TRUTH IN ADVERTISING VS TRUTH IN POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS

It's that time again. Political campaing season is coming, now that the polls are history and the voting is starting.

Businesses have to abide to Truth in Advertising, why don't politicians?

Are they held to a lower standard?

We should have all of the politicians wear a collar that would shock them when they lie to the public.

They should also be held accountable for advertising that is used to sway public opinion on their behalf.

Where have all the honest politicians gone, well they've been dead for a long time.


Here are some of the voices of the past about Politics.

“You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.”
― Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary

“In politics as in philosophy, my tenets are few and simple. The leading one of which, and indeed that which embraces most others, is to be honest and just ourselves and to exact it from others, meddling as little as possible in their affairs where our own are not involved. If this maxim was generally adopted, wars would cease and our swords would soon be converted into reap hooks and our harvests be more peaceful, abundant, and happy.”
― George Washington

“The Seven Social Sins are:
1. Wealth without work.
2. Pleasure without conscience.
3. Knowledge without character.
4. Commerce without morality.
5. Science without humanity.
6. Worship without sacrifice.
7. Politics without principle."
From a sermon given by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925.

“Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
Mark Twain

About political correctness
“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.”
― Napoléon Bonaparte

“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
― William F. Buckley Jr.

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
― John F. Kennedy

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
― Edward R. Murrow

“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.”
― Frank Herbert

“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Extremes to the right and to the left of any political dispute are always wrong.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.”
― Henry Kissinger

“In this country we have no place for hyphenated Americans.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Leadership is being the first to put others second. Wait, that’s not right. That’s politics."
"I trust politicians to do what’s right. For themselves.
”
― Jarod Kintz

“The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli

“The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.”
― Will Rogers

DON'T BE BLUE

The Poisonous M&Ms Analogy

The Poisonous M&Ms Analogy has been going around for quite a while. It represents an idea that creates much opposition from the extreme ends of the spectrum. On one side you have the people who want to place limitations on recent events affecting society, or even past events. On the other you have people who do not want any limitations on those aspects of society affected by the events. Both can be right or wrong, depending on which side you are standing.

The Poisonous M&Ms Analogy goes something like this.
Someone says that you can have a whole bag of M&Ms, not a small bag, but the big party bag with 1000 M&Ms in it, but warns you that 1% of them are poisoned. Do you want to still have the free bag of M&Ms? (the actual scenario used 10%, but I feel that's much too high)

The analogy usually refers to something that is certainly meant to stir the emotions when it is referring to a minority of ideologies, like race, religion, ethnicity or any other defining notion.

There's the side believes that treating them all as suspect is validated by not wanting to eat an M&M from a bag were some of them are poisonous. The other side believes it can be used to prop up any kind of harmful stereotype about groups, such as genders, ethnicities, religious and political communities without having to engage the objections to unfair generalizations.

So we should just do away with all of the laws we've made in the past because they are unfair to people who want to commit a crime against innocent people.

The bottom line is this.
We have laws for a reason and the underlying reason is that a minutely small number of a given population has performed an unjust act on the rest of the population with something harmful, like death, in the beginning. It escalated to other less offensive acts that may not have killed anyone, but hurt the physically or financially. If we knew who they were, we wouldn't need the law, but they are hidden among us and acting like us and society is forced be reactive instead of proactive.

Now we are back to the Poisonous M&M Analogy. What if half of the poisonous ones were green, but only about 40% of them. Now you could throw out all of the green ones, but still have .5% poisonous, that’s about 4 out of say 800.

Here's the part they didn't tell you. If you do eat one of the poisonous ones, everyone standing next to you would also die and everyone within 10 feet of you would end up in the hospital, kind of like a virus. Now you have the bag of M&Ms, what do you do with them?

Of course all of the Skittles are free to eat, but what about the green ones?

DON'T BE BLUE