I don’t know about you, but next to lying, hypocrisy is the thing I most despise. The Webster’s New World dictionary says it means : “a pretending to be what one is not, or to feel what one does not; a pretense of virtue.”

Lately I am hearing the same people who applauded vile rhetoric against a former president, now screaming that it is not OK to say anything negative or voice any protest against a current congress or administration. Whereas community action and organization was considered an amazing and wonderful vocation and an experience to be commended, it is now being referred to as an angry mob of well dressed people. Is community action only for poorly dressed people?

Is there something wrong with wanting to know the facts? Is reading a bill in it’s entirety wrong, just because those who represent us don’t think it is worth their time to read it? I went to college and I want to read it. It tells me what will happen to my health care for the rest of my life. Much of it is truly terrifying when I read it, but if you don’t you can just act surprised when it happens, I guess.  I have been a victim of things I didn’t bother to read in my lifetime and I will not do it again.Why is  having an opinion which differs from a current administration  somehow blasphemy in America? I can remember a former First Lady, now Secretary of State, screaming at the top of her lungs that it was the essence of patriotism to disagree. I really don’t understand why what’s right for one side is wrong when the other side does it.  Either it’s OK or it isn’t but how can you say it’s wrong when you just argued that it was right?  To me that is the essence of hypocrisy.

To thine own self be true was my Dad’s motto, and I believe that we all need to independently make sure that all the facts are backing our beliefs right now, and be willing to look at all of them without prejudice and decide with our own hearts and minds what the truth is. We have left that up to too many others for far too long.