Romney: Slave To His Own Mendacious Appeal
Last edited Sat Oct 6, 2012, 11:10 AM - Edit history (2)
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The way the lie about 'cooked' job numbers has been spread and adopted by Romney's surrogates and supporters is disturbing and alarming.
Listening to some of his supporters today on c-span and news accounts of the reaction to yesterday's 7.8% unemployment rate, I was struck by the way that even the ridiculousness of this lie about the Labor Dept. manipulating job numbers hasn't stopped his supporters from repeating it like it was gospel.
It's clear that there is no floor to the campaign of lies against Barack Obama. It's also clear that Mitt Romney is singularly the person most responsible for the proliferation of a blatant and demonstrably false accusation against a bipartisan department of career Labor Dept. employees. His supporters are simply following his lead in using outright lies as campaign rhetoric and attacks; even after they have been proven false beyond any reasonable doubt.
Romney certainly didn't invent campaign lies, but, he's made the practice of deliberate and repeated prevarication (even after being directly called on his distortions by an objective press) a standard in republican presidential politics.
Romney is pushing forward with his campaign of deliberate and encouraged distortions and lies -- with no apparent intention to even try and hew his rhetoric and campaign claims to the truth and facts. His advertising campaign has been an amazingly corrupt challenge to the press and others who normally seek to provide accountability to these election-season claims and attacks.
So far, the press has been remarkably responsive in pointing out the lies and distortions, but, there's really no mechanism of restitution or reprieve for the deliberate bull which has proven effective at confronting the candidate, penalizing him, and rehabilitating the reputation of his opponent. What we have now is a shameful dialog from the republican candidate and his right-wing supporters which is so personal -- so demeaning toward his Democratic rival -- that the standard of discourse among the supporting public threatens to descend into a free-for-all of character assassination and deliberate obfuscation. Heck, we have that right now.
I'm not a fan of Ayn Rand, but she made an interesting and relevant quote that, perhaps, Romney's partner Ryan's admiration for the writer might cause him to reflect on with a personal interest of his own:
“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim," Rand wrote in her book, 'Atlas Shrugged.'
"What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all,” Rand wrote.
In the unlikely event that Romney actually managed to assume the presidency, after a campaign of deliberate and encouraged lies and distortions, he'd be resigned to a political landscape without the accountability that a well and properly informed electorate would provide to measure his own actions and conduct in office. That Labor Dept. he's allowing to be demeaned and slandered today would be his own; presenting job numbers in a Romney administration that would be marred and mostly ignored by a cynical public encouraged to distrust and reject the very product of the very government he propounds to lead.
For most of McCain's campaign against Barack Obama, the republican and his running-mate took great relish in distorting the record and character of their Democratic opponent. Their campaign also benefited from a deliberate campaign to characterize Barack Obama as someone who's values and intentions were, somehow, un-American and dangerous.
Much of that sentiment, deliberately proffered up from the actual republican campaign and candidates, still hangs around President Obama's neck today. Indeed, the Romney campaign has done what they could to capitalize on that sentiment among supporters, like one of their major promoters, Donald 'Birther' Trump.
Yet, one of the most edifying, and redeeming moments in the McCain campaign came from the candidate, himself, in a town hall appearance. A lady stood up and tried to insist that President Obama was an 'Arab' that she 'couldn't trust,' and was interrupted, corrected, and rebuked by John McCain in a profile in courage which I still appreciate greatly today.
At the risk of alienating a sizable number of his base supporters who had invested their opposition in many of the lurid and bigoted characterizations swirling around about Barack Obama, John McCain checked himself and told the woman (against a chorus of boos from the conservative audience), point blank:
"He is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared about as President of the United States. If I didn't think I would be one heck of a better president I wouldn't be running."
Older Woman: "I have read about him. He's an Arab".
"No, ma'am. No, ma'am. He's a decent, family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about."
John McCain's campaign had already benefited from the deliberate character assassination of Barack Obama by his surrogates and supporters; yet, he couldn't continue to countenance a following which insisted on such divisive, false, and demeaning rhetoric that the lady had demonstrated in her opposition to his Democratic rival. McCain had an inner limit to the degradation of our public discourse which he refused to ignore or put aside to further his political ambition.
There is no apparent limit to Mitt Romney's ambition for the presidency. He sees no need to temper or reject the more extreme factions of his republican party in their character assassination of the president; or repudiate their deliberate lies and distortions about this Democratic president and the government Barack Obama oversees and manages.
Mitt Romney is short-sightedly 'condemning' himself (as Ayn Rand wrote) to 'faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked.' The government and country he would inherit, if elected, would certainly reflect that cynicism and prevarication that he bred into his supporters with his own unapologetic distortions and acquiescence to the deliberate lies from surrogates and supporters. He's surrendering to the 'blackest of destruction;' he's auguring to become a hapless 'slave' to his own mendacious appeal.
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