It didn’t use to be this way

by Mike Meyer

It’s time to check the winds of change. We have very large and growing disconnects between the majority of Americans, the Trump following minority and the people who do the talking. This has become more obvious and more pressing as conditions worsen.

With officials now allowed to lie blatantly and constantly with an owned media both leading and echoing those lies, a significant segment of the population has crossed the line into delusion. Unfortunately the definition of a lie has been eroding for years in the American mind. But no one makes that connection.

We’ve lived for several generations with the idea that it’s ok for our TVs to shout “New and Improved” and to strongly suggest that life can only get better if you buy more. Everyone laughs at the lies, known for years, as ‘puffery’. But this has resulted in a major erosion of the concept of truth.

Unfortunately this is not limited to advertising and laundry detergent. Politicians are generally understood to be untrustworthy and constant liars. Yet we allow them to tell us what it is that we want and, more importantly, what we don’t want. Just as we buy the products that we are told lies about and are upset when the lies prove to be, well, lies. We are often more surprised when some claim proves to be true.

This has penetrated much deeper into our public life than politics and advertising. Most people never notice this although periodically, in the back pages of the newspaper, an announcement will be made on the computation of unemployment numbers. The adjusted numbers, somehow are always lower than the previous numbers. Why is that?

One variable for this are those actively looking for work. If you give up in frustration, within a short time, you will cease to be considered unemployed. That makes the numbers look better. If you search you will find an argument for not including those as unemployed. Do they consider their status to have changed? Probably not but they no longer need to be counted. If you look you can find the actual numbers of the population without a job. We know there is a larger number of people working but unable to get a living wage. These numbers are simply ignored. The unemployment numbers look good! Is this anything other than a self serving lie?

The GDP continues to climb. The market always goes up and down turns are always temporary. What the hell is the GDP and is it relevant to me? The answer is, probably not unless you are a corporate owner, investor, or are a member of a large, increasingly rare, retirement group with funds invested. So why should policies be made on the basis of increases in GDP? Why should the majority of the population be happy and reassured that GDP has increased when the results of that, now, give them little or nothing?

This is a major contradiction. We have known for thirty years the implications of human caused climate change. We now know that we have only a few years during which we could affect changes that could reduce the disasters. We know in great detail how the destruction of our climate is a result of the over production of goods and related services. So the rise of GDP in the United States, one of the planet’s greatest polluters, increases those disasters. Yet this is presented as ‘good’. That is a lie.

An increase in GDP, as it is now calculated, is bad for all of us and all other life on this planet. We know this. It is proven and understood. Yet all of our national policies and actions are designed to increase this strictly for the gain of a very tiny class of very wealthy people and to the detriment of everyone else. This tiny class is allowed to stand in or replace all of us. Isn’t that replacement a lie?

There are many better ways to measure the well being of a society or nation. There are also very important measures that contribute to current and future well being. The rate of carbon in the atmosphere creating drastic climate changes is very important. Fairness in the distribution of assets and wealth is very important and directly affects everyone’s well being. The health status of every person in the country directly affects the well being of the nation and the reduction of crime among many other effects. But that’s not important so it is not considered.

In fact the leadership of both political parties tell us we don’t want any of these things that we want. We really want the super wealthy to have more. I think that is a lie.

Depending on which surveys you check somewhere between 70–80% of Americans want Medicare for all as single payer, national healthcare. This has been true for years. Please name all the politicians who have worked to deliver that. In fact even the mainstream Democrats somehow say, no, people don’t want that or, no, you can’t have that even though most countries have the equivalent. It would reduce the flow of wealth to the elite. That is not allowed.

These are constant lies that we have and continue to live with. Is there any wonder that the placement of an incompetent and mentally disturbed criminal who lies constantly in the highest position in the country is somehow accepted? Trump’s mental incapacity and ignorance are stunning but certainly just a bit more than what we consider normal. The fact that a percentage of the population decides to believe all the lies should not be a surprise. They have been raised on lies

The surprise, if you believe the talkers who are supposed to tell us what we think, is that some of these young politicians who are not white and male, are saying silly things that are different. People are being told that these new members of Congress are saying things that are not right. They are challenging old lies. Those lies are all that are left of us.

In the land of lies truth is criminal. If lies are accepted as real, truth must be a lie. Then truth is dangerous and must be denounced. That is reality and not a lie.

How do we fix this? Is it even fixable? We understand, now, that reality as we see it is built of assumptions and interpretations of things we do not see or instinctively understand. We work to understand those things scientifically and that is the best that we can do. Does that leave us lost in a relative world where lies repeated often enough are indistinguishable from truth?

No. Despite decades of people making claims that what we can come to understand in the eternal quest for knowledge isn’t what they want, we are now beginning to see that the relative nature of the quantum universe allows us to be the arbiters of truth and not irrelevant specs in a sea of galaxies. The universe, in some mythic form, does not present us with truth. It presents us with an infinite array of potential reactions to actions. We cause those potentials to become actual by observation and the intent to know.

A stunning realization is that we then must be responsible for the reality that we help create. Liars always lie to avoid reality of actions they take. But reality is our own and the reality that we inhabit together on this planet or wherever we go in the future. If we are the actor who causes the collapse of the waves of potential, it is our responsibility and lying threatens the reality that we assist in creating. No one else is to blame.

This looks as if it is our time to mature and accept the responsibilities of a sentient species in a quantum universe. Those who continue to lie and to accept provably false statements are not responsible and must be protected until they can accept maturity.

In the world we are entering we are the only source of truth. That is a very big responsibility. Those who are unable to take this responsibility must be protected from themselves for the sake of our planet and our universe. I don’t know how else to do this.