Random Musings

Just Asking

Why do people make promises they don't keep? Take oaths of office that they don't uphold? Don't they realize that those aren't just words uttered in a particular order? Words have meaning. Meaning is substance, something tangible. Or so I was lead to believe.

Why do people make vows in front of their God, their person of the cloth, and the assembled to keep myself only unto thee until death do I part, and then not follow through even though neither party died? Isn't a vow a promise, an oath of sorts?

I have been following the unfolding sexual and ethical, potentially criminal scandal involving the mayor of my former hometown, Detroit, and his chief of staff since it blew wide open yesterday. What a mess.

Kilpatrick came into office after we moved here to Georgia, but as all of my immediate family still lives in Michigan and the Detroit Metropolitan area, I continue to follow the news there. I have been watching this thing since the father of one of my former students, who was deputy police chief at the time, and two other officers were fired by the mayor in 2003 or thereabouts for conducting an investigation into improprieties that were sufacing way back then.

Since that time, Kilpatrick was reelected, and took the oath of office a second time. The aforementioned officers sued for unjust termination and won. I knew they would. I had a strong hunch that all that was being whispered about the mayor and the raggedy way he conducted his personal life was true. The whispers were too loud and coming from too may directions to not have some element of truth to them.

Well, it exploded sky high yesterday, revealing that there was indeed more than an element of truth to it. A slew of released text messages published in the paper told it all. It was revealed that the mayor and his mistress lied on the stand about their relationship, thus opening themselves up to charges of perjury, and they may have lied about other important things that had the potential to ruin the lives of others,

But more important than that to me is all the people who have been hurt, disallusioned, slandered, and betrayed just so that they could get their "swerve on".

I feel so sorry for their children. They are young kids, but old enough to understand the things that other children may say to them about their parents. They are old enough to understand that their parents are liars, that their father is married to their mother but had a girlfriend, and that their mother had a boyfriend who was married to someone else. I feel sorry for the mayor's wife. It's bad enough to have a philandering husband, but to have the whole world, via the internet and this text messages know about it, too....

I'm just asking, why do people make such shambles of their lives and the lives of the people they promised to love, and why do they betray the trust of the people they make an oath to lead?

Seems like that's becoming the norm and fidelity and honesty are the stranger events....