T R U T H
«You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time».
Abraham Lincoln
This is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
They lie to us, from the moment we come into this world. The government lies. Our parents lie, at the very least by proxy, since they’re convinced the liars speak the truth. Our professed teachers lie through their teeth, as they tell us they are teaching us about the world. The lie today is so profound, and reaches so far that even the truth is a lie.
The claim is that we live in the best possible world, that the politicians, the executives and the police, to mention a few want to do what’s best for us. There are some snags, of course, but all in all… we are now very close to the paradise they’ve always promised us.
While we’re toiling under the whip.
While we’re struggling to survive another day.
While we’re being suckered by another slick tongue.
Just a few thousand years more, and we’re there.
They tell us that the world is basically just, and if we just work hard and accept our lot in life, we will live long and prosper. They tell us with a straight face that the fact that some people are rich and powerful is how it’s supposed to be, that we’re all better off for it. The trickledown theory is an old, well-proven trick working every time so far. It’s obvious, apparently that freedom can exist in a place where uniformed bullies break the skulls and beat the living daylights out of thinking, independent individuals every time they attempt to show us what the world is truly like. We believe that sending a bunch of trained thugs and murderers out to kill children in the name of democracy is perfectly all right. We believe them because we want to, because the truth is too terrible to contemplate, and because we’re brainwashed from the cradle and so propagandized that we can’t discern left from right. We’re taught to sucker ourselves until we no longer know truth from lie, fact from fiction.
And when someone does manage to tell us this self-evident truth… somehow… usually under the gun or a bloody club, we condemn them in the strongest possible way, because the powerful members of the establishment tell us to do so.
This is the world of today, the world the human beings have created for themselves. Radical change is clearly needed. But when we speak up and act against the tyrants disguising themselves as benevolent leaders, those very tyrants and their eager servants tell us that we are terrorists, criminals, murderers and thieves. And most people believe them. Yeah, even we believe them. There are few of us, after all, and the others are many. The majority is always right… right?
And the majority usually stays silent today. They are being good sheep, and that’s all that’s required of them.
This is the world today. Be welcome to it, because you have created it. You keep it going with our silence, your inactivity and your condemnations of the few freedom fighters there are.
The slick tyrants may on occasion even lie to us by telling us the truth, lie by misdirection, and we are fooled by the smallest of mirrors.
T R U T H
Looking around
Wherever I look
Bile rises in my throat
I want to throw up
But I can’t
Bile sticks in my throat
I can’t get rid of it
No matter how hard I try
Stink all over
Wherever I go
I’m squeezing my nostrils shut
Doesn’t help
Truth is crushed
Wherever I look
I open my eyes wide
I see
I see the truth we all know
We and the planet are one
How many times
have the truth
Been crushed
How many times
Have I cried
Truth crushed to earth
Shall rise again
Amos Keppler 1993
This is an expanded version of the post first written and published in 2005