One of the best ways to judge someone's character is to determine whether he would get along with himself. If he constantly criticizes others for things he does himself, then he wouldn't. And that means he is that lowest form of life, a hypocrite.
With someone like that, you should take everything he says with a grain of salt, and discount his opinions. You certainly don't want to befriend him.
Likewise, if you ever want to know which politicians are credible, look for the hypocrisy.
A politician who has taken both sides of an issue, depending on which happens to be politically convenient at the time, renounces his credibility.
Such a politician is nothing but a spin artist, no more credible as those campaign staffers who will always come out after a debate and opine that their man won.
Whenever there's a racial flare up, ask yourself what would have happened had the races had been reversed in that situation. Would the usual agitators have flown in to make hay out of the situation? Would they be saying the same thing?
Figure out who the hypocrites are, and it gives you a much better sense of the right and wrong of any situation.
For instance, if one side accuses the other of electoral fraud or intimidation, but ignores that which their own side encourages, that's all you need to know.
If one side accuses the other of being "haters," but seems to be much more spiteful and ill-mannered and gratuitously insulting themselves, that tells you everything about the "character" of that side.
Likewise, it's always illuminating to see what the media prefers to pay attention to. Which scandals are kept in public view and which are allowed to slip down the memory hole? Which types of crimes are given a lot of publicity and which are ignored?
If a newspaper or television station prefers to only give attention when the criminal is one race and the victim another, but studiously ignores crimes going in the other direction, that tells you everything you need to know about that media outlet, and their credibility.
People manifest their character through their hypocrisy, or lack thereof, and so do political parties and the media.
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4 comments:
I think it's fair to say that while the Republicans have acted hypocritical at times, the Democrats have taken their own hypocrisy to entirely new levels.
As you noted in your post, Democrats will complain about voter crimes and 'disenfranchising' minority voters by requiring something as simple as a State ID, yet the majority of voter fraud cases come from those within their own political camp. What's worse, the Democrats have actually opposed laws that help to reduce instances of voter fraud!? They say one thing, but do another. Truth is, the Left doesn't want to play by the same set of rules as the rest of us.
This might be an obscure example of hypocrisy, but during the OJ Simpson trial, those who supported the LAPD were wearing a blue ribbon pin on their lapels. It was a way of expressing their solidarity with the cops whom many felt were being unfairly treated by the defense. Well, it wasn't before long that OJ Simpson's defense team were visibly wearing them too! Such arrogance and gaul!
One last thing, John. As I see it, a true hypocrite is not someone who may do something hypocritically on rare occasions. If we're honest with ourselves, we've all done things which we regretted because we did something that went contrary to our own set of beliefs and values. None of us has been perfectly consistent in all that we've said and done. When we think about it, we're ashamed and guilt-ridden by it.
The genuine hypocrite, on the other hand, is the person whose entire manner of life is hypocritically lived. It's the kind of person who makes hypocrisy a lifestyle; it's his very nature; it comes natural to him or her; and such a person has no deep-down remorse for it.
Ambrose --
Good points. I tried to write this post in such a way that I didn't mention the two parties (I took out a reference to a President who voted against raising the debt limit as a Senator, calling it "unpatriotic" and reflective of a "lack of leadership," then turned around when it was in his interest and said that anybody who voted against the debt limit was "holding the government hostage"). I wanted people to draw their own conclusions about who the hypocrites were. But you're right, it's pretty obvious, especially when it comes to voter fraud.
I hadn't heard that about the Simpson case, interesting.
And you're right about chronic hypocrites; what you're describing are basically sociopaths; there's never anyone more hypocritical than a sociopath. These days I see the Democratic Party as near-sociopathic in its dishonesty (and hypocrisy), and the tone is set by the Obama administration, which has lied to us about everything from the NSA to the IRS to Benghazi to the nature of Obamacare. Any one of these scandals would have sunk a Republican administration, but the media turns a virtual blind eye to all of them and after an initial flurry of publicity, lets them fade away.
I liked bluffcreek1967's contribution, describing the difference between non-hypocrites and hypocrites. The non-hypocrites (who may sometimes screw up by being two- faced) in the long run, listen to their conscience, hopefully learning from their mistakes, doing better "the next time." Thank God for people who listen to their conscience.
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