Our legalistic tradition requires the witness on the stand to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" as a way of eliminating all the possibilities of falsehood.
Political Correctness forbids us from speaking our minds for fear that we may either offend someone or that we will end up losing something ourselves in the shoutdown resulting from our true feelings.
Politicians and their staffs have become so skilled at shading the truth that we now have a new term -- "Spin" -- to describe what we all know; the truth is in there but it is either not the whole truth or maybe not nothing but the truth or perhaps both.
Somehow, "spin" has become acceptable -- not just for the political class, but also for the rest of us. And, we are doing that with our children: no child ever loses; everyone gets a medal or a trophy, every graduate excelled at something.
We even tried that with housing -- everyone should have a house, riiight? This is a great country and everyone deserves to own a house. Somehow, we failed to realize that not everyone in our society can afford all that goes with a house -- like a mortgage and taxes; we failed or did not want to accept ... the truth.
I did not set out to have this blog be full of political commentary, so please do not, dear Reader, take this as such, but aren't the politicians once again, failing to accept the truth about "the stimulus?" When all the stimulus money is spent, won't people get laid off again? We were paying for them to be employed, but now there are no more funds to supplement the payroll. The "shovel-ready" projects are all half-done, but the stimulus money runs out. It's over.
The truth.
If you stimulate my heart to keep it beating and then the battery causing the stimulus runs out of power, what happens? The heart stops. Truth.
We need to get back to a basic honesty with ourselves and our society. Legalism, Rationality, Enlightened Thinking, One Worldism, Spin -- all ignore the fact about human beings:
WE ARE FLAWED.
I want to be better, I want to do better, I strive to make the world today a better place than it was yesterday. But, calling our foibles something other than the truth of what they are, may make us feel better, but we are deluding ourselves and being deluded willfully and knowingly by others. Feeling better? Is that what all this illusion is about?
Spinning the truth to make it fit an agenda or to avoid full disclosure is deception, sleight of hand. Doing so may make the spinner feel better or feel clever, but in small ways or large ways, it harms those being deceived.
We should get back to the truth -- sooner, rather than later.
How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four; calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
~ Abraham Lincoln
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