Thursday, March 1, 2012

Why I don't like Romney

No, it isn't personal.  It isn't because he insulted Gingrich, or even if he ran negative ads against him.  No, in order to explain my dislike of Romney, I have to discuss something that I haven't discussed before.

You see, even though I am not rich myself, I wanted to be.  So, I always have been looking for that one thing that might put me over the top.  No, I didn't find it.  But along the way, I think I may have picked up a few things.  One of those things was in a self-improvement book.  I won't cite the book specifically, just something in it of significance.   It was a quote of Marcus Aurelius, the last good emperor of the Roman Empire.  It went something like this:  "Our lives are what our thoughts make it."  So, if you think failure, you will get failure.  If you think success, you will get success.  Everything in life results from the way you think.  You are what you think.  If you haven't heard of Marcus Aurelius, you probably heard that one before- you are what you think.

Now, what does this have to do with politics?  Well, Romney put down the space program.  Not only that, he made it out to be something that can't be done.  Even worse than that, he made it out to be something that is worthy of scorn.  In other words, we can't do it, and we shouldn't even try.  So, if Romney becomes President of this here country, his mindset comes in the bargain.  If he really doesn't believe we can do it, well we certainly aren't going to be doing it.  "Our lives will be what our thoughts make it."

Ok, so what's the big deal?  Space isn't that important.  Maybe not.  But consider this:  if a presidential candidate said in 1912 that we should go to the moon, he would have been laughed at.  Sort of like today with Gingrich.  But in 1962, it was national policy.  It was expected that we would do it, and so we did.  Our lives were what are thoughts made it.  The physical equivalent of those thoughts of achievement in space became reality and we did it.  I lived through those years of Apollo.  Getting to space was a given.  It was part of the culture.  It was expected that we would do this.  There may have been doubters, as there always is, but the aspiration certainly wasn't treated with scorn.

So, with this ridicule of the very concept of getting to the moon again puts us right back where we were 100 years ago!  If we are what we think, and we really can't do this anymore, where does that leaves us in the future?  Would you rather see the progress from 1912 to 1962- or would you rather go back to the horse and buggy era?  Where will we be in the next 50 years if Romney's mindset takes hold?

To me, what Romney did was unforgivable because he set the thoughts in motion that will result in decline.  It doesn't have to be that way.  We should go back to the moon because we can do it.  We should do it because it will bring enormous benefits to us all.  It will make our domain infinitely larger and richer.  Yes, and I think it will make us safer.  Rich countries do not attack each other.   Happy people do not hate each other and want to kill each other.  If this becomes our way of thinking, we will go back to a past that hasn't been so good to us.  Who should want that?

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