Feud wrote:Cooper42 wrote:What I don't understand is that, whilst G W Bush was a worrisome fellow, I could see why some people would like him and vote for him. I could understand, if in disagreement, why someone would vote for him.
Edit: Even McCain. Crap politics, but even so that guy had "President" written all over him.
What I can't see is what anyone finds presidential in Romney beyond him being the leader of the party they might support. Romney is just a nasty piece of work. He's like a living, breathing example of the moral bankruptcy of the republican's version of the American dream.
The guy gives 30% of his income. He spent two years in unpaid missionary service. He's spent years in unpaid ecclesiastical roles, including as a Stake President, which typically takes about at least 15-20 hours a week, and puts him on call 24/7. While at Bain, he once stopped the company business and dedicated its full time (as well as that of their accounting firm) to canvas the streets looking for the missing daughter of an employee. She was found because of those efforts, drugged in a basement and hours from death. He's also the only president in living memory who's never done drugs, been drunk, cheated on his wife, or been divorced.
Yep, that's some moral bankruptcy right there...
Which was kind of what I'm getting at.
He has himself, personally, done many a 'good thing'. His interactions with individuals is that of a caring, devout man.
Except his politics align with a politics that disenfranchises the powerless and those least able to fend for themselves.
The actions of an individual on a personal level cannot be scaled up to provide indication of how they would act when responsible for the lives of millions who they will never, ever meet face to face. Romeny's personal benevolence masks a politics that is far from benevolent. That's the moral bankruptcy I had in mind.
Edit:
@DHKold:
That is a beautifully naive bvision of science.
I stand by scientific methodologies as the most robust ways of producing accurate, contestable knowledge that we have. But to claim that scientific endeavour is entirely, completely, disaccociated from the political realm is just plain wrong.
At the very root:
How we produce knowledge is, fundamentally, in the realms of politics as much as
what knowledge is produced.
Science is funded, undertaken and designed within a world that is not devoid of politics. The practice of science is not (cannot be) utterly devoid of political engagement. Whether it's board room decisions or the day-to-day practices of lab work and the individual s in the corridors of universities and corporations, science is not somehow in a sealed bubble away from politics.
It is, however, wrong to suggest all science is political
in the same way. Those who dismiss science as being always from a specific political viewpoint are just wrong.
There is more to politics than elections and senates and parliaments. The personal is political. Science is conducted by political persons. Within the scientific community there are measures to reduce overt bias and plain cooking of results. But politics seeps in at the very root of what is researched (what is deemed worth while researching, what is funded) and how it is researched (what is deemed the best way to produce knowledge)
Whoever you vote for, the government wins.