Wtf Wes...

Man, this was a rough episode for me. I don't know exactly how to sort it out. I feel like my respect level for Wes has gone down and it revealed a rather distasteful and ugly selfish side him. HT said this episode made her smile...I wish I could also say I'm smiling but I'm feeling more disgust than anything.

Wes..you let me down. What are you doing??

In general I can relate to Wes. He's a politician personality type, and I don't see that necessarily as a bad thing. Knowing how to navigate politics is crucial to navigating any non-close friend type social setting(workplace, sports teams, activity groups, family or in-laws). Needing politics is just a product of people having different needs and wants.

HOWEVER, the most most important element to any leader, or politician is the trust people have in their word. One’s ability to deliver. One’s ability to have ppl confide in them. One’s ability to be reliable. That’s why good politicians usually speak in soundbites...less is more. Less is less to get tripped up over, and less is less have to falsify and screw up, less is less that you need to wheedle and needle between parties to make everyone happy.

If people think your word is worthless, then you are worthless. But speak long enough and about enough topics, wheel and deal enough projects, interact with enough ppl and it becomes impossible to keep everything on the same page. President Obama promised many things in his campaign and he delivered on some, and turned an about face on others. It comes with the territory. Legend has it that President Washington never told a lie. Ironically...that seems like a big fat one to me itself, but I think there’s a world of difference between a well-intentioned liar(President Clinton...liar liar pants on fire as well as other “stuff”, but also world renown humanitarian that led the complex country to the only budget surplus in the last 20yrs) and an rotten liar(President Nixon). Lying is a bad buzz word, but it doesn’t have to be.

For instance, take the difference between lying and not telling the truth. Not telling the truth happens all the time. For example, if one were to say they were attending the party, but ended up missing it b/c something else came up, what is that? If your boss asked you the status of a particular uncertain issue, and you gave an incorrect response, what is that? If an analyst projected the quarterly earnings per share for a company, but the projections were off, what is that? If your friend told you something, and you passed the word along to a third party, and then your friend changed their mind, what is that? And in these examples it can actually cause harm and consternation when ppl take what is said at face value an act on it. It is possible to cause harm without trying to harm ppl. That is the rub.

Is there a some grey area, where the words that come out of our mouths do not equal the truth, but in that same breath that those very words also do not equal a lie? Maybe maybe not.

However...I think Wes crossed the line. I was willing to let the Danny-knife slide, but I think he’s crossing into the territory of untrustworthy and ruthless and shady after the way he treated Landon and CJ. The word they use on the challenge use is shifty and there’s going to be a picture of Wes next to that word in the next edition of Urban Dictionary dot com. He gave his word to Landon, and he broke it to save himself, and that's just plain wrong. No grey area there.

And now’s he’s playing Theresa and I’m losing respect for him.

Urgghh...I’m the biggest Wes supporter here but I don’t know what to say here. I identify with him, and I relate to him, but what if ppl start thinking I’m like Wes? Wes seems to be a good guy when the going is easy, but when push comes to shove, his ugly side comes out. Which is more real? Damnit Wes.