If you haven't noticed yet…life seems to flow in cycles. If you are aware of this you may just catch some of the messages being sent your way like a barrage of artillery in the middle of a war.

 

Or…as I like to say…"Lord, hit me on the head with a 2x4 if you really need me to hear something." Of course, that is not the way I operate mostly in my relationship with God because most of our communication is rather quiet and unassuming.

 

However…there are those times…these past two days have been one of those times where a thought or concept seems to make itself visible multiple times in a row. I have been confronted with three specific instances where a communique was only partially true with the (intended or not) results being a mis-direction of the facts. When I took just a moment to think about this topic, dozens more examples flooded into my mind as well over just the past couple of weeks.

I am going to categorize these mis-direction strategies into three categories…those intentionally trying to cover the truth through deception, those unknowingly communicating partial truths and those purposely not sharing the whole truth for the good of the listener.

 

Examples of all three of these ways can be found in our government. Politicians are masters of mis-direction. In times of war, mis-direction can be used to intentionally mis-inform the enemy and/or to protect the troops in battle. Our wartime commanders have a responsibility to protect those under their charge. They do not have a responsibility to share all of the facts with the general public.

 

However, this same strategy can also be used to intentionally deceive the very people who are holding you accountable for your actions. In this case…politicians (in wartime or not) often tell partial truths to deflect the hearers to focus on something only partially related.

 

I have heard many politicians interviewed and they all seem to do this to some degree or another. It seems to go with the territory. Wouldn't it be nice to have someone just "ANSWER THE QUESTION AS IT IS ASKED…PLEASE!"

 

Sorry…got a little uppity there for a second.

For instance…when President Obama has been asked about the people's support or lack of support for the Health Care Reform bill recently passed…he answers along the lines of "I think people support that we have their best interests at heart" (not a direct quote but close). Whether people actually believe in someone's sincerity is a non-issue in relation to whether or not they actually support a specific issue or not.

 

President Obama is a master at this tactic of deflecting the issue to something that sounds similar but is in fact quite dissimilar.

 

Our politicians also routinely take part in the activity of sharing partial truths out of ignorance. We have seen many great examples of this in this past year. Anytime a legislative bill is thousands of pages we know that most of these people have not read what they are voting on. Yet, they answer specific questions regarding these bills…often with misleading answers that they think are correct because they heard it somewhere else.

 

Anyhow…here are the three examples from these past two days:

 

Yesterday I received this email:

 

This is a perfect example why I refrain from watching the news on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN or NSNBC. Today (20 August 2009) on a segment of the "Glen Beck Show" on FCN (Fox Cable News) was the following:

"Today even though President Obama is against off shore drilling for oil for this country. He signed an executive order to loan 2 Billion of our taxpayers dollars to a Brazilian Oil Exploration Company (which is the 8th largest company in the entire world) to drill for oil off the coast of Brazil. The oil that comes from this operation is for the sole purpose and use of China and not the USA. The Chinese government is under contract to purchase all the oil that this oil field will produce, which is hundreds of millions of barrels of oil". We have absolutely no gain from this transaction whatsoever.

Wait it gets more interesting. Guess who is the largest individual stockholder of this Brazilian Oil Company and who would benefit most from this? It is American Billionaire, George Soros, Liberal businessman who is a radical left wing supporter, finances MoveOn.org as well as other liberal programs and was President Obama's largest and most generous supporter during his campaign. If you are able to connect the dots and follow the money, you are probably as upset as I am. Not a word of this transaction was on any of the other news networks.

 

Here is some of the answer I sent this person (to her credit she was not advocating it at all…in fact she said in the beginning that she had not checked it out yet. She was only sending it to and my son I believe so that we could help check into it)(I am showing you my answer in raw form…so it would generally be edited to show to the public in general):

 

Hey I did some research on the Barak Obama, Brazilian connection. It looks like the email was written falsely. Here's what happened…A guest host filling in for Glenn Beck covered an editorial in the Wall Street Journal talking about the Obama administration promising $2 Billion to Petrobras (a state owned oil company) for oil exploration. There never was an executive order talked about on the program or was one ever given by Obama. The government run Exim (Export/Import) bank made a promise to the company to loan the oil company the money to be able to buy goods and services from America. It was a committee of 3 Republicans and 2 Democrats who made this promise just a week or so before the newly Obama appointed director came into office. George Soros indeed owns a great deal of stock in the company and the Chinese do have a stake in the company as well.

 

The story is actually very interesting because some so-called "watchdog" groups debunked the email and called it mostly false. Whereas the only patently false part was the executive order. The rest of the email seems to be a mixture of partial truths. It is actually hard to decipher how much is really true and how much is not. Fred Hochberg, the Obama appointed director of the Exim bank, has made it a priority to do this deal with Petrobras. George Soros reportedly sold a great deal of controlling stock just before this decision a year ago. The liberal media reported this as proof that there is no connection between the decision to lend the money and Soros. What they did not report is that Soros, although he sold a bunch of controlling stock, went and bought another type of non- voting stock from Petrobras which was performing much, much better. So…in the end the Soros connection actually was stronger rather than weaker. He would stand to gain financially much much more because of his movement in Petrobras stocks even though he would have less actual control over the company. One of his spokesmen said that he never had any control and didn't expect to be a controlling factor ever in the state run oil company anyhow.

 

So…although the media reported that part of the email false…it was actually true.

 

The Chinese connection was a $10 Billion loan to Petrobras…so the company was certainly beholden to the Chinese and the $2 Billion loan from the Exim bank would have helped further that connection even though the $2 Billion itself would be going to American businesses…except there was one interesting part about the language in the initial pledge of money…the words "encourage" and "may" were used. These words seemed to almost give the option for Petrobras to choose another route for the money. Now the Exim bank has a pretty good history so I am fairly confident that if the loan ever occurred that the language would be clear.

Another part about this story is that I could not find anywhere any information on what happens if Petrobras defaulted. Since it is a state owned company, and states are notorious for defaulting on their debts to the US…who comes up with the $2 Billion then. Does this money actually then come from us to cover the bill?

 

 

As I researched this I was amazed at the mis-information on all sides of the equation. I think some of it must have been on purpose. Whoever started the "executive order" language must have been trying to mis-direct the truth for a desired end. Also…there was a statement at the end of the email that said we do not see any benefit from this at all. This is a false statement as well because some Americans will see benefit from this transaction.

 

The so-called "watchdog" groups must do better investigation than appears or else I wouldn't really trust anything from them. So…either they are incompetent or falsely mis-leading…especially on the George Soros connection. Either way it is a problem. Here is a link to the Snopes.com article if you wish to see it… http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/braziloil.asp

 

The Wall Street Journal editorial was not very clear on the subject either…but at least it was an editorial and not proclaimed to be news.

 

Anyhow…the art of mis-direction is used from every side about almost every issue covered. We have an enormous amount of information at our finger tips…but at what cost? All of the information we have still does not take the place of good old-fashioned research.

 

Here is #2:

 

This one involves me. Yesterday I was asked a direct question about my personal experience in a certain matter that depending upon how I answered would directly affect me and one of my children. Rather than answer the question directly, I chose to deflect and partially answer the question.

 

My reasoning for this was that the direct answer would have given a perception that is false. My deflected answer actually is more truthful in the complexity of the issue. So…whereas someone was trying to simplify an issue and wanted an answer on the simplified issue…my direct and "honest" answer would have given a false impression. The deflected answer gave a true impression.

However, I started thinking about my answer afterwards and wondered if I should have simply stated the simple truth and let the chips fall where they may. I came to the conclusion that this would have been unwise because our ultimate objective is to get to the truth in the end. If someone dismisses something in their own mind before the truth is allowed to be shared, then the truth is not served.

 

I am not condoning this fashion of answering in any way…but it certainly caused me to question myself in a healthy manner. It also caused me to look at even how our politicians answer questions. I still will have a healthy skepticism…but I need to constantly be vigilant in finding the "truth" out for myself.

 

I do not believe that the ends justify the means in any way because most of the time people get hurt with this mentality. But, there is a balance in life with communicating. Do we want the truth to be communicated? Or, is our only goal to be "rawly" honest every time we speak?

 

That call will have to be your own.

 

Quickly…another form of this concept is when you are driving and come upon a light that turns yellow at just the wrong time. You are too close to slow down safely and you are too far away to "not break the law."

 

What do you do? The simple minded person stops at all costs because that is the law. The person who is looking at the bigger picture knows that in general the safer thing to do is to speed up and go through the intersection…even if that means you may hit the red light as you travel through the tail end of the intersection. Technically you have broken the law…but for safety reasons…it is typically the better choice.

 

Here is #3…

 

I was asked to look into a health company by a close friend and business partner. I will not mention the company because I don't want to hurt my friend and his/her business.

 

The bottom line is I am still open to the opportunity…but I had to pause with caution because of some of the information I saw on the company's own website.

 

The company had some testing done (for a fee) from a very well known medical facility in the country. In the beginning of marketing, the company used this connection as an endorsement from the facility.

 

It turns out the facility had to issue a statement saying the complete opposite. It did not endorse the product at all and that the tests performed were too specific to come to any real conclusions as to the efficacy of the product.

 

To the company's credit…they changed the language of the affiliation but they still use the two studies done to draw conclusions that can't realistically be drawn. I read the studies and they don't concur with the conclusions drawn.

 

Now…to be fair to the company…the product may have helped many people improved their sense of well being and perhaps even actually helped their health. However, the company uses mis-direction purposely to cover the fact that they neither have many outside endorsements nor do they have any real science to back up their claims.

 

I am not hear to prop up the scientific methods of study at all because I believe they have some very inherent flaws…but if you are going to contend that science backs up your claims…I would think you would want some actual studies to do so in such a way as to actually be relevant to people.

 

Anyhow…once again…I have gone on very long…but this topic is of great interest to me. As you can see…I really have no preconceived notions as to how to categorize this form of communication. It is neither good nor bad because in different scenarios it could be one or the other.

 

However, I will say this…if your mis-direction is to protect others and or part of a way to communicate a more complete truth…then perhaps it is warranted much of the time. If your mis-direction is intended to deceive for your own personal gain…or simply because of sheer ignorance, maybe you should rethink your own character.

 

I would sure love to hear some of your thoughts on this subject…