A friend of mine explained the way of things to me in 1998 - that reality is not what's important, but rather people's perception of reality.
Kudos to Grist for bringing the Truthiness of the AmeriCone Dream ice cream flavor to my attention. And kudos to HornDozer for the following piece on truthiness and history since the 1970s. It is my pleasure to introduce him by way of this piece. He's a retired history teacher, and one who stays up on current events. I enjoy discussions with him from time to time about our current events. His piece follows.
Of course it is our need for drugs that pays for all the drug lord operations. And our need of cheap dependable labor that causes the flood of illegals. If we really want to stop both drug related violence and the flow northward of illegal aliens, then we stop buying Mexican drugs and hiring Mexican illegals.
Although I despise the lawlessness of the whole border scene, and the Mexican government and the drug cartel, I equally despise the illegal hirers and drug users. (And I might add the lawlessness of Enron, Tom Delay and all the other corrupt bigwigs in today's America including the Bush Administration. and its Neocon thugs/idiots.)
But as to Mexico and our border: before I would move to a position of alarm concerning the dangerous and dastardly things going on currently, I would have to see stats to help me understand that it is worse than the last decade--or even century. Is it worse than the Mexican Revolution? Or the murder 10 years ago of Luis Donaldo Colosio, the leading presidential candidate in Tijuana. Or the drug wars that killed no one knows how many in Juarez 15 years ago? Etc etc.
What I am thankful for is that they want to kill each other--and not me nor other turistas. That way I can still travel/live down there in relative safety. Granted I am more secure in my hometown than in Nuevo Laredo. But I have no desire to go to NL. And I refuse to live my life in fear of being killed by situations in which I am so statistically secure. (I don't have the figures, but I would wager that the number of gringos killed in Mexico by drug lords or their violence is minimal.) Find me statistics. I don't want to deal with "truthiness."
Read this whole article on truthiness. It is my new favorite word. It so definitively describes the way Republicans have operated in this country since before the Reagan Administration and the Republican Party conspiracy with the retard, reactionary, fundamentalist Christian right. The Republican Party at that time set up "think tanks" to arrive at truthinesses that "prove" that what the Retard Right fears, and feels in their gut is the absolute truth, and that they (the Republicans) are the ones to set up programs to allay the fears and strive for the things that the RRs believe "in their gut" to be true.
Unfortunately, a whole lot of what they feel or fear in their gut is not the truth. Just truthiness.
And this is what we have spent our tax dollars on since the Reagan Administration. That and on making the Republicans richest patrons more wealthy.
That is my History 101 since the late 1970s--with the exception of the Clinton Administration when we paid off the debt, improved governmental service to citizens and avoided overwhelming wars.
Of course my History 101 was predicted to a great extent by George Orwell in 1984.
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