Will Governor Romney have his medal revoked?

Lance Amstrong won over half a dozen Tour de Frances--one of the toughest athletic competitions out there. He did so in an age when many if not most of his competitors have since been found to be doping. And now, apparently, he has too, and stands to lose just about every award he's ever earned. I don't know how they'll award those races to someone else, given how many of the runners-up have also been convicted of the same thing. Some obscure guy in the peloton, perhaps...

It would be comforting to know that the same thing happened in politics. Often, instead, the truth tellers get expelled by a public addicted to comforting delusions and propagandistic narratives that flatter them.

On the other hand, the fact checkers are becoming more visible and their "pants on fire" conclusions more damaging. So we'll see.

Governor Romney won the first presidential debate. The President lost badly on all the atmospherics, and it's not like the Governor was the only one lying and shading and spinning up there. But the President was not accusing the Governor of being a corrupt politician, smiling as he said it, and the Governor was. Just as Governor Romney clearly won the debate in the eyes of most of the public, he also won the Stack O' Lies contest too, his stack being substantially higher and stinkier than the President's stack.

So will his victory come to be seen as a pyrhhic one as the political equivalent of steroids he used to win with come to light, one by one, even the powerful forces arrayed on his side do their utmost to discredit the truth-tellers as they do so?

And if this does enable him to win, will he ever feel qualms about having cheated his way to the top?

In both cases, I don't know. Apart from his fierce desire to win and to dominate, and his equally fierce devotion to his family, who can tell what else he actually believes? His positions sometimes reverse within 24 hours. Kind of head-spinning, really.

I bet when at age 16 he led the pack of boys that held down the homosexual boy to cut his hair to an acceptable length, Boy Romney told the homosexual boy--with a smile--that he was doing it for the boy's own good. Traumatizing him for life was unfortunate collateral damage, ultimately acceptable in light of the greater good achieved by enforcing conformity to proper social norms. Right? He wasn't bullying the boy just to bully him...or so I'm sure he told himself.

Then as now, though I don't know this of course, I suspect he thinks to himself that he does everything he does politically for the common good...and that the ends justify the means.

Nothing personal, as the mafia soldier says in The Godfather. Just business.