The Good Guy vs The Liar: National Relationships in Crisis

This last year has been frustrating for me as I’ve watched so much news coverage of Republicans and seen so many damning and utterly ill-informed articles about Barack Obama.  Seriously, it just got a bit much.  Not because I have anything against Republicans as individuals, but because of all the distortions that the Awfully Conservative have happily spewed out in lieu of truth.

There’s been too much of something that’s not right about it all.  That something is a unique mix of an absence of elementary logic, a total ignorance of cause and effect, and sheer memory loss.

I think it’s reasonable of me to presume that a large proportion of the US doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, so I’m left perplexed. 

For example, why would anyone want to forget the state that the US was in when Obama took office?  Why would they want to forget that G.W. Bush’s approval rating was 22% when his term of office was over?  (CBS News, Feb. 11 2009)  Wiki puts that figure at 19%.

Why would anybody want to ignore that there was a reason for such widespread unpopularity?  On September 2 2007 Nelson D. Schwartz of the NY Times wrote "At current rates so far this year, RealtyTrac expects foreclosure filings to hit two million in 2007, or roughly one per 62 American households — a rate approaching heights not seen since the Great Depression."

According to Tim Bishop,  who quotes Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, G.W. Bush “assumed office with a $250 billion surplus for the previous fiscal year - and a booming economy. He left his successor with a $1.2 trillion budget deficit and an economy that was losing 750,000 jobs a month.”   

With something as massive and complex as the US economy, the effect of bad government is long term.  And that effect doesn’t stop immediately once corrective measures have begun to be put in place.  The law of cause of effect isn’t man-made and it’s not something anybody can manipulate.  It just is.  

We all accept that if you smoke heavily all your life you’ll probably get cancer.  Do you get it after the first cigarette?  Of course not.  And if you have treatment, is your cancer cured after the first session?  Nope.  Sometimes when you’ve abused your body that much the treatment doesn’t ever work.   Fortunately for the US, the economy is recoverable.  How do I know this? 

Because it’s already in recovery.  Here’s the part that really defies logic and seems to indicate a downright hemorrhaging of memory:  Obama is criticised for not creating enough jobs, and Conservatives want to bring back a Republican administration.  Yet, in the entire eight years of the G.W. Bush Administration, job creation averaged  +0.51% in the first term and -0.84% in the second.  (Wiki)

Notice the minus figure there.  Obama’s average, on the other hand, is +0.85% and it’s getting better.  Slowly, admittedly.  Not nearly fast enough.  But when you consider where all three of these men started from, it’s actually brilliant.  Isn’t it?  Aparently not.  Obama can be blamed, but not either of the Bushes?  George H.W. Bush averaged +0.69 despite that the previous term average was +2.53%.  Oops, what happened there?  Ah, but that wasn’t his fault, I forgot.  Silly me.  

To get serious for a moment, I know people are suffering, and I don’t mean to minimise that.  I know what suffering is.  I know what it means to not be able to get any kind of job and to not be able to put food on the table.  I know the place it takes you to.  I know how dark things can seem, how hopeless.  No human being should have to experience that.  

But none of it is Barack Obama’s fault.  And I don’t believe blaming him, or bringing in a Conservative Republican administration will solve any of the problems.  Mitt Romney isn’t an honest man – and let’s face it, even Conservative Republicans don’t like him.  And he’s shifting in the wind like crazy right now. 

But, what will be will be.  If America comes to its senses and gives Obama a chance to build on what he’s begun, then America will reap the benefits.  If not, cause and effect will operate whether people want it to or not.  If Romney is elected, America, the middle class and the whole world will suffer.   How much does he want to add to military spending – without knowing know what he wants to spend it on?  That looks terrifyingly as if he’s a puppet of the military industrial complex.

More guns.  More wars.  More lies.  More wealth creation for the already wealthy.  It’s not a pretty picture.  But, the biggest block of resistance to Obama is conservative elderly white males.  Republicans haven’t reached the youth and if they don’t change that this will be the last election they have a chance of winning.

What is it with those white guys anyway?  They're bullies.  Why don’t they just go to therapy and find out how to conduct their relationships and their lives with integrity.

The pitch video for my Indiegogo Campaign

Exploiting Relationships For Profit - Facebook's Blunder?

I’ve been watching the Facebook saga with quite a lot of interest.  Somehow the giant prodigy just doesn’t seem like a winner any more.  Perhaps I’ve been influenced by all the hype around its lack of success on the stock market so far, but I think there's more to my sense that fundamentally something's wrong.

It seems to me that its power grew because it was originally about people connecting, with no money involved.  So it was all about the heart.  The foundation was solid.  But now all the advertising and intrusion into privacy, and the extent to which people use it to promote business has changed it into something completely different.  So different in fact that it’s primary purpose isn’t related much to its original one, which created the foundation.  The giant has become weakened.

It's one thing connecting with your friends to say hi and keep in touch, share stuff, and ask a favor.  I think asking is fine.  It’s challenging, but there’s nothing wrong with it.  If you need, you have to ask, and if people get annoyed or judge you for it, then that’s the reality of your relationship, and it might as well be out in the open so you can both move on.

But it's another thing to actively market products to your friends on a consistent basis.  I don’t mean it in a moral sense, that it’s bad, because I don’t think it is.  It’s just it doesn’t work after a while!  It doesn’t work with me!  Good case in point is the Borowitz Report, which I absolute love – it’s intelligent satire - hilarious and insightful.  So I subscribed to it.  Now I get an email every day.  I read probably one a week, maybe not even that much.

But what really brought all this home to me was the blog I started, to promote or at least tie in with an ebook I wrote.  Every day I posted something, and I followed somebody’s advice to automatically feed it to my Facebook page.  I didn’t think it through.  Then I started tweeting, and I connected that to my Facebook as well.  Not so long ago I realized that my Facebook friends are getting inundated with tweets and posts that aren’t related to our relationship at all!

I was actively marketing to my friends, and – which is most important when it comes to marketing – ignoring the fact that none of them are interested in my damn book!!  Gaaahhhh.  So I’ve got some choices: I must seek another market for my book, and I must either have more variety on my blog, or I must disconnect the automatic feeds between my Facebook and my blog and my  twitter account.  If I want to share something I’ll do it manually.

How many times have people said “don’t mix business with friendship”?  It’s not a cliché for nothing.  Facebook encourages you to do the mixing, but I wonder if it isn’t paying the price.  If the majority of people were drawn to it because it was a place where you could get away from advertising, and it was about real connection and not money, how can it sustain itself when the culture has become about exploiting connection for profit?

Hmmm, I think I'll share this page!

To read a sample of or buy my ebook Make The Connection: And What About Me? on how to be real love and be loved and be the boss of your own life, Click here or go to Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble Nook 

 

Below is some entertainment for you!