Not a single chance in hell.
To admit some error on my part would be to admit that:
The end justifies the means.
That lying through one's teeth (not once or twice, but continually without end) is just fine,
That painting a man of low brow and lower character, after the fact, can make him a rosy hero, a saint, and even a god.
That principles I have held dear my whole life mean *nothing*, because if one is ceded, so are they all.
That a heavy gloss of turd-polish and spray-on tan fixes everything.
and that words mean nothing at all.
Absolutely, and not unjustly.
Dead wrong. I find it shameful that people would vote for such a boorish ass. His past aside (where I could dwell for hours), just the manner of his election was so unconscionable as to make him forever unpalatable to me. Just the type of character who would baldfaced concoct lies, and slander his opponents, is all I need to know about the man.
That guy is a sack of crap, and it doesn't matter how much you wish it otherwise, I will never, ever trust a man like that. Period.
So you can damn well stop gazing at my navel for me. I know exactly why I don't trust the man, and why I never will. And I am most assuredly not in error, any error whatsoever.
Foremost: Character. If that is not there, nothing else matters, because there can be no trust.
If you say it.
In my own experience I have found that declarations of uniquivocal certainty about things which cannot possibly be known fror certain (the hearts of men- even one's self) or really any absolute statement about anything as chaos-ridden as politics, or the future (more than a few seconds from now), are doomed to eventually being revealed as vain.
As someone recently stated, "you may be the first" to prove that belief incorrect.
With all due respect ( and that is great, sieur), all that your statement proves to me is that you know your own feelings and conditions for trust of a politician. Nothing more and nothing less. I believe your statements about your feelings and the scope of your requirements for allegience. Your prognostications and declarations of "facts" are another matter.
Lastly I address something stated by another poster previously regarding the supposed impossibility of achieving moral outcomes using immoral means. The entirety of that question hinges on the definition of "immoral". Lying is not immoral if in the process of applying a falsehood, good is achieved( a "white lie"), can we not agree on that?
Once that is established, (and I don't know any reasonable person who disagrees with that at least to a minimal degree), the question then becomes " in what circumstances other than white lies, can actions normally deemed "immoral' achieve good outcomes?
It is immoral to take human life - generally. But in defense of a loved one against unprovoked attack, homicide is not only moral and permissable, but some might say imperative. I am one of them. I believe that to fail to defend an innocent life against wanton,egregious violence, even if it requires homicide, is sinful.
Nicolo Machiavelli wrote a satirical book titled, The Prince. That book was about the Borgia dynasty/family mostly, and about the mechanisms they employed to exercise dominion in their time. What Machiavelli pointed out was that in the context of savagery, the requirements of achieving and maintaining power require the abandonment of all but the most immutable moral considerations. One must be willing to kill ( even murder), cheat, steal and yes, even LIE to achieve power when one is competing with others who will do the same.
The watchword in politics is not "what is moral" the watchword is "what will achieve results". I understand that people debate the truth of the statement "the ends justify the means" but sadly, in our savage world, that is almost always true in political contests where the goal is THE POWER TO USE GOVERNMENT FORCE TO OVERPOWER MASSIVE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE.
My preference is to be moral and to avoid lying or any other moral transgression, largely because it runs counter to my code and also because I know that immoral behavior damages or destroys intimacy and social/professional relationships.
But politics is another matter entirely. Machiavelli stated somethng similar, though he likely never actually stated that he believed that the ends justify the means. The book The Prince was a statement about THE REQUIREMENTS OF DEALING WITH SAVAGERY, not a statement of his preferences.
Machiavelli's greater work and likely the one which revealed his true character was the Discourses on Livy (or simply the Discourses), which was an exploration of the magnificent, humane Roman Republic and the glorious efficiency/morality that it once exercised as a form of governance. The Republic existed only for a brief period, and was supplanted by the savage Roman Empire, in which the Borgias, and likely most of those at the highest levels of the democrat and Republican parties, would have felt right at home.