Letter to the Editor: Memory loss

By Sun Advocate

Editor:
Do you feel as though you’re living in the Twilight Zone – fuzzy flashbacks from the past; a brief glimmer of the present; grand illusions of the future?
Well, we finally entered that zone. It started in the recent past with a little lie, added to by another lie to cover that lie and thus the final lie that mushroomed us right into Iraq and I don’t mean the ‘mushroom cloud.’ The final lie soon may encompass the whole Middle East.
The zone doesn’t end with the resultant war. It now seems we are unable to keep our hands on important documents and data. Have you ever seen so many missing laptops, documents, data, reports, e-mail, identity identification that has disappeared during the past six years?
First, official military papers were lost or misplaced confirming the commander in chief’s enlistment in the Texas Air National Guard. After looking high and low the only person that knew he served was the person in question who vaguely remembers flying in an airplane a time or two. Nary a soul could verify his existence on base.
Next came the disappearance of a laptop from the Veterans Administration containing the personal data of thousands of veterans. It was later recovered but we cannot be assured the information was not compromised.
Shortly after that, Medicare had the same circumstance when millions of social security numbers were lost. Again, we had the assurance that all is well.
Continuing came the loss of e-mail from the office of the vice president and his chief of staff that conveniently could not be found during the trial.
Even documents necessary to National Security have been spirited out of the country. It appears that not an office in this administration has been immune to the pilfering of documents; whether it is through honest loss, incompetence or outright theft.
Even private corporations are experiencing the loss of millions of customers’ credit card information supposedly held in confidence yet placed on a laptop for anyone’s access.
It doesn’t end there for there are untold losses yet to be and untold losses we have not been informed about buried in a small paragraph hidden away in a classified document. Identity theft, credit theft, document theft, bank theft are waiting in line for each to be exposed at will.
Let’s not stop there. The biggest malady has yet to hit us. Loss of memory seems to be the latest infectious disease surrounding Washington. The ‘don’t remember,’ ‘can’t recall,’ ‘if my memory serves me’ crowd is on the increase. You remember they sit beside the ‘little white lie’ group.
We all have days when we forget to mail the letter on the front seat of the car that was supposed to go out two days ago; we have days we run out of something in our home; or we might forget to send our child to school with no lunch money. But, we remembered.
There lies the difference between them and us. It’s called memory.
Surely, a person that is elected to his or her position didn’t have memory loss when he or she campaigned. Surely that person didn’t display the loss of memory so prevalent in Washington today during his or her interview for that position. After all, they attended the best colleges and universities, received a degree or several degrees, as expected, for the position they currently occupy.
Must we accept lies and deceit? Honesty and integrity seem to be buried in the past, perhaps in their lost memories. Although our memories seem to come and go at will at times, the memories of our elected officials and those they appoint seem only to return in the wee hours of the morning when legislation is being written to benefit themselves or those who have deep pockets.
Need we remind them again and again, they work for us.