To say that Willard Romney is a liar is to say nothing new to anyone who has been paying attention, but alas, quite a few people aren’t paying attention. And while, in 2000, the press worked vigorously to spread the false meme that Al Gore was a fabricator, we can rest assured that having learned its lesson (I jest, of course, IOKIYAR), it will fail in its duty to spread the truth about Romney. So, it’s up to each of us to arm ourselves with the facts, and spread them far and wide. In that spirit, I recommend this article from Mother Jones, which explores some of Mitt’s lesser known lies. In some cases, of course, one can make the argument that there is a literal truth buried in the artful language, but really that sort of thing is still lying. If your object in speaking is to get the listener to believe something you know is not true, then you are lying.
The Mother Jones article focuses on three stretchers about his personal life, including the one about his burning desire to go to Vietnam, a desire frustrated by those deferments Uncle Sam kept forcing on him. The folks at Mother Jones just can’t seem to understand how hard it was for him:
So his story—he yearned to be fighting for the United States in Vietnam and did nothing to keep himself out of the reach of Uncle Sam—is false. And he has not acknowledged in public a particularly interesting wrinkle. At Stanford, Romney led a protest against demonstrators who mounted an anti-war sit-in at the university. He held a sign that proclaimed, “SPEAK OUT, DON’T SIT IN.” Yet five years later, in 1970, after George Romney had turned against the war, Romney told the Boston Globe, “If it wasn’t a political blunder to move into Vietnam, I don’t know what is.”
Romney wished he could have gone to war, but he didn’t enlist. He took no steps to prevent himself being drafted, but he did. He supported the war, then he didn’t. As a politically-minded son of privilege and politics, Vietnam was a confusing matter for Romney, and he has not addressed that publicly.
(via Mother Jones)
Imagine, if you will, that this was Obama’s story. Would we ever hear the end of it?
One Comment