The Republican National Convention is over and I for one am exhausted. You see, I’m considered a polished researcher. Facts and figures are my stock and trade and I’ve long prided myself in being able to back up the opinions proffered with at least three independent sources. Public figures and politicians alike have hired me to ghost write speeches and short remarks on their behalf, primarily because I understand the power of words and language and understand the impact they can impose on others and truth is something I prize above all else. One politician in particular hired me to extract him from remarks he had made about the gay community that landed him on the national news. A short statement was prepared and forwarded to his office. Within 5 minutes, my phone rang and an angry United States Congressman was on the other end to ask if I’d lost my mind. He said, “You’ve just reversed what I’ve always said. You’re asking me to stand up and say I was wrong.” To which I replied, “You were, Sir. Dead wrong. And offensive.” His voice bellowed into the phone, “Do you understand that you are addressing a member of the United States House of Representatives?” I replied, “Yes, Sir, I do. And I’ve voted for you five times because I believe in you. I respect you, but on this? On this, you were just wrong. When you’re right, I defend you with everything I have. When you’re wrong, I never hesitate to call your office to tell you so. And Sir? Please understand I’ll continue to poke you with a sharp stick every time you do. It’s how I express my affection for you.” There was a brief silence and when he came back on the line, it was as if all the air had been let out of him. “Good answer, Carol. Good answer.” Within the hour, he had called a press conference, delivered my words verbatim and the controversy was over as quickly as it had begun. And why? Because he had thought about it and realized the intellectual dishonesty of his position and knew that in the end, he had created his own angst based on fear. Once he released the false premise upon which his position had always been based, he was free to move forward. The public, realizing that his fear was more a generational issue and not one based on hatred, were quick to forgive. I ran into that Congressman two weeks ago and we laughed over the whole affair. He thanked me for having the courage of my convictions. The truth really does set one free.
I shared that anecdote with you to help you understand intellectual dishonesty. Simply, when one avoids an honest, deliberate and comprehensive approach to a matter because it may introduce an adverse effect on personally and professionally held views and beliefs, that is intellectual dishonesty and that was the pervasive theme of last weeks’ Republican National Convention. I don’t think the people who spoke were stupid or even malicious, rather, they conveniently disregard fundamental economics, particularly for those at the lowest end of the income scale. These are educated, learned people, many of whom have been better educated than myself. They’ve studied the same economic reports, understand entitlement programs every bit as well as I and yet they completely disregard those realities because they are ‘inconvenient’. Poor people, the unemployed, the homeless, veterans, women and minorities are inconvenient in the America they are trying to build and I will share some examples with you.
Let’s start with Ann Romney. She spoke at
length about her humble beginnings with her husband. She spoke of the many nights eating tuna and pasta on a door laid across two sawhorses while they lived in a basement apartment. But the reality is, he was the son of the Governor of Michigan and she was the daughter of the Mayor of upscale Bloomfield Hills. Both had attended exclusive private schools and both had been raised in privilege. She had previously told how they “had to sell stock” to get by and in her speech, she was sharing how she related to the experience of the average American woman. There was an intellectual dishonesty about that statement, however. Two young people with millionaire parents and some of Daddy’s stock they could sell to get by is hardly the average American experience. I doubt their parents would ever have let their utilities be turned off, let them go hungry or permit them to do without much of anything. I was watching that speech along side a young single mother who works two jobs and still can’t make ends meet. She won’t accept any form of public assistance because she says, “Look at the way these people are talking about anyone who can’t make it alone. I’m not lazy and I’m not looking for a handout. I just want to get by. I want my kids to have decent clothes on their back and have enough to eat.” As she was talking, I looked down at her shoes. They were worn, split and dirty and I’m betting they were the only ones she owns. I wondered how many pairs of shoes Ann Romney had in the closets of her numerous homes, as she stood there talking about how much she related to the American experience of motherhood in her couture dress. Yes, the RNC was a beauty pageant as one politician after another got up and told America how hard their parents or grandparents had it. Not how hard they had it, but how hard their ancestors had it. Listening to them, you’d think every last one of their parents were coal miners and housekeepers scrubbing other people’s toilets. Does Ann Romney sincerely believe she knows what it’s like to be genuinely hungry and under the threat of being homeless? Hardly. But listening to her was a lesson in intellectual dishonesty.
One after another, Republicans stood before America and bemoaned the deficit, blaming it squarely on the shoulders of President Obama, conveniently leaving out the policies of their own party that got us into this mess. Willard Mitt Romney smiled into the camera claiming he wished the President had been successful, conveniently failing to share the story of how, even as President Obama was being sworn in, his own party had met in private to conspire to crash his presidency and if need be, the country right along with it. They like to talk about how the President has “gutted” Medicare to pay for his ‘failed’ Obamacare socialized medicine. They conveniently fail to tell you that $716 billion dollars in cuts is wasteful spending within the program – and it’s the very same cuts Paul Ryan proposed. They also left out the part about it not being socialized medicine. Never before have the previously serving President and Vice-President of their own party been so conspicuously absent. President Bush was treated as a persona non grata at the convention. That’s probably a good thing, given that the hurricane that significantly shortened their convention was headed toward New Orleans on the seventh anniversary of Katrina devastating that city. When we think of Katrina, we all see President Bush with his arms around the FEMA director telling him he was doing a ‘heckuva job, Brownie.” Of course, we knew immediately, that the entire Gulf Coast had pretty much been left to their own devices and we all witnessed how that turned out. We also got to hear all about how our 236 year-old Democracy was in danger of toppling in a mere three and a half years at the hands of our President – while conveniently leaving out the salient details of the Congressional conspiracy to make sure he failed at all cost – even if it meant toppling our Democracy. That’s intellectually dishonest.
Paul Ryan’s speech was a little tougher. That wasn’t so much intellectual dishonesty as it was perhaps a record-breaking string of misinformation and out and out lies all put together in a single speech. This is what a bald-faced liar looks like.
What I’ve learned about intellectual dishonesty is that it’s contagious. When presenting the average Fox-News gobbling sheep with actual facts, they just resort to the alternate universe where they begin making things up on the fly. I’ve long referred to these people as the American Taliban. In the HBO series “Newsroom”, my newest addiction to the best writing on television today, the Tea Party best summed up by anchorman Will McAvoy in the following way:
http://youtu.be/vH1gJESvfbc
During the endless GOP debates, I listened in horror as the audience booed a gay serviceman, cheered the idea of leaving the uninsured to die, killing as many people on death row as quickly as possible, child labor, torture of political prisoners and the idea that, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself. When Willard Romney mentioned compassion for the poor and afflicted the other night, that portion of his speech was met with the resounding sound of… crickets. It makes me wonder when basic compassion died in America.
I’d also like to address the intellectual dishonesty of those who label themselves “independent voters”. Often, they love to regale me with their intellectual superiority for not supporting either party because, in their words, “they’re all the same”. That sort of lazy thinking is disturbing to me because one needs eyes, ears and a pulse to understand that is patently untrue. Being so gutless because you love having both sides pander to you for a vote isn’t an informed position at all. If there are any ‘independent voters’ left out there, I’d be fascinated to learn why you’re still sitting on the fence, especially women who self-identify as Independents, since the GOP platform says you’re so stupid, you need to have government make laws about every facet of your sexuality.
But while the GOP had made an out of context comment of the President the centerpiece of their convention, claiming they built everything on their own, the persistent theme of their speeches was about how, if you just work harder, you can make it in America. You too can get your little piece of the American dream. You and I both know the dream of upward social mobility is slipping away. 43% of those born into the poorest households will remain in the poorest households, while only 4% will make it to the richest. Conversely, 40% of those born into the richest households will stay there. Only 8% of them will ever know poverty the way the bottom 43% will. The lesson: those born rich stay rich and those born poor stay poor. That fact has never been truer than it is today. Republicans will have you believe this is not the cause of the excesses of capitalism or the irresponsibility of American finance or even the way big business has rigged the system in their favor. They want you to believe that Barack Obama has turned this country into a nation of people with their hands out, palm extended heavenward, waiting for a gub’ment check. The President has done everything in his power to put forth a jobs plan, repair our crumbling infrastructure and promote green energy and green jobs – all things the GOP have previously proposed. But because he was the one to ask for it, Congress said no. They claim President Obama has attempted to make each of us ‘less American’, less desirous of earning our way in the world. And while they slap him around for invoking he name of George W. Bush and his disastrous presidency, they never fail to interject the name of Ronald Reagan, the architect of trickle down economics. When you have to invoke the name of someone who was president 30 years ago, your ideas suck. They’re convincing the Fox News crowd that their American dream is being robbed by lazy minorities who don’t want to work. Conveniently leaving out that 2.6 million more Americans are living in poverty since last year while less than 8,000 more are on welfare is intellectually dishonest.
I watched Melissa Harris-Perry on Saturday morning. She lost it when a Conservative economist insisted that wealthy people deserve everything they get because they “take risks”. “Poor people turn into Dairy Queen, while job creators take risks.” The fun begins at about the 8-minute mark. She blasted her guest and talked about what real risk looks like. While she was visibly shaken after the blow-up, her point was spot on.
http://youtu.be/FrQ8O1t-nxE
Take a hard look at these shoes. Understand for a moment what it’s like to stand in these shoes on a rainy day, working for minimum wage to feed your child.
I’d like for the GOP to walk a mile in the shoes of my friend.
Carol Baker is a political writer, satirist, and co-host with Vicki Childs of our Here Women Talk weekly internet talk radio show called BROADSIDED. You can hear their show every Thursday at 11 am Eastern/10 Central/8 Pacific
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I do want to tell you that I respect your views Ms. Baker and a friend of mine sent me your opinion piece. I decided I’m going to spend a few hours going through it and doing a counter piece myself on Michelle, Barack, and Joe. I think one thing that stuck out above is how you stated below Ann’s picture about her dress costing so much…Michelle is always seen wearing very expensive clothing including a 6K outfit during the Olympics. Honestly I don’t think either Ann or Michelle’s clothing now can necessarily prove that they don’t know what it’s like to come from a humble beginning. Many rich people actually are very tight with their money and don’t allow their children to become reliant on their riches because they feel they should learn how to be self sufficient on their own. I think our society automatically assumes that when someone is rich, they are like a Kardashian and don’t appreciate the value of money and hard work.
Interesting that a you chose to focus on a single comment I made about Ann Romney’s clothing bill, which was more than some families living in poverty earn in a year. It came out to like 2/3 of my own income. Michelle Obama’s dress cost something like $800 and she was wearing a pair of shoes the average woman could have afforded before the crash. The cost of her ensemble only became pertinent because she was wearing it while telling everyone how she knew just what they were going through. I’m sorry you can’t see that having 5 maids in 2010 and raising your children with 7 nannies and never worrying about where your next meal is coming from doesn’t set well with a woman who doesn’t have a single decent pair of shoes and is raising 3 kids on her own on a steady diet of beans and rice. My beef is not with the size of the Romney’s wealth. I hear they’re worth $250 million dollars and if they were worth $10 billion dollars, I frankly wouldn’t care. My beef is not with their bank account. My beef is with people who clearly have not experienced poverty telling poor people they were poor once too when in relativity, it was nothing like the experience of today’s poor. Almost as charming as Willard telling unemployed people he’s unemployed too. Is it the same? Really? I don’t view the Romney’s anything like the Kardashians and never made a comment like it. I have immense respect for Ann Romney and her personal tribulations with health issues, but in fairness, she has access to the finest health care money can buy, while so many Americans die needlessly every year for the want of access to such world-class health care. I think the Romney’s appreciate the value of money more than most people, actually. What they don’t do is relate well to those who don’t.
As for Michelle Obama’s expensive clothes at the Olympics? Tell me, what would you have the wife of the President of the United States wear? I’ve seen complaint after complaint every time she dresses down with direct references to her ‘going ghetto’. If she dresses down, she’s a slob. If she dresses appropriately (which she can NOW personally afford, it’s an affront to the poor. Tell me… what is appropriate dress for the First Lady?
Ms. Baker, can you consider now doing a thorough review of Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden’s speeches? In particular, I found it interesting to look into Michelle Obama’s background and find out she too was very privileged however she didn’t seem to relay that in her speech.
Well, if you want me to write a piece telling how Michelle Obama’s father was a city water plant employee and her mother was a secretary at Spiegel’s catalog store and try to explain to my readers that constitutes “privilege”, then no, I won’t. If you want me to write a piece talking about how her family was descended from slaves and lived in a two-story house in Euclid Street in Chicago, where her parents rented the upstairs apartment while her great aunt lived downstairs and call that privilege, then no, I won’t. If you want me to explain how Michelle Obama, through hard work and excellent grades qualified to attend one of Chicago’s first magnet high schools, but it was something that necessitated a three hour commute from her family’s Near West side home to the school, a commute that took three hours every day and call that privilege, then no, I won’t.
If you choose to write a piece on false equivalency, that’s entirely your right to do so.
You say that Michelle Obama came from privilege. Really… Though she didn’t live in the slums of the Chicago’s Southside..let me tell you a little something about Chicago’s notorious South district.
First a little personal history. I was born 40 miles from downtown Chicago, in the city of St.Charles. I grow up there. In all the years that I lived there my family never once traveled to the Southside. It was, an still is, one the toughest and most violent urban areas in the country. The truth was and is, if you where not born there, you did not go there. Admittedly, 7436 Euclid Ave is not in the middle of the Southside slums, it is however still the Southside. A place notorious for murder and all other major crimes. An area you did not, and still do not, drive in if you do not live there or know the area.
The South Side of Chicago has long had its share of gang-infested housing ‘projects’ but with the University of Chicago hospital close by, there were plenty of white professionals in the area as well as hard-working families in the Robinsons’ own image.
No one who lives in this area would even begin to pretend they were rich. If you want to stay hidden behind your rose colored glasses, then there is nothing I or anyone else can do or say. But, if you truly desire to expand your knowledge and put to rest this idea that First Lady Michelle Obama-Robinson came from privilege, then I implore you to Google the address of the home, where from birth until marriage, she called home.
Even the Google photographer knew not to venture off of East 75th Street more than about 100 feet, but you will see this “privileged” living in the neighborhood where she was raised.
The address again is 7436 South Euclid Ave, Chicago, Illinois…
On a personal note…grow some intellectual honesty and integrity and use your computer for more than a tool for entertainment. When you finish…return to this thread and post an apology for this obvious lack of knowledge and truth of which you speak.
I didn’t watch any of the RNC, thankfully. But I’m grateful for this recap. Good grief, did Ann Romney really tell about their “hard times” like that? That’s almost comical. She would have been better off to admit how privileged she and her husband and their families have been. I had never before heard of Melissa Harris-Perry but loved her passion in that segment you posted. And that’s the second time you posted something from “Newsroom.” That show looks spectacular. Unfortunately, we don’t get HBO, so I’ve never seen it. Thanks, Carol, for sharing your thoughts about intellectual dishonesty, and thanks for keeping me up-to-date on politics.
I agree with you completely about the blatantly dishonesty last week. I would rather have hear Ann Romney for one say that she and Mitt were blessed to be born into richness and since then they have lived their lives to help others and that with hard work…blah, blah. But to make it sound as though their struggles were like those of the common person made me mad and made me laugh. I think they are good people with a lovely family, but they have no clue about the middle class. They don’t even have a clue that without a strong middle class this country won’t succeed. They still are spreading their dishonesty that the rich getting richer is how things will turn around. That is also blatant dishonesty.
Thank you Carol for saying what so many of us feel. As usual, you are spot on.:-) 🙂
Thanks, Vicki. Sadly, some people are coming here to say that I’m accusing them of intellectual dishonesty because they disagree with me – and then they accuse me of intellectual dishonesty because they disagree with me. I wish they’d read the article in context. You know me perhaps better than anyone after sharing the airwaves with me. I welcome opposing ideas, it’s how I learn things. The only think I’ve ever asked someone is to have a fact-based reality when coming at me with an argument. What’s my favorite comeback? “Prove it.” Some people don’t can’t even grow a pair and admit that what happened last week didn’t have to be their political reality. Instead they come at me with horseshit about conciliation and the debate of ancient Greeks. Christ, man – grow a pair and just say it. There’s no shame in having an opposing opinion. Can you at least agree that one cannot accept every premise on the most simplistic level? Not every opinion is valid when you leave out ALL the truth. (Shaking my damned head…)
I do believe it is more than dishonesty. Everyone has a responsibility to what we are seeing and saw played out last week at the RNC. If people only seek a savior, it absolves them from taking responsibility for what is created. Scapegoating is cowardess. If we look to a mere mortal to have all the answers without our input, without our critical thought, without listening, we are just as much at fault. People are not hearing the contradictions in the political rhetoric because they only want to sit back, maybe vote, but expect to place full blame on the shoulders of others. That is a bi-partisan criticism.
Obama ran on a platform of “Yes, We Can” — WE. That we means me. What have I done? Have I been part of the creative process that seeks sound solutions, or have I hindered the process by name-calling and point my finger? The theme of the RNC was “We Built It,” but was clearly understood by attendees as “I Built It.” There is no “we.” If there were, they would not accept the defunding of public broadcasting, education, healthcare, etc. They would understand that success does not necessarily mean monetary riches, but that it can mean we are all a little better off than before. It means hard, creative work and compromise. (Oh, but I’m sorry, compromise is a vulgar word. It means weakness.) I was very disappointed in what I viewed from the RNC. Clint Eastwood was not the only one who was puzzling. The whole thing pretty much brought to my mind a bunch of over-privileged, white, blowhards talking out of their ass. I hope the Democrats this week have better taste and a better grip on reality.
You’ve been a regular reader here long enough to know that there have been plenty of issues with which I have disagreed vehemently with the President. I can separate the policy and the reason behind it from the man. There are people who have read this and take it to mean I don’t like Willard or Ann Romney. That is simply not true. I think they’re probably very nice people. I just don’t believe they are any way in touch with what people are going through right now. If you can’t relate to people from all social strata, if you have no emotional connection with anyone except those within your own socio-economic group, how can I trust him to faithfully represent all of the people fairly?
You asked why any woman would indentify herself as an independent instead of democrat. I ask why any person of sense would identify with either party. Both sides lie through their teeth, saying they are going to do things they can’t possibly do on their own, instead of simply promising to do their best. And that’s when they’re not so busy bashing and lying about each other that it makes me sick. Yes, I’m an independent. Yes, I’ll be voting for O’Bama. But it’s not because of people like you. It’s because of people like ex-President Clinton, who pointed out in the ad he was in, that what the republicans are proposing is that we go back to doing what the Bush administration was doing – the policies that got us into this mess in the first place.
I fail to see how deciding I don’t want to be part of either party makes anything wrong with me, and I damn well resent people like you who try to paint us all with the same brush, which is one of the the very things you have just complained about the republicans doing. Talk about intellectual dishonesty.
Thank you for pointing out the precise intellectual superiority and lazy thinking that “all parties are the same” I was talking about. I was genuinely curious when I asked the question because I’ve never had a so-called Independent come to me with anything more than an “I’m an Independent because I’m too smart to be sucked into defending an actual ideology – they’re all a bunch of failures and I’m only voting for the least of two evils.” I don’t see the courage of any conviction there. I’m not asking you to vote for anyone because of “people like me”, as you so beautifully put it. I’m asking you to believe in something. Not to agree with me, but to believe in something based on fact and a personal conviction. The Republicans are a party who have written into their platform that you are too addle-brained to make decisions about your own sexuality and they want to legislate that for you. Yeah, I’m actually stunned that you can’t stand behind a party that stands for you. People like me – that was my favorite line.
Like most egotists, I imagine you are successful enough that you can always submerge any negative feedback in the puddles of your accomplishments. Based on that assumption, I doubt anything I have to say will register any longer than it will take you to disregard it, but that is fine. I raise my objections not for your sake, but because to see something amiss and say nothing offends something deep inside of me.
You pride the quality of your speech writing on a trifecta of independent sources -which I would assume you are trying to equate as objective though the two terms are not at all synonymous, except that would be intellectually dishonest of you- then later try and assert that no politically independent ideology can possibly be existent and that only insurmountable hubris could make someone claim they didn’t belong on the Red team or Blue. I suppose accuracy isn’t a necessity in political speeches any longer, or consistency for that matter. Nor logical rigor, unless the fallacious nature of your critique of Mrs Romney’s speech stemming from the company you kept while viewing it went somehow unnoticed by you. You strike me as bright enough that I would bet it occoured to you but you simply didn’t care.
In any event, none of that is really important to me, I find it more or less amusing. What disheartens me is the attitude behind it. Debate was neither art nor artifice amongst the ancient Greeks, as you and those like you have reduced it to today. For they at that time, discourse was meant to be conciliatory in nature, not combative. The point was not to triumph but arrive at a truth. Any aim less noble than this is intellectually dishonest. They did not always live up to that ambition, often they did not even remember it, but rather than take solace in that we should steady ourselves by it and keep it forever in our hearts lest we similarly stumble. It is for this reason when engaging in debate certain niceties are observed. Such as assuming intelligence on behalf of the speaker, and attacking the strength of their argument rather than its weaknesses. Pettiness and petulance come easily, rising above it requires somewhat more effort.
So, essentially you’re saying that I’m an all-consumed egotist if I don’t fall at your feet and agree with you? Then I’m an all-consumed egotist. I don’t need to submerge your negative feedback anywhere. In fact, I like to keep long, bloviating treatises like yours front and center as a prime example of exactly what I was talking about. That you would dismiss three non-partisan sources as not being objective because it doesn’t fit in nicely with your political beliefs is all the information I need about you. That is intellectual dishonesty at it’s finest. I’ve written many articles defending positions opposed to mine because at least they could be based on at least some factual information. Facts don’t have a bias – they are what they are and to claim facts are intellectually dishonest leaves me aghast.. I don’t dismiss the idea that there are some genuinely independent voters out there, but not one has been able to come forth and defend why without dismissing me as stupid for accepting a side. You’re no exception. You claim my critique of Mrs. Romney’s speech was fallacious, yet you have nothing to back it up except to accuse me of yet more intellectual dishonesty. I was crystal clear in why I can’t accept her as understanding what the average American woman goes through since she’s never been an average American woman. If the point of the GOP convention was to arrive at truth, then they failed miserably. If you call that conciliatory, then this country is in deep. The truth is exactly what I was aiming for, yet, because I didn’t fawn over the ‘charm of a truth’ instead of the actual truth, I’m petty and petulant. Please understand, Cody, I don’t dismiss you because we disagree. I dismiss you because you have used the language I love in a very beautiful way to call me stupid, mean and a liar, as though that’s somehow more honorable.
In regards to you being a liar, stupid or mean, I was not attempting to insult you or insinuate anything of the sort, I do my best to refrain from personal judgements on individuals I do not know and I do apologise for the tone as it obviously came across as contentious. That was certainly not my intent and the fault lies entirely with me for not having made that more clear. When I referred to you, and those like you, I was speaking of political speech writers in general, and you specifically in reference to this work as it is all I have to consider your work by.
What I was attempting to convey was a bit of gentle goading, as I noticed traces of the same faults you find in other’s analysis lurking amongst your own. It was criticism, but not critique. When overcome with contempt or disgust, none of us act well. Discontent, when expressed, is always undignified. There is a danger in contending against those things which affront us, as Nietzche observed, when we stare into the abyss it also stares into us. It is far easier than most people appreciate to become what they detest. This is a small matter in regards to you, but it is one deeply pervasive in our society today. I am sure you have noticed it, especially lately, as frequently as I have and in all probability share in my unhappiness over it. A single Samuel Clemens is a novelty, a nation of them is a travesty.
As for your sources, we are speaking abstractly of something nebulous as no specific instances were referred to in any way. One cannot objectify the subjective anymore than they can generalise the specific. Without knowing the nature of the sources you chose not to name (as it was not pertinent to the discussion), one cannot discern any facts except those you use to describe them. As someone whose livelihood centres around their ability to wield the written word, I did not think it a matter of quibbling to insist that independent, your word, was not the same as objective -the implication. I believe you can appreciate the difference. Inaccuracy and assumption are often attributed as the children of intellectual dishonesty, though they are frequently innocent of any relation at all.
As for your critique of Mrs Romney -it was fallacious. Particularly, it was a relativist fallacy. You are trying to contrast Mrs Romney with the woman you watched her speech with, which is unfair and unrelated.
Your objection to Mrs Romney was personal, my disagreement with that objection is personal, but my contention with it is simply based on the fact your objection reflects poor reasoning. Let us be personal for a moment and off record as it were, since I am about to speak of something I know little about,
Mrs Romney was born to privilege, but as none of us choose the womb we enter life through. I do not understand your evident resentment of her upbringing or why you choose to hold it against her. In her own way, she believes she struggled for autonomy, independence, and to make a life of her own. Common struggles. That her struggles were not as difficult as others does not infer somehow that she did not struggle at all. Every man has their own limits. She sold stocks to make ends meet. While this is not typical of most Americans, many of us have depleted our savings in times of economic uncertainty, perhaps even additionally called upon assistance from friends and relatives. Those stocks were an embodiment of her future security sacrificed in the hope of temporary assurance. Having known poverty, I sympathise with the desperation I imagine she must have felt in making that choice. Her options may have been different, and her circumstances, but the experiences she went through are not altogether alien.. . Of course, I surmise all of this based solely upon what you provided and I may be very wrong, I did not watch the convention as I have never been interested in the Republican party as a whole, or its theatre and I speak from a position of ignorance.
In closing, my original message was supposed to be one of friendly cautioning, my only hope was to induce a bit of self reflection in the hopes you might profit from the examination. This nation is very dear to me you see, I served in the Navy and somewhere along the way developed a deep and abiding affection for this nation which raised me, its unique and exceptional philosophical heritage, especially in contrast to the many nations I have seem which share this world with us. Like Rome before us, it is a light in the world, not despite its flaws but in spite of them You are in a trusted position to influence its future and the tone of discourse applied in getting us there. I expected my sentiments to be dismissed, but I could hope they would be first considered.