I MUST NOT TELL LIES: #LiesWeLetThemTellUs

[Segami]

:smoke: :smoke:


" After 30+ years of baldfaced lies from our government, the media, and anyone in a position to profit from it, the first demand of the 99% might simply be no more lies. Sunday on Twitter, Jean Ann Esselink (@uncumbered) started a hashtag game that ended up creating a crowdsourced list of lies we’ve been told in a variety of areas—lies that can be discarded, already, as we have had enough of them.


Powerful and well-financed propagandists are behind most if not all of these lies. However, the hashtag #LiesWeLetThemTellUs suggests that we are partly to blame for not challenging what we were told. Because you are reading PoliticusUSA, I know that you never believed some of these whoppers, but you probably did believe some of them—I know I did. And what struck me as this list grew was how many of these lies have endured because it is more comfortable or at least less inconvenient to believe them. But what made this list worthy to post here is knowing how much better our lives would be now if we as a nation had been more courageous and more tenacious in demanding a truth-based society.



Can we learn from this exercise? I have.






THE LIST



Regulation causes uncertainty and is a bad thing

Corporations are people

Americans are exceptional, and therefore entitled

We can keep on doing whatever we want forever

We never have to pay for it (reduce taxes without giving anything up)

We are not responsible

Occupy protestors don’t have clear demands

People have a right to protest, & to petition government to address their grievances but only 9 to 5 with a permit

The cops needed to use pepper spray

Being gay is a choice. (Likewise being unemployed)

Gay marriage will hurt society

Openly gay soldiers will ruin the army

Marijuana is a gateway drug

Nobody dies in the U.S. from lack of health care

Increasing the arsenic levels in your water won’t hurt you

Alternative energy is much more expensive than fossil fuels

Global warming isn’t happening

Snow proves global warming isn’t real

Evolution, schmevolution

The earth can heal itself

Corporate-owned news outlets are a fine idea

Media is only fair when it repeats everything uncritically

There are two equal sides to every story

Fox News is fair and balanced

CNN is a news channel

The “good old days” (slavery, child labor laws, sweatshops, street urchins) were so great & we need them back PRONTO!

Pizza is a vegetable

It’s teachers’ fault that schools are failing

There is no difference between a blastocyst in a Petri dish and a newborn baby



list cont'



http://www.politicususa.com/en/i-must-not-tell-lies-liesweletthemtellus


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[MedleyMisty]

1. I can't say I've ever believed any of those

But then I'm not an idiot.

Really, though - it doesn't take any effort to not believe those. It doesn't take any special privileges. My parents were factory workers, and my father died when I was seven. I grew up in a single wide trailer. I only have a two year degree from a community college. There is nothing that I have that is not available to everyone else. People chose to believe this crap.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Ditto. The only one I kind of believed was that home ownership was a good investment. I'm yet to be

proven wrong on that, but admit, I might have made more money doing something else with it.