You were lied to, boldly and baldly. Deal with it.

I am well aware that every now and then, I come off as extremely preachy, and probably pushy. Lo siento.

It’s a byproduct of having too many opinions and not having enough time/energy to spout them all, so I’m afraid that I have used the campus of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to vent my frustrations with society, and for that I deeply, sincerely and from the bottom of my soul apologize.

Did you notice what I just did there? While I do at least try to come off as more helpful than mean, I have never apologized for anything I have had to say, and it’s because if I think it is important enough to expend the energy it takes to type it all out, it’s worth it. What I just did was to make a somewhat sincere statement and then proceeded to drown it in an acid bath of lies and half-truths. I am hoping that by doing so, it will enable you to better see when exactly you are being lied to in your everyday life.

Maybe your parents just fed you some line about “not having enough money” to buy you that new Corvette this spring. Did they wink? People usually have a way of telling when they lie. Keep an eye out.

As a society we are constantly exposed to lies, and it is pretty depressing that everyone is so used to them that they have trouble identifying them when they are winking a person in the face. All through history, people have told us to tell the truth, honesty is the best policy, and we all had to suffer through that whole speech about Washington not being able to lie after chopping down his dad’s cherry tree (for the record, there was no cherry tree. Take a moment, savor the irony).

I personally agree, and if nothing else I respect this generation for being much, much more blunt than any previous one. We don’t like being lied to, and therefore we don’t like to do the lying either. As individuals, yes, we lie through our teeth every chance we get, but as a society, I’d say we have a pretty low tolerance for bull… well, you know.

The problem is, as a certain dictator once observed, if you lie long and hard enough, eventually it’ll be accepted as fact, which is why people are still telling that stupid cherry tree story. That is exactly how we got into this whole Iraq quagmire (you were lied to, boldy and baldly, so deal with it), and it’s still getting us into trouble.

The main problem is with our history, which is constantly being rewritten for the sake of telling a good story. Only the grisly details that aren’t easily covered up are the ones that we are given in their totality, although I’m sure that as time goes on history will say that the American Indian genocide was really just them migrating into the ocean or some other stupid thing.

A good way to get around these lies is to try to have a sense of humor about what’s happened, and believe me, a lot of people desperately need to get one. You can’t combat bad history by just covering it up, all it does is cause more confusion and convince the people who have read both “1984” and “Lies My Teacher Told Me” become more convinced that we are headed towards a very bad end.

The whole point is, you’re better off questioning every little thing you are told, especially by over-opinionated columnists. We have more access to information than we would have at any other time in history, and instead of milking it for everything it’s worth, we’re still accepting the same old crap. Come on people, get on the trolley already and let’s stop all of this “America Rah Rah Rah!” stuff.

Truth is, your parents probably didn’t wait ‘til marriage either, Christopher Columbus was a genocidal maniac, and you cannot catch anything from not putting something on the toilet seat before you sit down (it has been scientifically tested folks). Everyone has a way to tell when they lie, we need to become more sensitive to them so that we don’t keep falling for the same old stories.

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