`a column by Colleen O’Brien
“…the chain of responsibility,” a phrase used in an opinion column* in the October 15 New York Times turned out to be a surprising point of view that needs to be publicized.
The guest columnist Mr. Eyal Press wrote about Americans who vote for people who wind up doing dreadful things once elected, which I would begin my list with not allocating enough money for mental health care; advocating for and signing legislation that prevents half the population from making its own health decisions; writing legislation that subverts voting in a democracy….
Eyal mentioned former governor of Florida Rick Scott, now junior senator from Florida. When he was guv, he was sued three times for misuse of public monies, lost all three trials and then according to Eyal paid for his losses with state monies. He was elected governor for a second time and then elected to Congress.
So much for paying attention to your voting responsibilities, Floridians. Your taxes paid for his lies rather than your healthcare. Florida is ranked 48th in the nation according to Florida Trend, Sept. 24, 2021.
And this is what Mr Eyal Press wanted to talk about – responsibility lies in the voter.
From what I can see, candidates can lie at will because it doesn’t affect their election; and then they can continue to lie because lying doesn’t affect their re-election(s). The ex-president came out of the gate lying during his campaign of 2016 and accelerated the count once elected. By the time he became a sore loser after a second bid in 2020, he’d racked up 30,573 lies, according to the Washington Post, which was tallying daily.
Is this why America is in such trouble that we vote without responsibility to ourselves, our families, our friends, our communities, our country, our role as keepers of the general good? If we like a candidate and his bold ways, we don’t have to care if he or she is a first-class liar? Voters determine who gets elected, so I can agree with Eyal Press that we share the responsibility for bad lawmakers and other elected figures – especially second time around. And we have no control over Supreme Court justices who lie at their hearings – Thomas and Kavanaugh, for example – because we never get to vote for them at all – and they thus win their nomination, appointed by the liars that we did get to vote for.
So, for those we can vote for, if we don’t take responsibility to vote for the most honest candidate, do we at some point have to take the blame and just live with unfair and unequal laws?
I didn’t vote for the ex-president, who turned out to be the Number One prevaricator in world history, but I did vote for Clinton, who bald-faced lied in his second term, too late for me to take back my vote; but he never ran for anything again.
Our national lying problem is often called “lying with impunity,” because impunity means exemption from punishment for lying, which happens all the time in this country, partly because our free speech is not to be abridged.
In the international law of human rights, impunity refers to the failure to bring violators of human rights to justice. Impunity is especially common in countries that lack a tradition of the rule of law or are intent on ruining the rule of law they currently have; countries that suffer from corruption or that operate by patronage; countries where the judiciary is weak or politicized; and countries in which security forces are protected by ill-tempered leaders. Impunity is the word used when the accused lies about his historically egregious crimes.
*Mr. Press is the author of the book “Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America,” from which his essay is adapted in a NYT opinion column of 10-15-21
