Trust

That’s a big word. Only five letters, but it carries a much heavier weight.

Trust is something that cannot be demanded, it cannot be coerced.  It is one thing, like respect, that must be earned.

I am not surprised, but am dismayed, that we cannot trust our country’s leaders.  Not a single man, woman, or Party can be trusted to carry out the responsibilities of the weighty offices we have entrusted them with.  How can I say that?

Because they’ve failed to earn my trust - by shirking their responsibilities.

Republicans have turned from a Party with basically American values into an Ayn Rand look-alike with purely selfish motives, devoted to the rich while trying to tell us they give a damn, all the while promoting policies which will inflate the deficit and the debt on the backs of the poor.

The Democrats have allowed themselves to be dragged towards the right and have failed to defend their own values, all the while embracing more and more conservative values while telling us that they give a damn.  Their cowardice in the face of Republican determination and lies has been epic in proportion, all the while continuing to prostitute themselves before the alter of the politics of money.

Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, USN, Ret., known as the Father of the Nuclear Navy, had this to say about responsibility:

Responsibility is a unique concept... You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you... If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible.

Politicians have failed, in the last decades, to take responsibility for either their actions or their failures.  Both Parties have allowed a quest for power to corrupt their basic values and kept them from maintaining a statesman-like demeanor in carrying out their public responsibilities.

Now, today, we have an election in which we have to choose between them, and if we choose wrong, we are all well and truly screwed.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I am not trying to set up some false equivalency between the two.

While the Democrats have failed utterly to show enough courage of their convictions to allow me to trust that they will truly take the leftward turn I really think this country needs, it is the Republican Party which truly frightens me.

In the 2010 election, they ran on the mantra of “jobs, jobs, jobs”.  Yet, as soon as they got power, they dropped any pretense of giving a damn about jobs and focused on either social issues near and dear to their hearts, or on helping Obama fail - and with him, the economy too.  This year, they’ve waffled between a weak, fluttering call for jobs, distracted by a continued call for those social issues, watered down by fake concern for the debt while proposing “solutions” which do nothing more than enlarge the debt.

In short, they couldn’t be less trustworthy even if they’d tried to be less trustworthy!

These days, the phrase, “Trust me!” couldn’t be more like the cynical call of the carnie barker, drawing the gullible into the side show to see the tattooed lady or the two-headed calf.