You're not winning till the other side is screaming.

Sometimes I am amazed at the number of conflicts going on around our issue here. It reminds me of what an ancient battle must have been like once two large armies were fully engaged and few soldiers could even hear the cry of their commanders, if their commanders were still standing.

Such is our lot. This conflict is so diverse and so expansive that we have to fight on so many different fronts. It reminds me of ancient battle peaking.

But my story is about lies and what they mean in politics.

I've had a saying for some time now I believe is an original. It goes like this. "In politics you can tell which person is telling the truth because that person will have six others pointing at them screaming liar!"

The truth has a power in politics. It is where the subjective and the absolute collide. The subjective mind may think that by telling itself and all others the spot on the skin is just a mole. But the absolute truth that it is a cancer will eventually overcome the subjective impressions given.

Back in the late 1990's, one of my key mentors was a very accomplished State Representative and Businessman named Linwood Mercer. Linwood passed away back in 2003 and I miss him very much as he was one of the few people in the world I could get good advice on almost any topic from.

Linwood was a political mastermind and a business pro. I could tell you many of the things he did and accomplished, but that would take me off of the point.

The point I want to make is that around 1997 I called Linwood and said "Linwood, my enemies on the local City Council and their faction are going around spreading some of the most outrageous lies about me that I have ever heard. I just can't believe it, nothing like this has ever happened to me before and the things they are saying are just not true!"

I was very distraught when this happened on such a scale. All over town this groups of ultra liberal women Democrats were claiming that I was the political puppet of some local multimillionaire developer they hated and that was just the beginning of the stories.

Linwood laughed when I told him how amazed and upset I was about this. He chuckled for a bit and I could hear the sound of his ice cubes chiming against the glass of his single malt scotch in his hand.

He said look, these people would not be lying about you and not expending so much energy trying to defame you if you were not succeeding in what you are doing.

The next time you hear about a lie they are attempting to spread about you, take it as a sign of your growing political prowess. After all, powerful people and their supporters do not mobilize against an individual unless they feel sincerely threatened by what you are doing and accomplishing.

These words of wisdom gave me a great deal of insight and good deal of peace of mind.

In fact, I learned later that any established political status quo will not go down or be removed without a lot of terrible screaming and gnashing of teeth. In short, if your opposition is not screaming their heads off and doing strange things and using desperate tactics, then you are not doing well enough to win!

So when I look around some days and see all the political mud, blood, and guts being slung around my way I just smile and think back to what old Linwood had to say.

When your enemies try to drag you down, defame you, and lie to others about you, it is because you are winning.

W