Alexander Pope said that “priests of all religions are the same.” This can also be said of politicians.
A stock in trade of American politicians is the cynical lie about history; as:
“This Watergate scandal is the worst political crisis since the Civil War.”
“Reagan is the most ignorant man ever to enter the White House.”
“Hurricane Katrina is the worst disaster ever to strike the American nation.”
There is ample proof that foreign politicians are the same. The first thing that occurs to them is simply to lie in some grossly obvious way. A strange man named Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist demagogue who almost won Mexico’s presidential election, has explained his defeat by claiming that his opponents, the National Action Party (PAN), cheated him out of his victory by engaging in the most fraudulent election practices ever seen in Mexico.
First try to imagine what could be more fraudulent than a traditional Mexican election. Then remember that within the lifetime of every middle-aged citizen of Mexico, candidates and supporters of the PAN were not only cheated at the polls, but also, wherever possible, arrested for campaigning against the ruling political party.
Obrador, like virtually all politicians, is banking on the idea that the voters have a lot of imagination, but no memory at all. And he’s traveled a long way on that idea.
