In Mr. Kruse's article he explains how government constituents have fallen farther from the honest truth and more into embellished half-truths. As long as our country has had a government, the representatives of our government have stretched the truth or taken some facts and twisted them to fit their own propaganda machine. Although his article uses the shock and awe technique of embellishing the extremism of government misdirection, there is still an underlying level of truth to it. Politicians and their campaign workers have more often than not taken one fact and spun it to suit their purposes. This has been evident through out the life of American politics as well as most other political systems.
I found it hard to be surprised by the claims made by Mr. Kruse because the majority of people consider politicians dishonest and perceive the government as lying to them in one way or another. The difficulty in this is differentiating between knowing about these behaviors and changing them. I can't conceivably think of a way to stop politicians from their dishonest behavior. As long as they get the reaction they intended from their half-truths, they will continue to use them to persuade people to their side. It's sad that we are ever falling into a period of less and less trust in what our representatives say, but it would seem there is no way to change this trend.
Sonney, I think Kruse's list of "reasons politicians lie more than ever" suggests some possible solutions to the problem. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteI reread his list and although I seen many explanation for the decent into dishonesty, I didn't see suggestion on ways to reverse the situation. Am I missing something? Is there more than just the one article?
DeleteSonney, I agree with you when you said it was hard to be surprised by what Mr. Kruse said. It is no secret that politicians lie.
ReplyDeleteMr. Kruse only suggested a few ways that we could change this behavior by becoming more honest as a nation. He said this would work, because leaders are only a reflection of the people that they lead. I think we could fix this behavior by becoming a more educated country. Citizens should do their own research instead of just believing whatever the leaders tell us. This way, we could call them out on it, and they would know they wouldn't be able to get away with lying all of the time.