Brilliant. Simply brilliant.
Everyone knows the story of the boy who cried wolf. The shepherd boy tricks the townsfolk into thinking a wolf was coming. After a few times of this, they just ignored him when an actual wolf came. The moral? In a nutshell… don’t lie because then when you tell the truth no one will believe you. I guess.
But in my case, I think it’s like when you do something bad enough times, people just ignore it like it’s totally normal and acceptable.
Take plagiarism. Me or someone in my campaigns over the years have seemed to have a big problem with plagiarism. Maybe we are lazy, or don’t have ideas of our own. Maybe people in my circle just like using other people’s words. Who knows?
It started in law school where I “had trouble citing sources” with law papers. It appeared from time to time in speeches or ideas throughout my life. At one point, it was the reason I dropped out of a race. Over the years, though, I’ve “normalized” it so much that it’s just brilliantly acceptable that I have no ideas of my own and just “steal” ideas from others.
Take the new cornerstone of my agenda that I announced:
“Build Back Better”
Never mind that it was first used as a “slogan” by the UN in 2015. And then a number of times after including in a large climate change UN event in April of this year.
Never mind that it’s basically the same thing Trump has been saying for 5 years. Invest in America business, America first agenda. We can have the same or similar agendas sometime. People like it.
Some people say actions are more important that words. But, I’m pretty sure at this point no one wants to remember the hundreds of thousands of jobs lost overseas because of the actions we had the 8 years we were in White House. Our agenda that was NOT America first. They just want to hear the powerful rhetoric of the amazing slogan we stole:
Build Back Better
Sounds great! If the UN didn’t want us to use it then they should have Trademarked it.
Come on, man.