Gore Vidal Quotes
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action … Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
Gore Vidal, Author & Unsuccessful Candidate for Congress, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, 1992
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Accusing her of being a fellow traveler with Communist sympathies, Nixon called her "the Pink Lady" and said she was "pink right down to her underwear." See {627826} and {619498}. Douglas and her campaign thought the accusations were so absurd that at first they did not even bother to respond. Nixon repeated the them and stayed “on message” and by the time that Douglas, who had opposed communism all her life, was believed to be one or at least a “fellow traveler” by most Californians—and finally she responded with statements like this, but it was way too late to turn public perception around. She awarded Nixon the derogatory nickname “Tricky Dick” which the majority of the public used for him throughout his career--{600036}.
The legislators control redistricting and with the aid of modern computers, choose the demographics of the voters that they want in their districts even if they have to distort and Gerrymander the election district.
Ryan told the national audience that President Obama had come to a factory in his district that as rumored to be closed. Obama had told the workers that the Federal government could assist and keep the factory open for many years. Then as Ryan explained, the factory closed the following year. He gave this as an example of Obama not keeping his word. However what Ryan did not say was that Obama had made the speech at the factory when he was a candidate for the Presidency, and then the factory was closed while George W. Bush was President and by the time he took office, the closure was done and the factory machines gone. And when Obama took office, our national economy was within days of complete bank and finance collapse. Obama saved most of the banks and then the American automobile industry. To suggest that Obama could have or should have done something for the factory that closed was shockingly misleading. It would have been a minor issue if some party hack had lied and made the same accusation. But this was the Vice Presidential Candidate whose acceptance speech was assumedly vetted by the Presidential Candidate’s staff. That is why the quotation was so memorable.
Romney and his surrogates had more than usual difficulty with getting their facts right. Fact checking organizations would call them on this and in April of 2012, Romney ran a TV ad that was grossly wrong and misleading. When asked about the expose of the falsehood of the ad, Newhouse made this classic response. The reason this is an important quotation is that the statement drew much more critical attention than the false had or its classification as untrue did. Even President Obama made fun of it in his campaign speeches. See Martin Amis {631017} for a serious critique of the meaning of the quotation.
The Republican Presidential Candidate in the Election of 2016, Donal;d Trump, when with only a few weeks to go before Election Day, and the polls indicated that he was substantially behind, began to give speeches that included many statements that the Election was rigged against him. See Quotation 643708 as an example. He presented no evidence at all, and even could not specify who was doing the rigging or how they were doing it. However, many of his followers, who tend to believe many political conspiracy theories, started to make plans for continual action after the election if Trump[ loses. For some unstable followers—all candidates for President have some—they were already planning methods of resisting if Hillary Clinton should win. To make matters worse Trump had encouraged his supporters to take extra legal action to prevent Hillary Clinton from destroying the country as they ave known it. He also announced that he would not necessarily accept the election results if Clinton won. He even threatened to have her jailed when he won the Presidency. Chertoff, a fellow Republican, was very familiar with unstable people and their oft times dangerous behavior to “protect” them, their family and the nation from some conspiracy or another. Chertoff and many other Republican leaders tried to persuade Clinton to refrain from such demography, but Trump was one of those people who tended not to listen to advisors or colleagues. He continued on his dangerous rhetorical path.
In the 2015 political campaign, she worked as a political surrogate for Domald Trump. She had been asked why Truumo made so many statements in his campaign sppeches that were contrary to the facts. This was her response. She was right so far as Donald Trump and most of his supporters were concered. One of the major fact checking organziations analyzed his speeches and found that about 80 persent of Trump's statments were untrue in part or totally. And almsot all media including Fex News which supported hom remarked on this extreme use of exaggeration or hyperbole, However, his supportwers did not seem to care. Ms. Hughes observed correctly that for a large number of Americans facts no longer mattered. What was important was the issue that he was talking about, whose siide he said he was on, the people he blamed for problems and the promises he made.
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, patrician manner, and polished style of writing. Vidal was openly bisexual and his novels often dealt with LGBT characters, which was unusual at the time. Beyond literature, Vidal was heavily involved in politics. He twice sought office—unsuccessfully—as a Democratic Party candidate, first in 1960 to the United States House of Representatives (for New York), and later in 1982 to the U.S. Senate (for California).
