Whom Can You Trust?

Whom Can You Trust?

When I was a young person over 70 years ago, my family had a lot of trust in our American government. After all, it was founded on promoting the rights of the 'common man'. And, living only 65 miles from NYC, we trusted the New York Times whose motto was "All the news that's fit to print". How things have changed! Yesterday's revelation in the Times about the lies and propaganda used by this administration to promote acceptance of the war in Iraq, is a wake-up call.

During WWII I married a sailor after a very brief acquaintance. When I met his parents, who had emigrated from a German settlement in Russia near Odessa, I was appalled and a little amused at their complete lack of trust in the government and newspapers. I tried to convince them it was different here, that government and newspapers could be trusted. In America, government and newspapers prided themselves on openness and honesty. The fact that my husband and I were both in the Navy reinforced my trust, and of course we were Republicans.

Lately I have reversed my thinking 180 degrees, coming closer all the time to my mother-in-law's point of view. But it wasn't until Nixon that I began to be disenchanted with the Republican party. Then, during Clinton's administration, I changed parties, and became a Democrat because of the unrelenting and unproductive persecution of the Clintons by the Republicans. I thought It must have distracted him and harmed his ability to do his job. And after all those years of digging, they couldn't pin anything on the Clintons, except lying about his bizarre sexual behavior. That was a disgrace, but it did little damage to our country as a whole. If I recall right, the investigations cost over $40,000,000. I considered that an appalling amount to spend on a witch-hunt. Little did I know then how enormously wasteful of money a Republican administration could be, as is being done now by the Bush administration in Iraq. If we elect our national hero, John McCain, he promises more of the same.

In Bush II we have a president who has done enormous damage to the country, and he appears to be going down to the finish line unscathed. If he leaves on schedule, some of the negative aspects of Bush's presidency are the enormous national debt, diminished civil rights, and a huge number of damaged veterans who are committing suicide at a rate several times higher than the media has told us. They may have set a record low in dishonesty in government. And to get to this place in time,  the administration has resorted to the same tactics used by the Nazis: lies and propaganda. That's a crime in this country, and Bush et al are getting away with it without prosecution by law.

Next year we have a chance to clean house and reverse this downward moral trend. But we can't even trust the electoral process or the voting processes either. Bush got into office using unprecedented and questionable means. They even disgraced military heros John Kerry by a means now known as 'swiftboating', and cruelly questioned the patriotism of Max Cleland, the triple amputee veteran who was a senator from South Carolina at the time.

We grass roots voices had better sharpen our minds and our keyboard skills. Perhaps it is even going to take a grass roots movement to march in the streets to protect our rights and the American constitution. All citizens who don't want this country run by the industrial/military power consortium should think about that.

This started out as a comment on Dave McGill's article titled "We've Been Duped", but it took on a life of its own, and I have promoted it to be an article.