Mitt Romney with his parents after father George announced his candidacy for Michigan Governor in 1962

Having somehow managed to miss it for the last three decades, today I stumbled upon a story that mirrors for us how insanely afraid and unaware we have become as a culture, how misguided and mistrusting we have become.  We're being asked to wake up to what is happening, to quit incessantly slamming the snooze button.

It's been in the news lately, a story from 30 odd (hypen or not there) years ago when Mitt Romney and his wife piled the kids into the family car for a 12-hour trip from Massachusetts to Ontario, Canada. For the drive up, their Irish Setter was in a kennel strapped to the roof of the car.

Sometime during the trip, they noticed a "brown liquid" had streamed down the back window of the car. No need for further explanation. You get it. The dog must have been petrified. Rather than clean up the dog and let it into the car, Romney decided to hose it down and put it back on the roof for the rest of the trip.

Irish Setters are nervous breed, a little paranoid. How would any of us two-leggeds handle being in a box on top of a fast-moving car for twelve hours, with breaks only at the gas station?

Asked about the incident recently, Romney called the kennel "completely air-tight" and said the dog loved it in there. This had to be some kind of special kennel: Seems to me that if it was attached to the roof of a car and was air-tight, it would pose something of a challenge in terms of air supply for the dog between gas stops. And if it was air-tight, how was it not "brown liquid"-tight?

It's easy to cut the guy some slack for putting Seamus up there to begin with. I've sure done my share of thoughtless things in my life and I can forgive myself for them. But once the dog let loose the brown stuff, common sense and compassion might have allowed for the dog to be let into the car, rather than be put back into the kennel up top for the rest of the trip.  Let's forgive him for that, too, and let's not pretend that just because it happened a long time ago that it does not matter.

Most of our elected officials in this country are ignorant or crooks or both.  Most people refuse to face this even when presented with massive evidence.  This article is not intended to be a personal attack on Romney.  Actually, he's another of those whom we can thank for waking us up to what a great teacher the world is for us. I'll get to why in a minute.

Many people seem to have great concern over Romneys' religion. Where he goes to church means little compared to how consciously he lives his life, the small things that can be so telling. I knew a very smart woman years ago who told me that when she was dating a new guy, she could always get major insight into whether her date might be husband material by the way he treated the waiter the first time her date took her to dinner. She figured that, sooner or later, he would treat her as he did the waitperson.

We get similar insights from people into their character when we see them interacting with their children, store clerks and pets.

Many years ago, I had a friend who told me that, decades ago, in order to keep his job, he had to obey his boss' request to take several young puppies recently borne by the family dog down to a lake and drown them. As he told the story, a certain limit was put in the trust I would ever have with him. I knew that if I ever was blessed to have a dog or puppies to give away, he would not be on my list of potential recipients.

And this is certainly not intended to equate what my friend did with Romneys' mistake.

Let's say I was a father of a mature woman who was dating a very smooth-talking man. And let's say I discovered that he had a history that included a rape conviction. I would not be particularly encouraging of her getting cozier with him.

History matters.  We are being challenged now to wake up to its' lessons.

As a culture, we can act very stupidly about some things. We seem to put more emphasis on what a politician has said in the last week than we do on what they have actually done over the years.

A politician can side step sensitive questions, can have quick answers that push all of your right buttons, know just the right things to say. Whether that person is fit to run a country has little to do with how glib they are or how well they know how to hold their chin for a photo op. Show me how he treats his dog, respects the waitress, or responds to his wife when she is upset about something. I want to know if he has heart.

Whether he would lead our country with heart is what is important. It does not matter if he can come up with quick answers that satisfy multiple factions of his political party or not.

It does matter if he is willing to take our country into another senseless war. All but one of the leading Republican candidates for Americas' highest elected office want to impress us with how our country can bully the rest of the world.  That is just about as stupid as the bumper stickers that tell us, "My son can kick your honor students' butt."

How often and dramatically a political candidates' position on an issue changes matters. What he does when in a position of directing others matters, whether he is is talking with an employee or ordering food at a restaurant.

Collectively, we are ignorant enough still to make things that are generally unimportant important: "Does he say he likes dogs? I have to find out if he likes cats, too."

"What church does he say he goes to?"

"Did he look a little flustered? If so, he must be hiding something."

"I don't like the way he salutes the flag."

And all this is just a set of mirrors for us reflecting how we deal with ourselves and our world. We might talk a good game. We know how to deflect criticism. Others can be conveniently blamed for our shortcomings. When someone challenges something we say, we can "clarify" it by contradicting what we just said.

When looking at ourselves in the mirror, we can deflect things about ourselves, pretend that we do not see them.

Our willingness to accept as truth what our favorite politicians deceptively tell us is directly proportional to the extent to which we con our own selves.

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Footnote: Another mirror for us in seeing how we treat ourselves and our world: After recently attacking Mitt Romney for the dog incident, Newt Gingrich announced that he will be putting up a new website featuring his love for pets: "Newt Loves Pets," featuring pictures of cute animals alone and sitting on an adoring Newts' lap. Manipulation does not get more transparent than that.

Our choices of political favorites--at least the ones we tell our friends and family about---tend to be made for the most ignorant of reasons. We do it based on what will bring us the most acceptance from those we love, what will rock the boat the least, what will preserve the most valued relationships. And sometimes we want our choice to be for the one we think will win rather than the the one most suited to the office. And we revel at the opportunity to judge harshly the "other guy."

We still tend to tell people that we are voting for the same candidate that is being heralded by our favorite television and radio political show host: "I'm a ditto head. If that guy's good enough for Rush, he's good enough for me." That kind of thing makes you friends down at the corner bar, but if Rush is the only reason you are going to vote for that candidate, you are selling out yourself.

Just as the politicians political pundits play their games on us, we play a game of deception on our own selves.

So thinking about all this, I am provoked to wonder: How stupid and shallow can people be?  Do most people really want to wake up?

And maybe the real question we are challenged to ask of ourselves is this: "How stupid and shallow am I willing to pretend I am?"

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Footnote Two: Back in the sixties, when Mitt Romneys' father was running for the office of President of the United States, his candidacy came to a grinding halt when he said that he had been "brainwashed" by the military about what was going on in Vietnam, that he had been falsely led to believe that we had good reason to be fighting over there.

The fact is that much of our voting public had been brainwashed to believe the lies that started and prolonged that war. While some of the public would gradually come to admit to having been brainwashed, in the heat of political battle for our nations' highest office, we would not accept someone who could be vulnerable to being brainwashed. Just when he had built great momentum in his run for the Presidency, George Romneys' campaign crashed.

We all make mistakes.  And we don't like to fess up.  George Romney had the guts to admit that he'd been deceived.  The people of this country---with major support from our corrupt media---nailed him to a cross for it.

What else do we demand from our elected leaders that we, ourselves, will not muster?

The most powerful institutions in the ways of our world do not want us to trust ourselves.  Their game is a complete deception and domination.  Just like the game of the imaginary, egoic mind that we are being pushed let go.

Who do you trust?

What in yourself will you choose to trust? 

Ego and corrupt institutions are disolved in the exact same way.  We simply withdraw our attention and support from them.  They do not exist except as we feed them. No resistance necessary.  No fighting.  This is maybe the best kept secret of all time.

Click on your pause button and ponder that one, please.