According to a 2015 Gallup poll, fifty percent of Americans wouldn’t vote for a socialist to be President, and forty-two percent wouldn’t vote for an atheist. The vast majority of them have no qualms with electing a liar, though: Ben Carson and Donald Trump are the leading Republicans and Hillary Clinton is the leading Democrat.
Carson recently admitted that he was never admitted into the United States Military Academy at West Point, nor had he received a full-tuition scholarship, disproving a long-held-and-revered aspect of his autobiography and his person. He also said, “A lot of people who go into prison straight, and when they come out they’re gay.” That’s just so woefully egregious that I couldn’t not share it. Trump just lies all the time. Clinton, in one instance of lying, has come under fire for falsifying aspects of a 1996 trip to Bosnia in the same vein as Brian Williams with his lying about his coverage of the Iraq War.
That’s not to say these are the only candidates occasionally, if not recklessly and rampantly, forsaking the truth. According to Politifact.com, a website operated by the Tampa Bay Times that fact-checks statements given by politicians, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, Jeb Bush, and Bernie Sanders have all expressed false statements. The latter two candidates, however, are the only ones to not have espoused any statements so incredibly false as to be categorized as “Pants on Fire.” They say Bobby Jindal hasn’t either, though, but evolution took place, despite whatever he has to say on the matter, so that can’t be right.
Candidates lying to sway public opinion is nothing new, so that means I have all the more reason to be utterly sick of it. I value truth over all else, in literally every situation, so when the people who wish to run the country in which I live just lie and lie and lie, I get the sudden urge to move to Canada.
Lying is just stupid. It doesn’t matter how much a lie helps you at first, because the blow back once the truth is uncovered will be, or at least should be, ten times worse. Just tell the truth. If you have some aspect of your person that is so awful that you must lie to cover it up, don’t run for political office. You’ll save lots of money and prevent everyone else from getting fatigued from rolling their eyes at literally everything you say.