In other news

wacobloke

17 August 2012 12:04AM

Since this whole unnecessary kerfuffle began, I have been reminded over and over again of the moment I (as a somewhat ambivalent US person, since I had--to my eternal regret--voted for him in his race for election originally) knew without a scintilla of doubt that Richard Nixon, as President of the US, was toast. I didn't "know" at that moment how it was going to play out, exactly, but I knew in my bones that he would not be finishing his second term.

It was the night that he took to the US TV air with and alongside stacks and stacks of nicely bound books, the sum total of contents of which--according to him--contained the relevant and (necessary)--but admittedly "edited" transcripts of the tapes of conversations occurring in the Oval office.

It wasn't that I hated or despised him, but, I knew in that moment that if our President really believed that the US voting public would accept an edited and self -affirming "version" of something like that (as an end-all and be-all)--something that otherwise would show real-world, accurate, "reality" if simply printed out verbatim, that we had a bigger "problem" on our hands than I had ever imagined up to that moment.

There comes a moment when the persistence of a belief (and continued action upon that belief) that others (err, the US voters) can't handle the truth, is a demonstration of a basic and profound unfitness to hold public elected office in the US.

CEO's of companies can choose to be be private and/or secretive and tell employees and others any edited versions of reality that they might want to tell at any given moment, and, by dint of the power of control over continued employment of the company's "employees", or by dint of "internal" voting power within "equity" ownership of the company (err, person), escape the otherwise human reactions and results. But, in a representative democracy, that just isn't likely to "fly".

President Nixon apparently couldn't stand or abide the idea of the US citizenry knowing and independently judging reality, and I fear we are now seeing the same thing with a presumptive candidate of the US Republican party for the office once held by US Republican President Nixon.

It's not the "tax" "laws" or ant particular "details" in your tax returns that are the problem, Willard, any more than it was the details and "bad language" of the "Nixon Tapes"--it's the overt avoidance of the obvious and the utter contempt shown for the intelligence and determinative capacity of the US citizenry.

If you don't have faith in the US voting citizenry sufficient to trust their reaction to actual reality, then you don't deserve the office of the President.

Give the public the returns and then spin the Hell out of them, if you wish. But, don't presume to tell the US citizenry that your summary of actual reality is sufficient for them.


Our ancestors fought and won a revolution to get away from that kind of regal set of privileges, and that kind of distribution of human (and citizens') rights.

posted by Dr Zen @ 11:37 am