The bull that roared. ahem, yaaaas.. my point precisely. Do you know what party has the most election promises unfilled?
The Liberal party of Canada. In 100 years they have never fulfilled ONE single campaign promise. Incredible? But true. Trudeau, Pearson, St. Laurent, Chretien .. not one... It's all smoke and mirrors. And its not because they cannot in practice do what they think they can do, it is because they KNOW that they don't have to! They know they can get elected by psychology! the colours of their party logos, (red) the colours of their suits, their style of speaking, etc, etc .. its all been carefully figured out. Some people mistakenly call this type of brazen, untruthful manipulation cynicism.
In fact cynics of the true school of cynical philosophy do not in fact have to lie. All a true cynic believed is that virtue is the best good (Is a lie virtuous) and "self control" was the route to that. In other words purposeful action of a practical nature i.e. denial of excess, achieved the best ends. (Virtue existed in the real world of what men did and not in abstraction, so what they do, i.e. their self control, was what defined good.) Cynicism did not suggest that the end justifies the means. It was a complex philosophy and not given to simplistic analysis. What it believed was that good could be achieved by doing somethings that in themselves were seemingly not good. As in a doctor giving medicine that was distasteful. In essence, realpolitik is the modern way to describe it. In effect it was a philosophy of rational and calculated action that was "controlled" or aimed to achieve a good result. Modern simplistics have twisted its rational thought basis to the the swallowing of the inherent paradox of the end seeming to justify the means in this belief.
(Cynicism is the politician's code word for liar as they by law cannot call each other untruthful, or liars.) But when a Liberal politician rises to make a campaign promise that is what they know they are doing. Lying. It is inherently self contradictory to lie to achieve a good end so I don't buy that getting elected at any price is a virtue. They are not true cynics, as to lie is without virtue. It shows a lack of self-control. (i.e. they are not denying themselves the luxury of the lie) Of course they would not call themelves cynics, if they decided to be virtuous, as they universally use the term in its pejorative sense. (The idea that a cynic believes others to have bad ends or to be inherently selfish, stems from a calculating person's actions being somewhat justified by the lack of the other's good. In other words he would say "It is allowable for me to disobey the law, as the people who enforce it are corrupt..")
We know that the Liberal could not be so stupid that he would promise and promise and say "oh gosh!, it is was just impossible to deliver, again! So sorry." Ergo he must be evil. Incredibly stupid or evil - take your pick. There are only two choices here. Evil? did I rig the test? No. I did not. They are evil. Or they are compulsive liars. Or they are all insane. Or lying is good. Very very good.
So we see that making a popularity contest of government tends to find the best liars, not the best leaders. It attracts psychopathic liars. They may be intelligent and they may be good speakers, but they are psychopathic liars. In the end letting ourselves be ruled by psychopaths is dangerous. Especially when we could destroy ourselves with the weapons we have invented. So we have to find a better way. Remember that people who score very high on the Hoare test actually are in ALL the positions of power in the world so watch out. (Hoare is a Vancouver psych who invented a test to determine the degree of psychopathia of a person. He found that executives and leaders scored very high on the test, almost as high as criminal psychopaths. This was because business and society rewards back-stabbing (sometimes the literal kind) .. liars more than it rewards competence. Next time someone infers you are slightly deranged tell them you are not the one running this place ... It is a safe answer...) Change will not be easy. If they suspect that you might actually succeed in getting them fired from their jobs, you could end up a non person very quickly.
EC<:-}
I know what you are going to say. It is impossible for so many liars to have gathered together in one place and fool all the people. Surely someone would have noticed this and called a halt to it. I just did. |
