Lies and liars

We all lie, to some degree. But not all lies are created equally.

My dad once said the worst kind of lie is when you lie to yourself.

We, collectively, the United States of America, are lying to ourselves on so many fronts, I don’t know where to begin.

The narrative goes something like this. We have the best system in the world. Despite obvious problems, all will be well if we just stay the course.

We’re awash in bad debt, but bad debt can be “cured”. It’s just a matter of creating more new debt to add to the old until we get out of this temporary slump. Keep pumping money. New growth will kick in and take care of things; we just need a bit more priming of the pump.

Well, I got news for you. We’ve been priming this goddamned pump going on six years and the real economy ain’t kicking in. We’re not even recovering new money dumped into the system, much less seeing gains on our investments.

Obama won the election on promises of change. Under the previous administration, we had seen wars fought on false pretenses, foisted upon the public by corrupt politicians and compliant lap-dogs in the press, including horrible acts of aggression and torture.

Rather than exposing these sins against humanity and the world at large, the Obama administration determined identifying the criminals and the crimes they committed a waste of time. We need to look forward, move on….

To more goddamned wars, based on lies foisted on the American public by corrupt politicians and compliant lap dogs in the press, including new and better horrible acts of aggression and torture….

We were promised a more transparent government.

And when one of our public servants tried to help with that cause, exposing unconstitutional, unwarranted spying on our own citizens, he, like others before him, but to a much more severe degree, has been declared an enemy of the public.

Fucking John Kerry had the gall to threaten pretty much every other country in the goddamned world if they offer asylum to the man.

Kerry’s latest shit-for-brains idea was to threaten to stop buying Venezuelan oil….

We’re getting real oil with fake money and he’s threatening them?

We’ve been told that domestic shale oil is going to save the day. I have a front row seat to that charade, living just a few miles away from the Eagle Ford fields. There is oil here. But input costs are so high and depletion rates so steep, I’m not sure we’re recovering the massive amounts of new money (or for that matter, the energy this money represents) being pumped into these fields.

It damn sure ain’t going to replace Venezuelan crude.

I enjoy advantages most farmers and ranchers don’t—land without a mortgage—the ability to irrigate in an area where most can’t.

We’ve been in and out of drought, mostly in, since 2006. We’ve consistently produced crops. And consistently have failed to turn a profit, when all costs are considered.

To be sure, I have made mistakes.

Like trying to grow non-genetically modified grains, which, under the current system, are not profitable or even marketable on any scale worth mentioning.

And I did waste a bunch of time squeezing milk from cows I can’t sell and making cheese I can’t sell and growing produce in a garden I can’t sell and shelling pecans I can’t sell.

Then there’s all those horses I failed to send to slaughter. Wait, that’s illegal too. Should have sold them to someone else I guess so they’d get stuck with my problem.

If I had only planted every square inch of my ground in Monsanto’s best and hung out at the local branch of the FSA to get every giveaway our benevolent government offers, things could have been better.

Hell, we might not have gotten audited by the IRS. Again.

Funny thing, the only receipts they requested so far are copies of non-genetically modified seed purchases.

I shit you not.

I’m sure you’ve heard that unemployment rates are down.

Why then do I have all these people calling me looking for work they wouldn’t even have considered a few years back? Begging for work is a more apt description.

Could it be that the new way we measure employment rates is a goddamned lie?

Keep telling yourself all is well; the stock market is higher than ever before. Ben Bernanke has saved the day.

Just so long as you remember, that too, is a goddam lie.