Thought that would get your attention. Feast on this trash! Dick Armey: Clinton and Gingrich traded stories about their girlfriends All the same, Newt was the more evil of the two for cheating. Being a republican and all. Right?
I dispise men that cheat on wives, outside of marrige things are a bit "looser" so to speak, but if you can betray your closest and most loved, then you can betray anyone.
Well said. Most people say "Who cares, they're a politician?!" or they expect corruption and greed from a president or office-holder. They actually expect it! And are okay with it! They get what's coming to them apparently. A politician who spends his spare time having sex with as many women as he can (Clinton) and who has even had allegations of rape, among other foul things in his closet, does not get one iota of confidence or support from me. And they shouldn't. As you said, they can betray anyone. A guy who has cheated with probably hundreds of women is NOT fucking trustworthy, and shouldn't be President of the USA.
Let's face it..Politicians are basically snake oil salesmen, and bullshit artists. People just vote for the one's that are better at their craft.
Maybe if he appears "virile" people think he will push a lot of stuff through the senate. I don't know. I certainly would not trust him to fall on his own backside.
that does not say much for the level of understanding of the general populous. they won't have a lot to complain about when it all goes tits up.
Oh, people will still complain regardless...But, all we can do is vote for those we believe to be the lesser of the evils, and hope for the best.
Gingrich pressured one of his wives for divorce arrangements, so he could marry his latest younger girlfriend, while she was bedridden with cancer in a hospital. Meanwhile, his entire political career was based on his claims of superiority in his personal morals and principles, his representation of "family values" in Washington. Clinton did not behave like that. You judge your politicians by the allegations of their enemies? Why do you place so much confidence in allegations from people you otherwise find untrustworthy and amoral?
Powerful men are promiscuous. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about politics, entertainment, business, sports, or any other field. It comes with the territory. The Europeans don't pay attention to it because they've been used to it since the days of the Greeks and Romans. Only in America do people get outraged when it's discovered, and pretend that it's unusual. It's part of our culture. Women don't have as many opportunities as men, so some of them use sex as a means for getting ahead.
Sadly, our leaders are often an image of what the people are..Many American men would certainly cheat on a spouse with out hesitation if they thought that they could get away with it...They may also cheat on their taxes, steal from employers, sell guns and drugs to kids or anything else that may get them "ahead".. But I would agree that accepting corruption as commonplace in the political sense is fine if you don't mind a corrupt political system..Like so many that have fallen.. The story of America, though, is so compelling that we should know that we don't have to settle, not now or ever. Beyond that, we can only vote for people based on what they've done and what they SAY they will do. And then Keep doing it..over and over until they realize that the bait and switch only goes so far.
You could replace that word with many things but it comes back to what you believe it takes to be truly "powerful".
Armey: "Politicians are fascinating. If you ever want to do developmental psychology, use them. They are much, much, much more skillful at developing rationalizations than developing rational thought." This is what I am interested in in regards to everything people do or say. This phenomena is particularly important in politics but it also is the foundation of organized religion and culture in general. Most of us our aware that rationalization plays an important role in life but I think almost everybody vastly underestimates how important rationalization and self-deception really are. Politicians are particularly big rationalizers for a few reasons. I think most politicians (but not the sincere ideological extremist idealists) are the sort of people who when they were school children would say or anything to become popular and were likely to have tried hard to win the friendship of popular children. I think this childhood focus then became their adult focus on a larger scale. Then most of the politicians got Law degrees. Law school indirectly teaches that it is OK to do anything that is legal or illegal but unprosecutable to advance your clients interests. Law school believes that in the outcome of the not necessarily honest contest between competing lawyers a sufficient justice will emerge that while not perfect is still functionally superior to any other system of justice that might be devised. Politicians tend to proclaim the same idea for the political systems in which they work. They claim that while the system is imperfect that the outcome is good enough and that the imperfect system is as good as can be achieved given the political realities.
I'd say acting like animals rather. If a grown man can't cut his wife loose before he hits the sheets with others, he's spineless. Do you hang out with people who you know cheat on their SOs? I don't if I can help it, much less respect their leadership, guidance and counsel. But I guess if you Aim low enough you may get a direct hit every time.
Giambe, go out and have some fun. You sit here moralising over everone and its getting to be a real pain.
And then there's the fact that it's what Dick says Well, people are human, and humans are animals. Well, yeah. But neither do I spend a lot of effort monitoring their relationships, just like I don't make an issue out of who is doing the cheating (e.g., in my circles, women are more likely to cheat, but that doesn't really matter to me, in part because it might simply be that the men are better at hiding it). To the other, how much leadership, guidance, and counsel do I really expect while listening to friends bitch about PAC-10 referees, or Brent Musburger's broadcast bias? Some of these people are family—e.g., how does one sever a cousin from their family?—and some of them are just longtime friends. Going back to your earlier point about cutting the spouse loose first, that's just not practical for some people. The counterpoint, of course, is that I have a very poor view of marriage at the outset, so it's hardly a surprise to me if someone I know ends up cheating on their spouse. Anecdotal example: Once upon a time, a friend of mine declined to have sex with me because she did not want to violate my relationship with her best friend. Obviously, I can respect that, except this was during one of the periods when her best friend was seeing someone else—e.g., not me. So ... even setting aside everything else that led up to that moment, okay, fine. Don't want to have sex? Fine with me. But please don't tell me it's about a relationship your best friend isn't in. Now then, given what she said, should I be at all surprised when, a few years later this friend of mine has a boyfriend who happens to be both handsome and financially secure, but is perfectly willing to cheat on him? Logically, sure, it seems contradictory. But I'm part of the American Generation X, so, frankly, this sort of thing is just about on par with my expectations according to experience. Also, I think about my peers who got married at a young age. Among my friends, even those I've lost contact with, none of them are still in those marriages. Certainly, this contributes to my poor outlook on marriage, but it also says something about the state of mind many people are in when they get married. They had no clue what they were doing. No clue what they were getting into. Men or women. They married for an idea, for a feeling, or in order to have a moment in time. They hadn't defined the idea; didn't understand the nature of such feelings; and somehow thought some aspect of that moment would last forever. As a result, they define the idea, redefine the feeling, and reshape their perspective on the value of such moments. In the end, they also end up defining the idea of marriage. In the United States, people stay together for the kids, public image, financial reasons, or any manner of justification that might make them feel better about the fact that they are miserable in their marriage. These, too, are defining the idea of marriage. To me, these relationships are farces to begin with. So, hey, they're cheating on a farce? Life goes on. Indeed. I should stop associating with people who enter significant relationships with one another, or, worse, get married. Look, I recognize that I'm treating this whole idea lightly, but any discussion that starts with what Dick Armey said? Come on .... In reality, if I disassociated myself from anyone who violated an oath, I would never speak to a police officer outside an official capacity; I would never speak to a married person; I would never speak to a Christian. And, for the record, one of the most decent people I know is a married Christian who works as a police officer in southern California. More specifically to the thread, there comes a point at which I don't care about a politician's personal life unless there is a specfic reason to. And, more to the point, it's Dick Armey.
