I was at Barnes and Noble at Sunset Valley today (had to buy Rachel Held Evan's new book while it was still warm) when a man came in yelling and waving his arms around. He had unkempt, greasy hair and wore clothes that were dirty and ill-fitting and he was clearly agitated, shouting at whoever would listen that he had paid good money for something (I couldn't understand what) and that he was being ripped off.
I didn't pay much attention at first as it seemed that someone stepped in to calm him down and then I didn't hear anything from him anymore. However, when I got to the cash register, two managers were talking with him, trying to explain that the large, expensive-looking book he held in his hands was not re-sellable and that they couldn't give him any money for it and also trying to explain that the book he had ordered had been sent back because he hadn't picked it up.
He got more and more upset as they talked to him and clearly had no plans to give up his conviction that he was being cheated. Then, as I stood there waiting to pay, two police officers came in and stood behind him at a polite distance, then moved in and escorted him out of the store. I have to admit, I had the fear that once he was out of the sight of paying customers, he would be treated roughly or arrested. As I left the store with my book (I got the last copy, by the way), one of the officers was advising the store managers of their rights in asking an unruly customer to leave.
What surprised me was what was happening on the sidewalk outside. A middle-aged deputy was patiently explaining to the man about why his book was no longer available and even got out a calendar to show him when it would come in again and what day he should come to pick it up, writing the date on a piece of paper and handing it to him. His voice was casual and calm, as though he were talking to a friend, and the man was equally calm, thanking the deputy for his help and getting ready to amble away.
Witnessing this small moment of kindness and dignity made me grateful for people who do a difficult job in a redemptive way.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Book review #1 (and it's a twofer!)
Jen Hatmaker has become one of my favorite new bloggers/authors in the last couple of months, mostly because I just read (and loved) her most recent two books: Interrupted: An Adventure in Relearning the Essentials of Faith and 7.
I liked her in her first life, when she was a regular Bible teacher and pastor's wife who wrote for young women, and I recommended her to the young women in my Sunday School class. But in her second life--after being interrupted and ruined forever for life as usual--she is something else: authentic and challenging and fierce.
If you want to get a feel for her writing (and her heart), go over to her blog and read the last two or three posts. Prepare to feel something and to change something, even if you're an old cynic like me.
Interrupted is her own story about being interrupted by the brokenness of this world and the call of God to prophetic and ordinary engagement. The story takes place on two fronts--her confrontation of herself and her own self-centeredness in the face of the brokenness of the world and the decision that she and her husband made to leave their traditional church and plant a new church (called New Church) which would focus on building a community where believers could follow this calling as a community.
I want everyone--yes, I mean everyone--to read the parts about how the world is broken and why and how we should care. I want us all to read the parts about how Jesus calls us to this life and nothing less and hold hands and say yes. I want you to read the story about Shane Claiborne and Jen and her new custom cowboy boots because it's just so perfect.
I have more mixed feelings about the other story line. I loved reading about how Jen and her husband stepped out in faith to start this new church. I want all of us to form small communities with other people to support and challenge and reinforce and love together as we collectively reach out to serve sacrificially. I don't want everyone to leave their churches, though, at least not yet. I want us to try to stay and reclaim, redeem, and restore . . . at least for now. Unless, of course, God or good sense says otherwise, and then go in peace.
7 is a unique and whimsical book, chronicling a series of experiments that Jen and her friends did, in an effort to confront their patterns of consumerism 30 days at a time. As Jen describes her efforts to eat only 7 foods for a month or to go without buying anything new or to give away 7 things a day, she is authentic, nonjudgmental (even of herself), heartbreakingly honest about the strongholds of consumerism that she confronts in herself and in the culture, and pee-your-pants hilarious. And the story about the little pink purse? Oh my.
It's really rare that a book can move me and change me. These two books do, especially 7, just because it's so unique and conversational. I'm planning to re-read both as soon as I can get to them. And I'm taking on a couple of experiments of my own, to see what happens. They're pretty close to my heart, so I may not write about them here, but I imagine that I'll share what I learn.
I know that several of you are reading these two books too--please leave a comment with your two cents' worth!
I liked her in her first life, when she was a regular Bible teacher and pastor's wife who wrote for young women, and I recommended her to the young women in my Sunday School class. But in her second life--after being interrupted and ruined forever for life as usual--she is something else: authentic and challenging and fierce.
If you want to get a feel for her writing (and her heart), go over to her blog and read the last two or three posts. Prepare to feel something and to change something, even if you're an old cynic like me.
Interrupted is her own story about being interrupted by the brokenness of this world and the call of God to prophetic and ordinary engagement. The story takes place on two fronts--her confrontation of herself and her own self-centeredness in the face of the brokenness of the world and the decision that she and her husband made to leave their traditional church and plant a new church (called New Church) which would focus on building a community where believers could follow this calling as a community.
I want everyone--yes, I mean everyone--to read the parts about how the world is broken and why and how we should care. I want us all to read the parts about how Jesus calls us to this life and nothing less and hold hands and say yes. I want you to read the story about Shane Claiborne and Jen and her new custom cowboy boots because it's just so perfect.
I have more mixed feelings about the other story line. I loved reading about how Jen and her husband stepped out in faith to start this new church. I want all of us to form small communities with other people to support and challenge and reinforce and love together as we collectively reach out to serve sacrificially. I don't want everyone to leave their churches, though, at least not yet. I want us to try to stay and reclaim, redeem, and restore . . . at least for now. Unless, of course, God or good sense says otherwise, and then go in peace.
7 is a unique and whimsical book, chronicling a series of experiments that Jen and her friends did, in an effort to confront their patterns of consumerism 30 days at a time. As Jen describes her efforts to eat only 7 foods for a month or to go without buying anything new or to give away 7 things a day, she is authentic, nonjudgmental (even of herself), heartbreakingly honest about the strongholds of consumerism that she confronts in herself and in the culture, and pee-your-pants hilarious. And the story about the little pink purse? Oh my.
It's really rare that a book can move me and change me. These two books do, especially 7, just because it's so unique and conversational. I'm planning to re-read both as soon as I can get to them. And I'm taking on a couple of experiments of my own, to see what happens. They're pretty close to my heart, so I may not write about them here, but I imagine that I'll share what I learn.
I know that several of you are reading these two books too--please leave a comment with your two cents' worth!
Friday, October 12, 2012
Speaking of cognitive dissonance . . .
If you were a fly on the wall in my house this week, you
would have overheard C and me deep in conversation about whether I say “CAR-mel”
corn (when referring to popcorn) and “CAIR-uh-mehl” when referring to candy. This mattered because I am ruthless with
myself (and sometimes others) about consistency in all things. I referred to the salted chocolates that I
bought in Michigan last week as “CAIR-uh-mehls” (as I always do) and we were thinking about my inconsistency in pronunciation. (We rarely argue in our house but when we do,
it’s always over something stupid.)
Anyway, C can tell you that I am relentless about
consistency in all matters theological, political or relational, which brings
me to the topic of this post . . .
The other night before bed, I was reading through the
biblical book of I Peter and picked up the theme in chapter 2 about submission
to earthly authorities. After enjoining
all people to submit in general to kings and governors, Peter turns his
attention to slaves, telling them to be submissive to their masters, even those
that are cruel, because it is to our credit when we suffer unjustly.
After ennobling the suffering of slaves by comparing it to
the suffering of Jesus, he turns his attention to wives, reminding them “in the
same way” to be submissive to their husbands, even those who are disobedient,
to be chaste and respectful, to have a
“gentle and quiet spirit,” and to imitate Sarah, who “called her husband
‘Master.’”
I don’t remember ever hearing a sermon or reading a book
about the first passage, about slaves submitting to their cruel masters. But I’ve heard more sermons, sat through more
lessons and read more books and articles about the second passage than I can
count. I’ve heard it used to explain why
a wife should always let her husband make the decisions because then God will
use his mistakes to bring him to repentance.
I’ve heard it used to explain why women shouldn’t be in some
professions, like politics or business, because it is impossible for them to be
“gentle and quiet” in those fields. I’ve
even heard it used—more than once—to explain why a woman should go back to an
abusive husband, because his eternal salvation is more important than her
getting slapped around every now and then (most recently by a famous
conservative theologian). (Disclaimer:
I know that many, many Christians don’t read this passage literally and
would be as disturbed as I am by these ideas.
But I grew up with these ideas and they aren’t going away.)
Here’s what I don’t get:
as conservative Christians have gotten more involved in the issue of
human trafficking and modern slavery, I have never once heard any of them say
that we should encourage slaves to stay with their masters and submit to them
rather than work for their rescue. I’ve
never heard the argument that Christian girls in other countries who are forced
into prostitution should be counseled to be more submissive to their pimps or
that men who are rescued out of mines or fields where they have been enslaved
should instead go back to a life of servitude in order to imitate Christ. Just the opposite: conservatives are now some of the most compassionate opponents of human trafficking.
I believe that they would say that Peter’s words to the slaves
would be consistent with the Greco-Roman household codes of the day, in which
slaves had no voice and no choices about their lives and no advocates for their
freedom. So why would the same people not also say
the same thing about the women? Why are
the words to slaves obsolete but not the words to wives? Note that we’re not talking about two
disparate teachings in different parts of the Scriptures; we’re talking about
verses separated only by a couple of related paragraphs. Doesn't the phrase "in the same way" (I Peter 3:1) indicate that these two passages have to hang together, one way or the other?
I want to be really clear: this is a post about consistency (and it's opposite, cognitive dissonance), not a post about women or their rights (or lack thereof). And let me also be clear about this: conservatives have no more or less inconsistency than liberals and religious people are not more inconsistent than atheists. But the consequences of inconsistency are dire. This is not a trivial theological argument akin to angels dancing on the head of a pin. This is a place where the inability of some to see beyond their own cultural biases creates devastation for half the world's population in ways that they would never support or desire.
This is why consistency matters. This is why we have to be ruthless about rooting out our own cultural and religious and gender biases and lovingly holding up the mirror to each other. I know. One of the lessons I've heard about the subjugation of women was my own, a Sunday School lesson I taught more than once in my younger years. And this is what repentance is: changing our minds.
One last disclaimer: I don't blame Peter for any of this. He actually elevated those who were considered inferior in his culture and ennobled the suffering of those who were believed to be beneath notice and his subsequent counsel to husbands (I Peter 3:7) was nothing short of radical for his day.
One last disclaimer: I don't blame Peter for any of this. He actually elevated those who were considered inferior in his culture and ennobled the suffering of those who were believed to be beneath notice and his subsequent counsel to husbands (I Peter 3:7) was nothing short of radical for his day.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
A few observations
I've been watching the vice-presidential debate tonight and I figure it embodied both the best and the worst of American politics.
Now I'm listening to the pundits process what happened and it is, as you'd expect, completely and predictably partisan. There is no listening, no learning--only an attempt to score points.
What is equally predictable and partisan is the Facebook and Twitter chatter. A friend of mine on Facebook posted that she sure hoped that the Republicans win the election so that Facebook can go back to being fun. Her comment was tongue-in-cheek but my laugh was real.
The only thing I want to say at this point is to refer back to the conversation we've had on this blog about confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. I'm actually hearing a lot of reference to both in the political chatter and I'm glad.
But here's what seems to be lost on most of us: If you can only see the confirmation bias of the other side, you don't really understand how it works.
Now I'm listening to the pundits process what happened and it is, as you'd expect, completely and predictably partisan. There is no listening, no learning--only an attempt to score points.
What is equally predictable and partisan is the Facebook and Twitter chatter. A friend of mine on Facebook posted that she sure hoped that the Republicans win the election so that Facebook can go back to being fun. Her comment was tongue-in-cheek but my laugh was real.
The only thing I want to say at this point is to refer back to the conversation we've had on this blog about confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. I'm actually hearing a lot of reference to both in the political chatter and I'm glad.
But here's what seems to be lost on most of us: If you can only see the confirmation bias of the other side, you don't really understand how it works.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Wondering
This weekend I overheard a woman talking about how she and her husband give away half of what they spend. Apparently other families in this church are doing the same thing because another woman asked her if she was "one of those" and she humbly said yes. As I eavesdropped, she said that what that means for her is that every time she buys something--food, clothing, decorations for the house--she either buys a second one for someone who needs it or gives the equivalent amount of money to the appropriate person or group. The thing that struck me was that she made it sound so easy--and fun!
That's always the way it is when someone has really mastered something, isn't it--they make it look easy and fun. Unfortunately, giving has often been made to sound burdensome, something that has to be coerced or manipulated or cajoled. Listening to this woman made me think of giving as something enticing and interesting. I wanted to walk over and ask her to tell me the stories--Who does she give to? How does she find out about needs? How does she ensure that her giving protects the dignity of the recipient? Does she give anonymously? How has her giving been used by God? (Of course, since I was eavesdropping, I just kept on walking, much to my chagrin.)
Recently, I was challenged to ask the question, "What do I have and who needs it?" A friend corrected me, saying that the better question is, "What am I going to do about it?" and I plan to get to that question, but right now, the first question is really intriguing. Right now, I'm looking at my stuff differently and wondering how on earth it all got here and why it's here and where it needs to go next. I don't think it will be easy but I do think it will be fun to move toward this.
Meanwhile, completely unrelated, I've been reading Jen Hatmaker's book 7, in which she does 7 monthly experiments with her stuff and her habits using the number 7. In other words, in one month, she eats 7 foods (more than most people in the world eat on a regular basis); in another month, she wears only 7 items of clothing. It's a little contrived but it's also very challenging and it's hilarious, too--I'll keep you posted as I get further into it.
Book reviews to come, I promise! Seriously, PCMFO and all the rest of you who keepbugging encouraging me to do that, I will . . . soon . . . I promise.
That's always the way it is when someone has really mastered something, isn't it--they make it look easy and fun. Unfortunately, giving has often been made to sound burdensome, something that has to be coerced or manipulated or cajoled. Listening to this woman made me think of giving as something enticing and interesting. I wanted to walk over and ask her to tell me the stories--Who does she give to? How does she find out about needs? How does she ensure that her giving protects the dignity of the recipient? Does she give anonymously? How has her giving been used by God? (Of course, since I was eavesdropping, I just kept on walking, much to my chagrin.)
Recently, I was challenged to ask the question, "What do I have and who needs it?" A friend corrected me, saying that the better question is, "What am I going to do about it?" and I plan to get to that question, but right now, the first question is really intriguing. Right now, I'm looking at my stuff differently and wondering how on earth it all got here and why it's here and where it needs to go next. I don't think it will be easy but I do think it will be fun to move toward this.
Meanwhile, completely unrelated, I've been reading Jen Hatmaker's book 7, in which she does 7 monthly experiments with her stuff and her habits using the number 7. In other words, in one month, she eats 7 foods (more than most people in the world eat on a regular basis); in another month, she wears only 7 items of clothing. It's a little contrived but it's also very challenging and it's hilarious, too--I'll keep you posted as I get further into it.
Book reviews to come, I promise! Seriously, PCMFO and all the rest of you who keep
Sunday, September 2, 2012
The political essay I wish I had written
You can read this essay at this link or read it below:
The Wrong Side Absolutely Must Not Win
The past several weeks have made one thing crystal-clear: Our country faces unmitigated disaster if the Other Side wins.
The past several weeks have made one thing crystal-clear: Our country faces unmitigated disaster if the Other Side wins.
No reasonably intelligent person can deny this. All you have to do is look at the way the Other Side has been running its campaign. Instead of focusing on the big issues that are important to the American People, it has fired a relentlessly negative barrage of distortions, misrepresentations, and flat-out lies.
Just look at the Other Side’s latest commercial, which take a perfectly reasonable statement by the candidate for My Side completely out of context to make it seem as if he is saying something nefarious. This just shows you how desperate the Other Side is and how willing it is to mislead the American People.
The Other Side also has been hammering away at My Side to release certain documents that have nothing to do with anything, and making all sorts of outrageous accusations about what might be in them. Meanwhile, the Other Side has stonewalled perfectly reasonable requests to release its own documents that would expose some very embarrassing details if anybody ever found out what was in them. This just shows you what a bunch of hypocrites they are.
Naturally, the media won’t report any of this. Major newspapers and cable networks jump all over anything they think will make My Side look bad. Yet they completely ignore critically important and incredibly relevant information that would be devastating to the Other Side if it could ever be verified.
I will admit the candidates for My Side do make occasional blunders. These usually happen at the end of exhausting 19-hour days and are perfectly understandable. Our leaders are only human, after all. Nevertheless, the Other Side inevitably makes a big fat deal out of these trivial gaffes, while completely ignoring its own candidates’ incredibly thoughtless and stupid remarks – remarks that reveal the Other Side’s true nature, which is genuinely frightening.
My Side has produced a visionary program that will get the economy moving, put the American People back to work, strengthen national security, return fiscal integrity to Washington, and restore our standing in the international community. What does the Other Side have to offer? Nothing but the same old disproven, discredited policies that got us into our current mess in the first place.
Don’t take my word for it, though. I recently read about an analysis by an independent, nonpartisan organization that supports My Side. It proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that everything I have been saying about the Other Side was true all along. Of course, the Other Side refuses to acknowledge any of this. It is too busy cranking out so-called studies by so-called experts who are actually nothing but partisan hacks. This just shows you that the Other Side lives in its own little echo chamber and refuses to listen to anyone who has not already drunk its Kool-Aid.
Let’s face it: The Other Side is held hostage by a radical, failed ideology. I have been doing some research on the Internet, and I have learned this ideology was developed by a very obscure but nonetheless profoundly influential writer with a strange-sounding name who enjoyed brief celebrity several decades ago. If you look carefully, you can trace nearly all the Other Side’s policies for the past half-century back to the writings of this one person.
To be sure, the Other Side also has been influenced by its powerful supporters. These include a reclusive billionaire who has funded a number of organizations far outside the political mainstream; several politicians who have said outrageous things over the years; and an alarmingly large number of completely clueless ordinary Americans who are being used as tools and don’t even know it.
These people are really pathetic, too. The other day I saw a YouTube video in which My Side sent an investigator and a cameraman to a rally being held by the Other Side, where the investigator proceeded to ask some real zingers. It was hilarious! First off, the people at the rally wore T-shirts with all kinds of lame messages that they actually thought were really clever. Plus, many of the people who were interviewed were overweight, sweaty, flushed, and generally not very attractive. But what was really funny was how stupid they were. There is no way anyone could watch that video and not come away convinced the people on My Side are smarter, and that My Side is therefore right about everything.
Besides, it’s clear that the people on the Other Side are driven by mindless anger – unlike My Side, which is filled with passionate idealism and righteous indignation. That indignation, I hasten to add, is entirely justified. I have read several articles in publications that support My Side that expose what a truly dangerous group the Other Side is, and how thoroughly committed it is to imposing its radical, failed agenda on the rest of us.
That is why I believe 2012 is, without a doubt, the defining election of our lifetime. The difference between My Side and the Other Side could not be greater. That is why it absolutely must win on November 6.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Political pet peeve #4
You'll be happy to know that this is my last political post for awhile except that tomorrow I will post the political essay I wish I had written. Stay tuned . . .
Political pet peeve #4: dishonesty
Dishonesty is the catch-all category for a whole range of actions and attitudes that pervade our political process, from Facebook to the national campaigns. There is a reason that the Bible (and in fact, just about every religious system) tells us to avoid "lying lips," "bearing false witness," and deceit in every form. Jesus called the devil the "father of lies" and warned us to avoid hypocrisy. It kills our souls.
Of course, there's just blatant lying--knowingly or unknowingly (let's be honest, though--it's mostly knowingly)--saying things that are just not true or have no evidence to back them up. Creating videos in which a person is made to sound like he said something that he did not say or was attributing to someone else: that's a lie. Creating videos that blame the death of a woman from cancer on the business decisions of a candidate: a lie. Perpetuating the myth that the president is a Muslim or is not a citizen: lying. Attributing something to a president that happened during another president's term: lying. We need to stop it.
Then there's the frenzy of intentional distortion that happens every time there is a gaffe. Anyone who does a lot of public speaking knows that it's impossible to talk about big ideas without an occasional gaffe. Occasionally, we say something we really believe but didn't mean to say out loud. When that happens, it's appropriate for people to call us on it. More often, though, we are processing verbally and we say things we didn't mean to say or don't say them in the way we intended. The feeding frenzy that happens after one of these missteps is entertaining but it doesn't help us get any closer to the truth of what a candidate really believes.
No one really believes that President Obama was saying that business owners didn't build their businesses; in context it's really clear that the "that" in "You didn't build that" refers to infrastructure and in fact, later he even comes back and clearly restates his position to correct the possibility of misunderstanding. But we like to misunderstand, don't we? No one really believes that Governor Romney "likes to fire people." It was perfectly clear from the context of his remarks that he was referring to his hope of "firing" the current administration. But we like to misunderstand when it supports our cause.
One of the more sophisticated ways that we like to misrepresent the truth is by manipulating the numbers, whether we're talking about poll numbers or science numbers or numbers that measure things. You know the saying that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Because so many of the issues we are discussing--national debt, budgets, health care, Wall street--are so complicated, it's possible to make the numbers say almost anything. And of course, we do. And then we believe the numbers that seem to support our own conclusions and rage against the numbers that don't.
I received an email one day that contained blatantly false information about a politician. I don't usually do this, but this was a from a friend and so I replied, citing the clear evidence that the information in the email was simply not true. The reply from my friend: "It doesn't matter if it's factually true because it's the kind of thing [he] would do." A campaign aide has said that her candidate would not be "bound by fact checkers," as if that were a bad thing. I once didn't vote for a candidate I had grown to like because it became clear that lying came far too easy (and seriously, lies that can be easily refuted on the internet? That's just stupid.) Likewise, I grew in respect for another candidate when he stopped to chastise his own supporters for propagating untruths.
Pundits say that politicians lie to us because we want to be lied to. There's probably some truth to that. But what if we had a moratorium on lying during campaigns? Or better still, what if candidates were rewarded for telling the truth? What if we stopped believing that the ends justify the means when it comes to deception? I guess politics wouldn't be as fun but we'd be a lot less cynical too, so that seems like a fair trade-off. It's worth a try anyway.
Political pet peeve #4: dishonesty
Dishonesty is the catch-all category for a whole range of actions and attitudes that pervade our political process, from Facebook to the national campaigns. There is a reason that the Bible (and in fact, just about every religious system) tells us to avoid "lying lips," "bearing false witness," and deceit in every form. Jesus called the devil the "father of lies" and warned us to avoid hypocrisy. It kills our souls.
Of course, there's just blatant lying--knowingly or unknowingly (let's be honest, though--it's mostly knowingly)--saying things that are just not true or have no evidence to back them up. Creating videos in which a person is made to sound like he said something that he did not say or was attributing to someone else: that's a lie. Creating videos that blame the death of a woman from cancer on the business decisions of a candidate: a lie. Perpetuating the myth that the president is a Muslim or is not a citizen: lying. Attributing something to a president that happened during another president's term: lying. We need to stop it.
Then there's the frenzy of intentional distortion that happens every time there is a gaffe. Anyone who does a lot of public speaking knows that it's impossible to talk about big ideas without an occasional gaffe. Occasionally, we say something we really believe but didn't mean to say out loud. When that happens, it's appropriate for people to call us on it. More often, though, we are processing verbally and we say things we didn't mean to say or don't say them in the way we intended. The feeding frenzy that happens after one of these missteps is entertaining but it doesn't help us get any closer to the truth of what a candidate really believes.
No one really believes that President Obama was saying that business owners didn't build their businesses; in context it's really clear that the "that" in "You didn't build that" refers to infrastructure and in fact, later he even comes back and clearly restates his position to correct the possibility of misunderstanding. But we like to misunderstand, don't we? No one really believes that Governor Romney "likes to fire people." It was perfectly clear from the context of his remarks that he was referring to his hope of "firing" the current administration. But we like to misunderstand when it supports our cause.
One of the more sophisticated ways that we like to misrepresent the truth is by manipulating the numbers, whether we're talking about poll numbers or science numbers or numbers that measure things. You know the saying that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Because so many of the issues we are discussing--national debt, budgets, health care, Wall street--are so complicated, it's possible to make the numbers say almost anything. And of course, we do. And then we believe the numbers that seem to support our own conclusions and rage against the numbers that don't.
I received an email one day that contained blatantly false information about a politician. I don't usually do this, but this was a from a friend and so I replied, citing the clear evidence that the information in the email was simply not true. The reply from my friend: "It doesn't matter if it's factually true because it's the kind of thing [he] would do." A campaign aide has said that her candidate would not be "bound by fact checkers," as if that were a bad thing. I once didn't vote for a candidate I had grown to like because it became clear that lying came far too easy (and seriously, lies that can be easily refuted on the internet? That's just stupid.) Likewise, I grew in respect for another candidate when he stopped to chastise his own supporters for propagating untruths.
Pundits say that politicians lie to us because we want to be lied to. There's probably some truth to that. But what if we had a moratorium on lying during campaigns? Or better still, what if candidates were rewarded for telling the truth? What if we stopped believing that the ends justify the means when it comes to deception? I guess politics wouldn't be as fun but we'd be a lot less cynical too, so that seems like a fair trade-off. It's worth a try anyway.
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