Romney and Bullying, Part Two

Romney and Bullying, Part Two.

When I wrote the blog below 5/11/12, I didn’t know that Romney had managed to avoid the draft for military duty in Vietnam.  Don’t misunderstand me, I opposed that war then, and I certainly do not support it now.  But using one’s religious obligation to be a missionary in France for two years, among other devices for avoiding the draft, then joining a protest supporting the war was a little much.  Avoid the draft if you must oppose the war, but then don’t support the war where other young men and women are dying or being injured, mentally and physically, while you peddle your bicycle in France. 

And in May, Romney still hadn’t begun to campaign against President Obama because he had not won the requisite number of delegates to cinch the Republican nomination.  Now he is campaigning with full blast lies against the President.  His phenomenal comment that President Obama has done nothing to create jobs has been really astounding.  The President has presented a Jobs Bill to Congress several times.  They passed the one portion dealing with cutting taxes, but refused to pass either this Jobs Bill or the Transportation Bill that would put thousands of people back to work repairing and upgrading our roads and bridges. 

I think Romney has gotten away with spouting off anything that pops into his head for so long, he has forgotten, if he ever knew, that now YouTube is repeating everything he has ever said, 24/7.  And once it is on YouTube, it is everywhere.  24/7. 

So, add his Vietnam experience with his blatant lying about President Obama’s record, plus the record of his lack of empathy, or sympathy, listed below, and use the energy generated by either anger or disgust to register voters, walk precincts, do whatever you can do on your regional level to elect caring people to Congress who will support President Obama in his second term. 

On Martin Bashir today, 6/8/12, Romney was pooh-poohing President Obama’s “to do” list for congress, saying that his “to do” list was written on his heart, and it is “Jobs, jobs, jobs”.  Bashir’s comment to that was that Romney could write it on his heart, which was, after all, and Etch-a-Sketch heart.

Romney and Bullying 5/11/12

When the news broke the other day about Mitt Romney’s high school bullying incident, I was rather annoyed.  As someone said, we probably all did stupid things in high school, so why make a big deal out of this.  That is the point of maturing – we grow out of our high school attitudes and mature into thinking, empathetic adults.  But then I began thinking about some of the other things Mitt has done and said, and in my mind they form a pattern.

 First it was the high school bullying.  A bully cares only about his or her own feelings and doesn’t think, or care, about the feelings of the one being bullied.  Then it was the “dog on the car” episode.  This one bothered me because Mitt’s first answer was not only really ludicrous, but was a lie as well.  He commented that the dog carrier was really airtight.  If it had been airtight, the dog would have suffocated shortly after the trip began.  Further, if it had been airtight, the dog’s effluent wouldn’t have run down the back of the car.  There was no discussion about the condition of the dog at the end of the trip.  Then it was how funny it was that when his Dad closed a plant in Michigan and moved it to Wisconsin, the local band could only play “On, Wisconsin”.  No thought about the people in Michigan who had lost their jobs, or apparent care about what happened to them.  Later, he commented that he really loved to fire companies who were not performing to his standards.  No comment, or thought, about what happened to the people working in the companies he fired.  He had a habit while at Bain Capital of manipulating companies into bankruptcy after having gutted all of their assets for Bain Capital without a thought about what the workers of those companies would do for a living.  And finally, his op-ed piece regarding letting Detroit go bankrupt, knowing full well there was no private capital around to bail them out, and he objected to using tax dollars to do so.  Not a word about the thousands of people who would be out of a job.

Anyone of these incidents, if isolated, would not be enough to form a pattern.  Obviously.  But when one puts them all together they do form a pattern of someone, who in this case happens to be a man, who has absolutely no comprehension that his actions will have a severely detrimental effect on a great number of people.

Martin Bashir had a Democratic analyst, Julian Epstein, on his program today who made the same connection, for which I was thrilled.  At least there is someone who has the ability to get this pattern of Romney’s out into the public forum.  But that was today.

Now imagine this man, Mitt Romney, as President of the United States.  What a chilling thought.