has done the last three-plus years as president. As requested, I gave her the print outs, she folded them, put them in her handbag, and when I asked her several weeks later if she had read them, she said, "No." and has stopped talking to me since.

It is not only the lack of intellectual curiosity that is disheartening but that an elected official, the head of our country, would allow a blatant lie to persist on the airways in order to win an election. So far, he has done nothing but nitpick at his presidential opponent. Can't he find anything of his last three years to prove his competency for re-election?

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