A good man often appears gauche simply because he does not take advantage of the myriad mean little chances of making himself look stylish. Preferring truth to form, he is not constantly at work upon the facade of his appearance. - Alanis Morissette
Let's say we have two candidates who are running for President this year, and instead of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, their names are John Doe and Joe Smith. John Doe tells the American people everything they want to hear, even when he knows it's a little unrealistic. Joe Smith, though, tells it like it is, knowing a lot of what he's saying will upset certain, or even a lot, of people. Despite being honest, we all know that John Doe would be elected in this scenario. We also know, since we're so removed from this imaginary event, that he would have been found, eventually, to have told a number of lies. People would be upset, and he would be a very unpopular president, especially since he deceived his constituents into voting for him. In a perfect world, he'd be thrown out of office and replaced. Well, even in the real, business, world, he'd be fired and replaced. But that's not how America seems to operate these days.
We, the American citizenry, seem to have this problem of wanting to elect someone who tells us what they want to hear, not what we need to hear. We want to elect someone we see as nice, someone we'd call a friend, someone we would be willing to let watch our kids. We want to see someone in the White House we'd accompany to the bar after a hard day's work, and share a cold Bud Light with. We forget that sometimes, these qualities aren't what makes a good president. Many times, public figures will promote some publicity event, to attempt to appear more likable. Why should this be necessary though? It's somewhat dishonest, presenting a facade to the people who place a large amount of trust in them, and someone willing to beguile us to appear this way most certainly doesn't deserve our votes.
This is why we need people to become more aware of the truths, lies, and misleading statements that ALL public officials make. No one is perfect, but we need to guard ourselves from those who lie consistently to us, and from those whose job it is to monitor what public officials say who simply sit back, and allow us to be deceived. There should exist some level of trust between the public, and the elected officials who guide the fate of our nation, but it doesn't always happen, and so we both need to be aware of the situation ourselves, and we sometimes need help deciphering what's being shoved down our throats. This is were fact checkers come in, and why their job is so important.
These men and women spend hours searching through speech transcripts, government databases, and other sources of information for hours on end, something the average American has trouble doing. With this knowledge in hand, we then end up having to trust what these fact checkers tell us, even when the do a terrible job. Take Glenn Kessler. A veteran fact checker, he completely failed the American people when he not only failed to call Congressman Ryan out on the scathing, blatant lies littered throughout his speech at the Republican National Convention, Kessler went on to defend Ryan's remarks, further reinforcing the lies that had been told to us all. He broke the level of trust that should exist between the average American, and those who track lies told to us. It raises suspicion towards his other works, and it seems a very real possibility that he's propagated an untold number of lies, which we simply believed due to his position.
It is for this reason that, while fact checkers are an immense help, we need to learn to check the facts ourselves. We can't let some lying, two-faced fraud to lie to us and get away with it. We need to be able to tell when we've been deceived, and prevent it from happening again. We need to be able to put into place a public official who can be trusted, even if we don't like them as a person. We need a leader who will tell us how it really is, who won't stoop so low as to betray our trust for a little bit of personal gain. We need to be able to pick these people out from the crowd, and throw our support behind them, because we deserve to be told the truth, indeed, everyone does. This person may not always do things we approve of wholeheartedly, but when they say that they have America's best interest at heart, we need to be able to tell whether or not they have been truthful with us, and then do what we can to ensure that we choose only those willing to tell the truth, no matter how hard that might be. We need to shake off the reigns of ignorance, and do our part to create a better society, one where we won't be fooled by false policy claims, or slanderous attacks against another person. We are what makes America great, and we should take responsibility for making it so.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/truth.html#cLWkMYvS8A1hlvzp.99
http://www.thenation.com/article/169751/washington-posts-feckless-fact-check?rel=emailNation
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