A Truth Test You Will Fail, Or: I Killed Your Kid And Laughed, HAHAHA!

Off that bitch!

It's the middle of the day and my buddy and I spot Brandon all alone in a grassy field. As the rest of our gang stands watch, we take our guns out and shoot that fifteen-year-old bastard down! We get closer and it seems he's still alive. We put two more fatal shots in him to seal the deal. Everyone stands around happy as shit. Kid got what was coming to him.

Not that we knew his name or anything about him.

His father came over and started wailing and shit but we didn't let that get us down. I went over and grabbed his head, moving Brandon's jaw up and down like he was talking, making him say stupid shit. Damn, that was funny! Next we cut off his clothes and took his picture (Bet his overly sensitive, touchy-feely liberal father bitches about that too!) Then I cut off his pinky to keep as my trophy.

I carry that pinky with me everywhere! It's my prized possession!

I ask you: think you are you outraged by this? Bet I can change your mind.

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I've always been interested in psychology. I like psychological films such as "Midnight Cowboy" and "Being There" as they seek to close the cognitive gap that exists in everyone's mind. This can be related to the culture of a society as well. Who is Hitler born in 1930's America? He's the guy in Ward C with the funny moustache talking about a "Thousand year rice". ("Reich! I said Reich!")

When crisis came to Germany its psyche brought forth a Hitler whereas ours gave us FDR. The former declared a witch hunt on Jews as the solution to their problems, the latter decried the banking institutions and other actual scoundrels who created the mess. As you can see, the psychology of a country can very much affect its fate for better or worse.

The measuring sticks of a psyche are the truths and lies that are willing to be believed. Hitler didn't invent anti-Semitism (and the inherent insecurity behind it), it was already widespread across Europe. It wasn't too far of a leap to institutionalize it, to sell the idea that Jews were the reason why people suffered and therefore Hitler was the answer. The reality, of course, was just the opposite. Enjoy the rampant fire-bombing there much, mein kampf?

America's response to the Great Depression was very much closer to the truth, which allowed us not to be swallowed up by madmen and fallacies. Germany's return to prosperity is testament to the power of repentance. But oh how she wishes to never have had that dark stain upon her soul! A nation destroyed - not by the allied war machine but by simple words. It always begins with the words.

Are we solving our problems today according to the truth? Are we in denial like pre-war Germany claiming there is no truth? Or are we succumbing to lies and laying the foundation of our own downfall? Are environmental rape, wars of choice and manufactured poverty the products of love? Answer these correctly and the truth will set you free!

"But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving.
We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature.
They are made by human beings."

But what has the American psyche swallowed lies as truth as of late? I'll let others debate what is already known. For me what is interesting is the depth of the lying. Trace the lies from the rise of the Nazi party through the end of World War II and they only become more ludicrous over time. As starvation and ruin spread the more eyes were opened to the insanity they had let guide them. But until that common awakening happens, the lies go on consuming more and more lives.

Where's the love in that? Life is a love or death situation, folks.

Our children are our truest mirrors - and for that we pretty much hate them. Their eyes see truly and mimic us in innocence we've long lost. Adults also participate in this behavior, taking signals from society as a whole on what behavior is allowed. The biggest open secret in America today is one can say anything, no lie is too big or too small. This happens for the same reason it always does: we believe we need lies more than the truth.

We need to believe our wars are just, our greed sustainable and that we are on the road to salvation (insert giggle). But the longer we stay in the grip of our lies, the sillier we become. Let me show you a seemingly innocuous example of this, damning not only in the triviality of it but also as a flag indicating the current direction of our disturbing winds. Meet Beth Schapiro, shameless weaver of fictional facts sure to be sold in the American marketplace of lies.

Beth is looking to cash in on - and mightily stoke - the current hysteria around allegedly massive under-age sex trafficking. Her consultancy group was tapped to "investigate" the proliferation of teenage prostitution. To do so she devised a method straight out of an SNL skit: she would count the number of under-age looking pictures used in prostitution ads. Despite the fact that the age of the photo, the accuracy of its true representation and the wild guessing used to determine a person's age of over or under 18 were used as scientific principles, her "study" is being touted as gospel by the hysterical crowd.

How deep does our public lying go? Check this out:

"We're the first to tell you, this is not a precise count of the number of girls being prostituted," Schapiro said. "We make no bones about that."

Of course, a precise count of the number of girls being prostituted is exactly what the statistics are being presented as in the media, in press releases, and in Schapiro's own study. When this is pointed out, Schapiro reverses herself.

"Well, yes, these are specific numbers," Schapiro backpedals. "And yes, they are hard numbers, and they are numbers that we stand completely behind."

This is the kind of cognitive whiplash you have to endure if you try to follow Schapiro down the rabbit hole. The numbers have the weight of fact and can properly be cited as actual incidents of juvenile prostitution, she insists. But when pressed to justify the broad and unsupported assumptions of her study, she says the study is just a work in progress and the numbers are only approximations.

1984 anyone? Cornered advocates declare the manufactured hysteria is done for the greater good because the heinous nature of the crimes cannot be overstated. Of course, it also gets them a lot of money - money they would never get without their fiction because the problem - however egregious - is small. It also allows them to attain superhero status as they boldly engage monstrous windmills and ghoulish phantoms in the public's mind.

There is massive human trafficking going on, of course. But like the rest of our heinous crimes we seek to cover it up and only pretend to fight it. Immigrant workers have been exploited by corporations for decades and it's people like billionaire Tom Hicks who should be arrested for crimes against humanity. Here's more human trafficking:

Bodies used for purposes that are not their own

This brings me back to my original story - and how much we really "care" about kids. The child killed above was not named Brandon, but Gul Mudin. Feeling better yet? He was a thrill kill done by American occupation forces in Afghanistan. It was not an anomalous act or committed unknowingly by army upper brass. But it was done under the cover of a Great American Lie - something we hold more precious than our lives.

So these thrill kills will pass with no moral outrage or soccer moms rabidly lobbying Congress to protect children or with any sort of demand we end our military machine from rolling ever forward even as it rots our soul more with every passing day. Instead, let's fail the truth test and "hope" for the best. Let's pretend we have a future - thereby insuring we don't have one. After all, it's the good little boys and girls who keep their eyes closed.