Fool Me Once-Shame On...

We have all been amused, from time to time, with our President's gaffs in public speaking, wordy non answers and bumbling around for answers to questions he was not informed of being asked about and had no time to think about. One of the classic missteps is. 'Fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again' -- George W. Bush. It was obvious the President could not get the line right and we ended up not knowing just exactly who was getting fooled and who should be ashamed. But at least we know you won't fool me again.

Let's take a different look at "fool me once...shame on me." Is it rather not more true "fool me once, shame on YOU"? Why do we have to tolerate those who go around fooling or deceiving people in the first place? People shouldn't have to wonder all the time if every last person that approaches them with something is trying to deceive them into buying something they don't want or believeing something that is not true.

The elderly get fooled a lot in our scam filled country. Repair men show up and squirt oil on the floor near the water heater to scare them into replacing it, or point out alledged dangers that they have created to fix. Honest and caring people are scammed every day out of their money by those who need them to go to the bank get their money and turn it over to the fooler, so they can double or triple it by noon. Sometimes they are asked to help "law enforcement" when, in fact, they are being scammed by the lawless.

Every week we get to hear from some fool in Nigeria who really thinks we're stupid enough, well some must be, to send them a few hundred so they can get millions out of the country into our bank accounts and share it with us. Sometimes the foolers pretend to be missionaries or God's coworkers who desperately need our help, but they are trying to fool us too.

People try to fool us everyday through the mail. "You have just won..." "You may already have won..." "Make thousands stuffing envelopes at home in your free time..." They are lying, which is what fooling is.

We get fooled and lied to a lot in our country. On the lower level of politics, we get fooled all the time, but much of this kind of fooling gets people killed. Of course the fooler is safe and none of what they cause comes near them. Nothing really seems to be as we are told, but how much they wish us to believe it is!

The President has had to change the reasons for going to war with Iraq several times because each time an earlier reason was given, we were being fooled. When we were being told "we are doing everything to prevent war," we were being fooled. When Colin Powell was at the UN promoting the case for war, he was fooling us. Evidently, someone was fooling him too. Sincerely fooled or deceptively fooled...I don't know for sure yet.

When some say all is well, we are being fooled. When we are told that something is THE reason for something else, we have a gut feeling, we are being fooled. In one moment, the hunt for Osama is the top priority, in the next, the President doesn't think about him much, and when he is challenged on the topic, he says Osama is a top priority. Fooled again. Time would fail us to illustrate all the fooling Presidents, Senators, Congressmen and Representatives inflict upon the sincere folks who think they have to trust them. We're learning quickly though these days and it is unsettling to the spirit of sincere folks to know that nothing is really as it appears to be and smoke and mirrors are the tools of way too many who hold our safety and security in their incapable hands.

"You're doing a heck of a job Brownie..." is what the President said to the totally unqualified head of FEMA after Katrina hit New Orleans. A few days later, "a heck of a job" turned into "a hell of an embarassment" and he quit a job, given to him by a President who no doubt told some crowd somewhere the man was totally qualified to head such a department. Fooled again.

I once almost got scammed at a gas station by a guy who knew how to fast change me out of thirty bucks. He was slick and the only way I knew what he was doing was that I had given him my only fifty. I told him what he was doing and he suddenly realized his mistake. I also had the pleasure of telling 7000 people a few minutes later in a sermon to watch out for the guy in the Gulf station on the island. Since the group was going to be there for a week, and that it was one of the few stations in the area, I suspect that the fooler cost his boss about a gabillion dollars in gasoline not sold to church attendees. What sweet joy!

We get fooled all the time in advertising and somehow we know it and don't care much. Things that are really good for us, really aren't. They are giving us cancer. Products that are really low priced really aren't. They end up costing us a fortune, don't work as advertised and don't last a month. Miracle cures don't cure, miracle diets don't help and when did you say I'd see hair growing again on my bald spot? All mine for a small fortune. One grow hair ad currently on the air tells me, "see results in as little as four months," and at the end of the ad, tells me "instantly grow new hair." Pick one boys, they aren't both true...you're foolin us.

And of course, I would be remiss not to at least remind us how often we are fooled by perhaps the greatest foolers of all... TV Evangelists, and by extension, many who never make it to the TV. Somehow we know that Money Bin, the white suited, slick haired guy who blows over crowds of people has a good thing going for himself and is fooling the faithful. No one is medically healed. No outside documentation of genuine healings is allowed and when a man on oxygen, tells the preacher he doesn't have to use it all the time, it's really not a miracle when the Fooler Healer removes the tube and declares a miracle. Many foolers are unaccountable to anyone but God and of course, God ain't sayin.

I once attended, out of curiousity, a famous healer's show, for that is what it was. He said he ran out of time toward the end of the evening, but that there were scores of people in the back who he had healed right out of their wheelchairs. I got up, walked backstage and found out the man was simply lying. There sat about twenty Sr. types in wheelchairs, disappointed that they were neither going to have anytime with the Liar, nor be healed, mostly of old age. They just sat there lined up waiting, I suppose to be taken back to nursing homes.

We watch these foolers tell people that "you feel better don't you?" and wonder why virtually no one says "Uh no, not really." They are told to lift legs, wave arms and do a jig, all of which prove they have been healed, but they and us are being fooled by the liar. I've seen these charlatans walk away from a person the moment they began to tell him that the feet or arms are not the problem. There is a special place in the hell of Karma for these foolers.

And finally, every week millions are fooled in their churches by, let's at least hope, the mostly sincere, yet uneducated and non critically thinking clergy. They get fooled about the fires of hell and the pleasures of heaven. They get fooled about the inerrancy of the Bible and the true history of their true church. They get fooled about the life of Jesus, how he was born, what he said or didn't say, meant or didn't mean. They get fooled on specific holidays as to the origins of those holidays and the alledged events that contradict on those holidays. They fool people about the day Jesus was born and about the day he died. Piously convicted but marginally informed I hope for most of them, but some know better.

So...Fool me once...shame on...um, YOU...yeah that's it. Fool me twice...shame on ME. Naw, I don't think so. Fool me once, why don't you foolers grow up and just stop it. Stop your lying and fooling and we won't have to give pause before we try to figure out who's the one that should be ashamed. YOU should be ashamed for being the fooler and leave us alone.

How do you stop a fooler? Well, it's kinda like the way you make a hormone...you don't pay her. Don't send the foolers your money. Don't give them your time. Don't vote twice for them and don't applaud for them when that niggly little twitch in your tummy tells you...I think he's fooling me.