- The symbolic mascot of the GOP is the elephant, and elephants
are said to have an excellent memory based on their instincts and "social"
cognitive
traits and attributes. As a former GOP member, activist and political
campaign worker, I, along with many other GOPers, should have an advantage
when it comes to the "gray matter" skills involving memory and
quick recall. After all, many famous TV prize shows rely precisely upon
these skills to reward their most successful contestants.
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- But I almost forgot what happened when, after "re-electing
the president," to quote the campaign slogan of the GOP at the time,
I voted again for Richard M. Nixon supporting his second term. Then Watergate
happened. I remember, as all good elephants and former elephants should,
how I reacted. I remember Nixon's televised appeal when he offered: "The
American people want to know that their president is not a crook!"
I bought it, hook, line and sinker.
-
- When I found out that he lied, I went totally ballistic!
How could any president lie to the American people? We tout open, participatory
and honest government; how naïve I was back then, and how naïve
the American people continue to be!
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- I was angry for this reason: If you and I lie, who gets
hurt? Sure, we can seriously destroy someone else's life, or several lives,
by making false accusations concerning people's marriages, their business
practices, their general character, and so forth. But how many people
can really be affected by such lies?
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- When it comes to the lies spoken by a sitting United
States President, whether denying being a "crook," or "not
having had sex with that woman," the outcome of such lies are spread
over a much greater population. They affect everyone in the United States,
and in many cases, the lives of the people in other nations! Considering
this, my reaction to the Watergate break-in and cover-up attempt by the
Nixon administration made me so angry that I stopped voting altogether!
I continued my boycott of government for fourteen years.
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- The first subsequent presidential election that I participated
in was the 1988 election of then-GOP Vice President, George Herbert Walker
Bush. But after he lied to me too offering, "Read my lips - no new
taxes," I refused to vote for him again. As a true conservative,
I could not in good conscience vote Democratic, a political philosophy
founded upon ever-expanding and more powerful centralized government striving
to achieve socialist utopia. My wife and I both voted for Ross Perot.
-
- After the resulting devastation of American principals
launched by the Clinton debacle, I felt sure the Republican Party would
restore America to its national moral and philosophical course, so I voted
for "W." I screwed up big time. Democratic philosophy set the
nation up for the total takeover by the criminal Bush administration.
I did not repeat the mistake I made in 1972 but I still couldn't bring
myself to vote for yet another satanic cult member offering the same platform
as the Bush regime.
-
- The Bush regime has morally, spiritually, and traditionally
destroyed our military. They have accomplished this by legitimizing the
unjust, immoral, illegal and unconstitutional invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.
After fooling both Congress and the American people as the Downing
Street Memo and the Karl Rove affair prove, Bush's criminal lawyers
used fraudulent word engineering to justify torture, making it open and
legitimate public policy in a manner never even considered by the world's
most brutal dictators: Mao, Stalin and Hitler.
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- Bush's war is devaluing our money, turning the entire
world against US, slaughtering our young in the military, raising the price
of our transportation and heating fuel, increasing terrorist groups from
cells to battalions and divisions, and is creating a racist hatred that
will surely deal with US massively in the near future. Appealing to the
criminal Bush regime is now what is even more naïve than voting ever
has been. When first I lost faith in the benefits and effects of voting,
I now have lost all hope in the credibility and outcome of the elections,
and have absolutely no problem accepting any and all charges that the elections
were fixed by the criminal Bush regime.
-
- I voted libertarian, but they have proven to be a closed
club. Democrats set up the Bush regime by ever centralizing and empowering
American government, to where now, the GOP, the party that could have turned
this big ship of state around, has navigated it directly into an iceberg.
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- Ted Lang is a political analyst and freelance writer.
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