The Primacy of Truth

In this political season when everything seems to be spin one ought to occasionally step back and ask the question: Just What Is Going On Here?
The answer is usually not very encouraging. There is a great deal of posturing going on. There is quite a lot of misinformation masquerading as analysis. The word experience has been getting a lot of play without a great deal of perspective or clarity. Experience in what, doing what, with what skills, with what demonstrable outcome? Is being a community organizer comparable to being a small town major or being a senator (State or Federal) comparable to executive experience where decision making is the order of business and not simply casting a vote?
And finally, what about TRUTH? It seems to me that truth, the correspondence of what one says with reality, is getting lost in the hurley-burly scuffle of mean-minded hurling of charges back and forth across the political fences usually without the trappings of real information or content, simply labeling the opposition. Both sides do it of course, but in the heat it generates the underlying realities are lost.
There are real differences between both the parties and the candidates. They are differences of principle, differences of policy, and differences of values and character. They are deep differences. We have a widening chasm in the public forum. It is a chasm created by the embrace of different principles, different "factoids" and a growing dismissal of truth, racing instead to embrace fashions, fads, and fallacies. The cost to the nation is incalculable. The long term cost may be our way of life.