We have become a society--not just politically but socially--that will be characterized in the future as insincere. In every walk of life, we lie. We lie about why we go to war, why we want to change the medical system, the purpose of taxes, the reasons for ethanol fuel, why we are supporting GM, why we did not support Lehman Brothers, why we have no charter schools, why some students do badly regardless. And who knows what global temperatures mean now? Or the acid in the ocean? The way we are going we will outlaw mathematics. And we lie to ourselves: the students with the lowest scores on achievement tests have the highest self esteem, political correctness supplants comity, torturing three murderers on an island is a terrible break with our history of love towards all, even in combat.
And we expect insincerity. No military guy can answer straight. Nor does it matter. Obama says he won't pursue the torture question and the next day he says he will. No one blinks. The guy who audited the S&L disaster in the 80's was interviewed in a hearing recently and was asked to estimate the amount of fraud in each government contract and he said "7% off the top and then whatever trickles down at each level." A culture that is completely crippled by lies. It is symbolically fitting that the greatest economic meltdown in history occurs because "no one trusts each other".
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