Cinco De Mayo, We are One.

I have written a couple of posts about the celebration of Cinco de Mayo. Both of them were at least a little lighthearted and carefree. Parts of them, were, I thought, hilarious. But, in light of things I have seen, read, heard lately I decided to go a different way today. I decided to go back to a time and place in the past.

I grew up in the Midwest. I listened to the body counts signifying progress in the Vietnam war on the nightly news. To my childish mind it seemed we had to have killed everybody in that poor country several times. But, there were ominous signs even then, abuses of power, commanding officers inflating the numbers to make themselves, and their commands look more lethal. Turns out this may have happened several times, so nobody could ever be sure how many people were actually killed in battle.

These were not bad men, bad officers, they were being coerced by a structure that demanded progress, and dead bodies were the chosen standard. It was a difficult war and progress offered some hope of eventual victory, or at least escape. They knew they were not losing, but they wanted so desperately to prove they were winning they were willing to inflate the numbers. Supervisors have used the tactic for years, inflate the numbers on measurements that are hard to disprove, and walk away happy.

Then came Watergate, and the nation exploded. It was espionage to salvage a presidency. And the outrage was complete. Later on, it seems that Nixon really thought his presidency may have been anointed. He was only trying to do the best thing for the country, by authorizing all of that illegal, unscrupulous, immoral activity, it was for the common good, he thought.

Of course, there were other things as well. But, we, as a nation came to view authority without a certain amount of healthy skepticism.

We were not wealthy, in fact we were probably poor, by most measures. And we were Catholic. So I had a lot of Mexican friends. Mostly immigrant parents, or grandparents who had come to America to make a better life for themselves. They took the most physical, demanding jobs, and worked hard for their money.

Anytime I was playing with their children, and it always seemed like there were hundreds of kids, all living in a small house, they shared everything. Warm, fresh homemade tortillas, covered in melting butter, and a little honey, just enough to make your hands sticky and your heart sing. They would laugh at how good I thought it was. They were the epitome of the American Dream.

Somehow the nation has changed, and now we trust our elected officials. Allowing them to manipulate laws to increase the wealth of the largest donors, alter voting districts to maintain an iron grip on power, strip protection from the poor, needy, children, anybody who can not make obscene donations to the hallowed towers of the ruling elite. And we demonize these poor immigrants, who are willing to work at difficult jobs, performing back breaking labor, settling for low wages, and little actual respect.

And somehow I am supposed to believe this is the path to making America great again. I miss the old days.

Fake news, about fake news. Oh, really?

"Fake news" is being discussed at length. More importantly, the ridiculous lies people are willing to believe. A man fired a shot in a pizza parlor because of a work of fiction dressed up as news. One can only hope the shooter, carrying a lethal looking rifle, was appropriately embarrassed. Of course, it only stands to reason that fake news did not force him to grab his frightening rifle, drive to the pizza place and shoot, he did that on his own.

Having grown up during the Vietnam War, and Watergate it is easy to view anything the government says with a healthy dose of skepticism. Having witnessed the rise of cable news networks and their pronounced lean it is increasingly easy to doubt the press.

President Elect Donald Trump tweeted his outrage over the cost of the new Air Force One  (of which, it seems there are at least two, another bit of government generated misinformation) and the press went into a frenzy. Though, his numbers seem apocryphal it has become a hurricane of reporting. Another reason to worry about the accuracy of the press.

It was not too long ago that President Bush stood on the deck of the Air Craft Carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and declared the mission in Iraq had been accomplished. Turns out the mission was only beginning and would soon bog down into meat grinder for thousands of brave American children. Technically, that was probably more wishful thinking than actual deceit. But, it was still untrue, even if it was unintentionally false. Never trust anyone.

Recently Life Explained Explores History had a post about Pearl Harbor. A respected, well liked member of the Life Explained staff questioned one of the points as being revisionist history. Possibly, (though it was checked several times from several sources) the more one looks the more it seems history is being written over and over again. However, the more one looks the news is likely less than accurate in most cases.

Newspapers, websites, magazines, television, radio, they are services. An old saying goes, "If it sounds too good to be true it probably is." Maybe it is time to update that. "if it sounds too good to be true, or too insane to be true, or too ridiculous to be true, no matter how much it supports beliefs you already have, it probably is." Though, it is being widely reported that reading Life Explained will make you much more popular and help you live longer. Why take a chance, right?