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ELECTION TIME –
HAVE CANDIDATES EVER HEARD THE WORD “TRUTH”?
By
Jan Bergemann
Published
September 14, 2012
No
matter what kind of office candidates are running for and where
they are campaigning, the word “TRUTH” seems to be a
four-letter word for all candidates from simple Association
Board Member to U.S. President.
During
this whole year all the campaign ads made it in my opinion
really difficult to watch network programs in television. Every
time you watched news or news programs you were bombarded with
campaign ads that had only one thing in common: They all tried
to outdo each other in explaining why the other candidate is so
horrible that he/she doesn’t deserve your vote. And by trying
to do just that, truth seems to be totally ignored.
Don’t
you think that there is a reason that the column POLITIFACT
of the Tampa Bay Times
(former St. Petersburg
Times) rates the contents of most of the campaign ads:
“Pants on Fire!” In other words, they investigated the
contents of the ad and found that there is not much truth in
these campaign ads.
It
gets even worse when you look at the so-called conventions. Some
of you may still remember seeing old pictures and films from the
Reichsparteitag in Nuremberg. Have you ever considered the many similarities? Fanatical,
flag-waving supporters sorted by state screaming out of their
lungs. Prominent speakers warming up these supporters for the
main speaker treated like a celebrity, whose speech is aiming at
nothing else but making the opponent look like a “devil in
disguise”!
I
have watched a lot of TV in the last few months – and looked
at lots of campaign ads. One important issue is prominently
missing: The
explanation from the candidates about what they will actually do
to improve the dismal economy – if elected. That leaves me
with one explanation only: Both candidates have no idea what
they need to do – if they are really elected. It seems that
all candidates are under the impression that money can buy votes
– why try to convince voters to vote for the candidate because
of hard facts and good ideas?
And
cheating at elections seems to be a national pastime. It seems
to work, because voters – and the DBPR – seem to think
it’s absolutely acceptable to tamper with the ballots: From
hanging chads to absentee ballots, from false ballots to
falsified signatures, voters seem to be so used to that kind of
fraud that they really don’t care any more – “it
happens all the time” seems to be the attitude!
Maybe
we should all just watch the movie channels for about six months
before important elections – and vote for the candidate with
the least campaign funds. Then we could be sure that we get an
elected official who is not already bought and paid for by
special interest!
What
is this country coming to?
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