Reflections by Phil Ellenberger

Archived in the category: Featured Writers, General Info, Reflections
Posted by Joyce Rhyne on 16 Jul 15 - 0 Comments

My goodness it is already the season of announcing that “I am running for president”. Not me, it has always been a mystery as to why someone would really want to be President. Nevertheless the Republicans have the most who want to be President but the Democrats have at least three. Who knows how many more egos will jump into the fray?

I guess it is sort of like being on Facebook and bragging about how many friends you have. However, in reality any President also has almost as many unfriends as friends. It is really difficult to get much over fifty percent of the voters to vote for any candidate. In point of fact, the parties or the PAC’s are willing to spend millions of dollars to get at least one percent more votes for their person..

There is little doubt that the people who sell the ads or take the polls like the big spending. That must be a big percentage of their income. It is as if the biggest campaign fund gets the win..

The arguments are about who is right about what might happen if you go the way “the other side” wants to do. This side says that going that way leads to prosperity and success. While the other side says no, my way is better..\ Those other guys aren’t giving you the true skinny. When there are literally dozens, like at the current time, it makes for a whole lot of I’m right – they are wrong in our ears.

One wonders who is telling the truth. If you stop and think a little you can wonder what is really the truth. That question has been bothering philosophers for centuries if not longer. Socrates was forced to drink Hemlock in 399 BC because some said what he taught wasn’t “true”. That may have been one of the first instances of not being Politically Correct.

The Philosopher A.N.Whitehead defined it fairly correctly when he said, “There are no whole truths; all truths are half truths.” When you are talking about the things both past and future that politicians talk about, it always seems that there are details left out. There is no doubt that many times there are also out-and-out whoppers but even those somebody might sort of agree with a “Yes but …” response.

It is a shame that we will be subjected to this bombardment of candidates and their speechifying for the next year and a half or so, It is even six or more months before the primaries will cut it down to, hopefully, a couple of candidates.

The early start is for the time to raise enough money to pay for all those millions they need to spend to get elected. It seems those costs are rising faster than the inflated egos that run.. I guess that is the truth of our modern social media connected world.

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