We are a real funny and amazing bunch of folks here in America. The topic of interest in the news today is the “truth.” This is a very interesting subject, because the truth in our society is very subjective. Parents teach their children to be truthful in all their dealings at a very early age, great, but as the child grows, those lessons of being truthful are slowly eroded by what they witness, in some cases, from their parents, from the news on TV, from our political leaders, to people who have taken oaths to be truthful in carrying out their jobs.
Truth to many of those “oath takers” is an instrument to be stretched, painted different colors, subjected to scrutiny, and twisted (not easy work) in an effort to convince others to trust them, and sorrowfully, it usually works.
The TV news broadcasters, for example, all say that their view is the true view, and they will rant and rave until they hope they have convinced you of it. You can usually tell they don’t really believe it themselves just because of the volume of the ranting and the different traffic light colors that the choreographer has blinking in the background. It was once an industry of trust, but in most cases no longer, and it seems the more the truth is bent and twisted the more popular the show is. Are we really that stupid? Yes we are!
So the truth is supposed to be what we are all after, right? Well, most of the population doesn’t really care they are burdened with just surviving every day, after the effects of our “trusted” bankers and “trusted” brokers on Wall Street who have, through their insatiable greed, brought millions of us into despair. But that’s okay because our “trusted” government is refilling those “trusted” banker’s, and “trusted” broker’s piggy banks again so they can go on their “trusted” unregulated way. Not one of these “trusted” unscrupulous souls have gone to jail for bringing the economy down to its knees, not one.
The three main U.S. car manufacturers have been producing inferior cars for years, (so says Consumer Reports), which brought them to the brink of collapse with the possible loss of thousands of jobs, mostly because their “trusted” CEOs didn’t seem to care. They didn’t care because they were the biggest welfare recipients of our trusted government.
Many of these manufacturers in the early days were also the biggest lobbyists against public mass transit, and probably still are. Why is it that in Europe over 60 percent of cars on the road are diesel powered, a cheaper fuel to refine, more efficient combustion and consequently better, almost 1.5 times better mileage, with less impact on the environment. Could that have anything to do with our trusted oil companies, or is it that our governments again are leading us astray, rather than being more efficient and supporting the consumer they were all elected to do. Governments would rather collect more fuel taxes at our expense.
I could also get into the “trusted” insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Everyone knows their track records, but we go on our ways shaking our heads without an utterance of protest. I picked up a mouth ulcer cream from overseas for $6 over the counter, but found the same exact stuff here for $40 requiring a prescription. Why? Is it because we don’t care about the truth? No, it’s that we expect some honesty, integrity, respect, and decency in all our dealings.
We are still looking for the truth. Sometimes it is bantered around like an old friendly sock, other times it raises its head in the most illustrious ways. Well, when it happens and the truth pokes its head out, it puts the fear of God into governments. And recently some bloke from down under had the audacity to print some truths about them. WOWEE, look what happened. Everybody went bananas, hey it’s only the truth. Yeah, but we haven’t seen it for so long. We better beat it back into the lies we are all more comfortable with. Sadly, truth has no dominion here. Rick Rick Bodlaender, Kirkland
