Trust

A post in which I ramble about trust, lies, and forgiveness.

Inspired by a post by Hanny, I have been pondering the topic of trust for the past day. While he writes about his personal issues with trust, the decline of trust in our society is what has dominated my thinking. There have been two eras in my life where trust has disintegrated within our society with the first being the Watergate fallout. The second is harder for me to figure out when it started and for good reason. I will get back to that in a bit.

It would be good for me to write a disclaimer of sorts.

A year and half ago, I went through a pain therapy course involving meditation to relieve chronic pain. In order to join the course, I had to take the multiphasic personality test that professionals belief reveal all about you. According to it, I trust too easily.

Anybody who knows me in any kind of depth knows I do not trust people one whit. My favorite mental phrase is “I don’t trust them any further than I can shoot them.” Seriously, I am not joking. When I was very young, I was trusting. It was interactions with other humans that completely destroyed that. Betrayal is something I learned about early and repeatedly.

Odds and Ends

It is Thursday and I am behind on just about everything I wanted to do this week. Going to the Renaissance Festival in Shakopee last Saturday went well but eventually I had to pay the piper. But I’ll take having it spread mildly out over several days rather than being out of commission for a couple any time.

British newspapers are superior to our dying ones in the States for many reasons. The main one is that they actually do real reporting yet. But I have to say I am envious of Daily Telegraph subscribers right now. They get bonus premiums included with the papers on occasion and this coming weekend’s are doozies. Free Rat Pack CD’s featuring Sinatra, Dino, and Sammy are making me wish I lived over there despite the riots.

The Republican Presidential debate last night was entertaining from an old political hand point of view. Extremely hostile moderators trying to start wars between the candidates made things interesting from the beginning and gave Newt Gingrich an opportunity to shine. From a technical stance, he won the debate but didn’t win the debate. These aren’t real debates, these are forums so command of facts and figures doesn’t matter a whole lot.

Instead I would say Mitt Romney came out with the win due to Rick Perry stumbling badly late during the “lightning round” part of the forum. But many will say he won and I attribute that to Brian Williams screwing up by serving up a batting practice ball of a question on the executions carried out in Texas. Watching him be stunned by the audience’s loud approval of capital punishment was priceless and gave Perry a rare chance to look presidential.

Back to Romney. He had some minor flubs but kept turning the debate back to focusing on Obama. Right there he showed leadership and people will pick up on that unconsciously. The too cautious Romney of 2008 was not to be seen and I was impressed by his poise.

Michelle Bachmann is on her way out despite a carefully restrained performance. But she has shown that women are now accepted as serious candidates, something made possible by Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin the last cycle. Constantly citing the amount of children and foster children she raised got her tweaked last night and deservedly so.

Rick Santorum was there and that is about it. Which is too bad, since I like his stances on most things. In this group he doesn’t have the presence to make it, but he would be someone to consider for VP if Romney doesn’t get the nomination. East coast cred would be of help to a Southern candidate.

Ron Paul was Ron Paul and walked into every trap set by the moderators. That lack of self control always gets him in trouble.

My candidate, Herman Cain, did absolutely great with quite a bit of applause from the audience. It is a pity he isn’t gaining any traction, but the establishment doesn’t want a political outsider. With the mood of “anybody but Obama” on the Right and growing in the center, it looks like a Perry or Romney nomination is coming. Cain had solid answers and plans to deal with the problems we are facing economically and they resonated during the debate. I wish more people would take a good long look at him.

Biggest loser of the debate had to be the moderators. They were vibratingly partisan with irritation and hostility showing in their voices. Audience reactions clearly bothered them as well. Nobody should think MSNBC and Politico are neutral after that.

Now to get to work on a special post for the weekend’s grim tenth anniversary.

A Suprising Newspaper Promotion

You would never see this in the USA these days.  The Daily Telegraph is giving away a voucher to pick up a free 1/72 Revell Spitfire Mk. II kit in the Saturday editon and another in the Sunday Telegraph for a 1/72 Revell Hurricane Mk. 1!  This warms my heart as it should any scale model builder and I hope parents take advantage of this opportunity across the pond.  Those two fighters were the backbone of the Royal Air Force in WWII, so a great chance at a history lesson is there besides teaching the joys of model building.

If such a thing were done here, it likely would cause a bunch of gray haired gentlemen to fight over the newspapers, I'm sad to say. The loss of hobbies where boys use their hands has been one of the more distressing changes in our society, as more passive forms of entertainment have taken over. You don't see that many youngsters building kits, they would rather be playing video games or watching movies.

As soon as my room is repaired and everything moved back in, I'll be eagerly getting back to finishing some kits myself.