Master of Deception

Tommy Siam represents the City of Florissant’s 9^th Ward on the City Council.  In his spare time he practices the art of deception.

Yesterday I was made aware that Councilman Siam has been leading a double life.  In addition to his public duties in the City of Florissant, Tommy Siam has also been pretending to be Keith English.  It seems Siam went out and purchased the domain KeithEnglishforMissouri.info, and was using it to misrepresent himself as English and then put forth false, misleading, and offensive things in order to hurt English, who is a political foe.  The site has been disabled. 

Upon seeing these claims I emailed Mr. Siam directly and asked him about them.  After a couple of exchanges back and forth he admitted that it was his site.  He then offered to transfer ownership of the domain to Mr. English at no charge, (as though anyone would want a fraudulent website once an election is over).  Mr. English lost his election, at least to some degree thanks to Mr. Siam’s deception.

I had to stop and absorb all of it for a while.

Here is someone who willfully and purposefully went out and bought that domain with the intent to deceive people, and to hurt someone.  Here is someone who, with forethought, chose to deliberately misrepresent himself to voters in order to fool them.  And then he actually did so for quite some time.

We all make mistakes and we all sin and do things we should not, but this just struck me as too planned, too intentional, and too deceptive for normal people to tolerate.  Would your gut not get tied up in a knot?  Would you not have trouble looking people in the eye?  Would your conscience not be screaming?

This is an act of arrogance.  How can a person deliberately deceive the voters in their own community, much less the rest of North County?  How can you let political jealousy and obsession (I have since learned that Tommy Siam was and is obsessed with Keith English) take you to the point where you stoop to this level?

I have been complaining just like many others of the huge amount of misinformation and falsehoods that we are all being bombarded with.  Fake news stories and made-up data are everywhere and people are sucking up lies like they were candy.  People are sick of it and it is doing damage to our society.

And here is one of the people making things up on purpose.  His name is Tommy Siam and he is the City Councilman for Florissant’s 9^th Ward.

In my email conversation with Mr. Siam it became apparent that does not realize he has done anything wrong.  He seemed confused, like he didn’t understand.  He went and bought a domain to deceive voters and he doesn’t get what the big deal is.  After all, he said he would give Keith the site, right?

I have had it.  This is what is wrong; right here.  This man is a perfect symbol of the disease that has taken hold of our society.  Where is the integrity?  Where is the respect for truth and honesty?  Where is your conscience and the feeling in the pit of your gut that lets you know when you have crossed the line?  Apparently those things have left Mr. Siam long ago.

I am not an attorney but because Keith English was a public official he will have little legal recourse against Mr. Siam for libel or slander.  Mr. Siam is already in office so he has nothing to lose there.  It makes sense that he would be pretty smug right now.

And yet…each of us who have raised children and taught them right from wrong understands what is required right now.  This is not rocket science.  If your child was caught lying about others and they hurt someone else you would insist that they take steps to fix what they had done.  And that would start with an apology.

I believe Mr. Siam needs to publicly apologize to Mr. English for impersonating him.  Tommy Siam needs to apologize to the voters of North County for deliberately misleading them.  And he owes all of us an apology for adding to the huge level of misinformation we are all experiencing.  As a reminder, an apology should include the reasons what you did was wrong and how it hurt others.

Tommy Siam and his wife Becky Sharma have been highly critical political foes of Keith English for quite some time, and they have often brutally expressed their opinions publicly.  Whatever we may think of this kind of public conflict it is not the same thing at all as misrepresenting yourself as being someone else to deceive voters.

I should note for clarity that these two men were not running against one another in any way.  I was not involved in either campaign and I could not tell you as I write this what political party either man is in today.  I have never met Mr. Siam and I am not an expert on what the issues are in Florissant right now.  I have watched Rep. English in the Missouri House and although I don’t always agree with him on issues I recognize the courage it took for him to take some principled stands in the past few years and I admire him for that. 

This is not about Tommy Siam or Keith English or Becky Sharma or Florissant.  This is about all of us.  Have we allowed our culture to degenerate to the point that we are completely numb to what is going on here?  Is there no longer any outrage at the misinformation and character destruction that we witness on a daily basis? 

Lots of people are feeling hurt right now.  We know we have to move forward.  We know we cannot hang onto all of the baggage we are carrying or we will never get anywhere.  Sometimes we just want to hear people say that they understand what we are saying.  We want people to see the wrong that has been done, and not to gloss it over.  We want an apology; even though we know an apology is nothing but words.

This is not about Money.  This is not about Laws.  This is not even about Politics.  This is about the way we treat each other as human beings.  We cannot allow our desire to win, or worse our desire to hurt someone else, to color our worldview so much that we lose sight of our own core principles.  We cannot allow the uneasy feeling in the pit of our stomach to go silent.