Half True
Photo by kewl 
My son said something back to me a couple of days ago that told me he was listening after all. He said “A half truth is a whole lie”. I think he might have said it a bit differently but that was clearly the thought I was trying to get across when he was 12.
I wish our politicians would learn this lesson. It’s election season again and I am trying to hear what they are saying but it’s hard with all the half truths flying around.
It’s possible to tell something that’s true and it not be the whole truth. Maybe that candidate voted for (or against) something in the past but if we don’t have the whole story we are not sure what and why they did it. It means taking something out of context and sharing it in a way that makes us look good or them look bad. Us and Them. Maybe that’s part of the problem. It ought to be ‘We’, shouldn’t it?
We the People. That’s how this all got started. We the people decided to fight for Justice, Domestic Tranquility and the Common Defense. It’s gone way past what we planned from a federal government but that’s a different rant for a different day.
Let’s stick with the half truth thing.
It’s usually about this time I start giving away a book. The book was written by Andy Andrews and the title is How do you kill 11 million people? A quote from the book is:
We must recognize that, as voters, we sometime accept a lie when it suits our own self-interest. That’s why polls sometimes show that Americans are in favor of throwing everyone out of Congress except their representative (at least among those knowing who their representative is.
It has become an accepted political strategy for politicians to tell voters the lies we want to hear. We, in turn, reward them with elected positions even when we know we’re not being told the truth.
Another quote is:
The danger to America is not a single politician with ill intent. Or even a group of them. The most dangerous thing any nation faces is a citizenry capable of trusting a liar to lead them.
In the long run, it is much easier to undo the policies of a crooked leadership than to restore common sense and wisdom to a deceived population willing to elect such a leader in the first place. Any country can survive having chosen a fool as their leader. But history has shown time and again that a nation of fools is surely doomed
From the book but actually a quote from Hitler himself is ‘How fortunate for leaders … that men do not think. Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.’ That seems to be the theory behind the TV and Internet ads that I see. They are telling a different story about the same person or event so I know they can’t both be the truth. Likely, neither are the truth even though some aspect of it might be true.
So where am I going with this?
I want you to buy the Kindle version of his book and read it. It’s $2.99 when I looked last time and you can read it with the free Kindle app on your phone or their cloud reader on your laptop. It’s a short read (20 minutes or so) and it is sobering in an election season.
I’ll leave you with the mystery that can be answered if you read the book.
How loudly are you singing?
You’ll understand if you read the story about the church located near the railroad tracks.
I hope you follow through and read this. It could make all the difference.
Thanks for listening,
Jerry Robertson
678-231-1578 Cell