When a lot of my female friends would come to me for advice, I would often tell them the same thing. The hardest thing to find out about a person to see if they're really a person you want to be with is integrity. Integrity rarely shows its face, particularly early on in a relationship. Both dating parties are knee deep in making good impressions, finding out information, enjoying the discovery of new common things, and the excitement of a new body to explore.
Do they do what they say they're going to do? Be where they say they're going to be? This isn't integrity --but I think reliability and honesty are the building blocks of a person's integrity.
Integrity means everything.
Dwight D. "Ike" Eisnehower said, "The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army or in an office."
Senator Alan Simpson put it this way... "If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters."
and of course when quoting you must use Oprah Winfrey, who said,"Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not."
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| ON BEING PRESIDENT: "It reveals who you are." |
But in dating, finding a person's integrity is hard because situations that require such judgment are few and far between. However, when they arrive, they can cut a relationship to pieces faster than a J.A. Henckels knife cuts through a tin can.
Sometimes it happens early in a relationship. A person has a situation come up let's say where their Ex has contacted them out of the blue.... they feel torn. If the breakup was recent and they still truly love their Ex, they will naturally be drawn back to them. Sometimes it's in hoping things will change or have changed... sometimes for a final night of lust because it's so comfortable. The question isn't what action they take.
The question is how they deal with the results of such an action. Do they tell both people how they truly feel and suffer the slings an arrows of the action they chose. Do they face down the fire head on, or try to cover it up? Those choices will reveal a person's true nature and inner strength.
When the 2016 election came around, people wanted to shake up Washington, for a multitude of reasons. History shows that when a social breakthrough occurs in an electorate that swings the pendulum far to one side or the other, it almost naturally snaps back to the other side the next time around. All things return to a natural state of balance.
But the shake-up in Washington, D.C. was supposedly about 'draining the swamp' of the old, cynical, and even hostile politicians that had been in office too long and replacing them with fresh leadership, many of whom would come from non-political backgrounds. Instead, what happened was the same old leadership was voted back into the Senate and House and a new President, who was both a reality TV star and business mogul, won the day.
Like her or hate her Michele Obama had a very pertinent quote about the Presidency. She said "I've seen first hand that being President doesn't change who you are. It reveals who you are."
Through all the unfairness, the social media bashing, the fake news stories and everything, the President must be solid from the inside out to take what is handed to him. In the case of Barack Obama, he was the only President ever to have been demanded to PROVE he was an American citizen to the electorate. He was handed a crashing economy with the auto and banking industries seeking a social gift-giving program (read Bailout) from the government, the same type of socialist handout Wall Street rails against when it comes to that money going to people in need. He was called a Muslim, told by his opponents that their only goal was to make sure he was a one-term President, and obstructed full-time by the Congress.
Ironically, the man that replaced him, Donald J. Trump, launched his political career pretty much on sustaining the "Birther Movement," calling himself 'proud' that he got Obama to reveal his long-form birth certificate. Even after this happened, Trump himself refused to disavow himself from denying Obama's citizenship.
In the end, Donald J. Trump became President, but not devoid of warning signs that he could be obtuse, dishonest, allergic to recommendations that went against his instincts, and have random changes of loyalty.
However, the events in Charlottesville, Virginia and the President's subsequent remarks have put the world on notice. Whether he is or isn't a white supremacist, a racist himself or a fan of racism (not that I even know what that is- hey, here I am in a white hood cheering...like my swastika pom-poms?)....there is no doubt that his decision in delaying his response, as well as the equivocation of the newly created term 'alt-left' with the marchers spouting blatant hate speech has set tension levels for the country at new highs.
Regardless of what you think of Donald Trump as a person, or of his politics, he has one job as President of the United States; that is to lead the entire country: all peoples, of all backgrounds, and to stand firm in the face of our enemies and reassure the country all is well. That is NOT what he has chosen to do, time and time again. Charlottesville is simply a confirmation of what many of us already saw.
The most disturbing part of this is not even that two-thirds of Republicans still approve of the President. That somehow they still are not moved by the fact that this President uses his Twitter account for personal attacks, the kind of which no one can undo because of the exposure of his office. Nor do they seem to mind that he's used his own buildings to profit from the Presidency, something our founding fathers would roll over in their graves about. Still this isn't the most disturbing thing.
The most disturbing part of this is the silence among the Republican leadership. People ask all the time how the heck did the Nazis rise to power?
SIDEBAR FOR WHITE REPUBLICANS - Now calm down, this is an example of fascism gaining power, not a comparison, per say, of this administration to Nazi-ism, OK? Calm yourself down because for white people the use of that "N" word on the right makes them go crazy. It's a shame they don't often react that way to the other more common "N" word, but I digress.
It was the silence of those that could do something. It was their inability to assemble their integrity in the face of a crowd and to create a force that might derail the oncoming train.
The Republican leadership has refused to call out this mistake clearly. There is only one way to do it -- say to the President, and use his name, that he must make a clear statement again racism, anti-Semitism and hatred. Not a delayed one. Not one that tries to lay blame on the several Antifa members for showing up with weapons. Not equivocating this fringe handful to the march of hundreds yelling "Jews Will Not Replace Us" and "Fuck You Faggots."
A few Republicans have done just that, and have found themselves in a Twitter war they can't win with the President. And they're seeing an actual backlash for having some true integrity. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona has taken a huge hit in his poll ratings. Leave it to Arizona to truly show their colors. Senator Lindsay Graham, with whom I've almost never agreed with politically, has showed that he has integrity, and won't support the President on this.
Yet our VP, who I agree is in a tough spot, as a supposedly devout Christian, cannot get himself to condemn the words of the President. I ask him just what is he supporting? What value system is this?
Although Senators Marco Rubio and Orrin Hatch issued statements on tolerance and against racism, they did not use the President's name, nor condemn his behavior. They are hiding behind the fear of losing their jobs. That's called a lack of integrity.
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| No statue on this recruitment poster for 8/12. |
The silence from other Republicans is, pardon the cliche, deafening. It is the sound of a decaying moral soul rotting from within. It is the atrophy of the American Spirit in the name of self-preservation. It is the death of integrity. Replacing it is an empty walking corpse, the likes of which we see on The Walking Dead.
If our country or our people were unclear about what our forefathers intended with the founding of this great nation, one need look no further than the over one million lives lost in the Civil War alone, all Americans. Add to that the struggles the continued over civil rights for both blacks and women, and the eventual creation of amendments to our Constitution to ensure those rights, and you have your answer.
America has always been about freedom and acceptance, even if that level of acceptance varies because of the integrity of its citizens.
You want to drain the swamp? Demand your leaders respond unequivocally to the President on this issue. This is the issue that will either unite us or rip us apart. Either you believe that America is for all of us, you who are the descendants of immigrants yourselves, or you are on the side of bigotry and hate. It's that simple. There is no gray in area in this issue. Choose. And make the choice wisely. And if you can't decide or your decision is silence, you may very wake up to an America that you no longer recognize. Then, it will be too late.
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