A friend of a friend has been saying for years - long before the great Maya Angelou is credited with saying it - that, "When they show you who they are, believe them."
With all of the insanity going on in the world right now, that phrase has never seemed more appropriate.
Lately, on almost any topic, both the narrative thread usually spun by those in power, and the truth behind the lies seems to be leaking out everywhere, even more than usual. Sadly, that hasn't stopped some of those in power from desperately claiming there's nothing really to see.
One obvious place to see this Orwellian duality is in the ongoing Exxon Mobil oil disaster in Arkansas. Exxon has promised to the media and the residents of Mayflower, Arkansas that they will cover the oil disaster cleanup costs. However, their past history, and a 1980 law - reasserted as still valid in a 2011 IRS memo - say that Exxon Mobil doesn't have to pay into the Federal fund to clean up disasters like this one, and Exxon Mobil's history has all the property owners in Mayflower scared to death about the future. Further, Exxon Mobil appears to have convinced the FAA to put up a "no fly zone" over Mayflower, Arkansas, overseen by the corporation, until further notice.
That could be a long time, as Rachel Maddow noted last night, when she cited the only other tar sands oil spill in America, back in July of 2010 in Michigan. Nearly two years and $765 million dollars later, cleanup continues from that Enbridge disaster in Michigan - a disaster that the company said would only take a few short months to clean up.
On a completely different topic, in the last month, the leaders of North Korea appear to have decided they'd like to threaten to go to war - nuclear war - with pretty much everyone else on the planet. Their threats late Wednesday, that they've authorized a nuclear attack on the United States, appears to have both the U.S. and China - North Korea's neighbor - a bit worried. North Korea's belligerent rhetoric, though stronger than ever, still follows the same behavioral role they've been playing against the U.S. since the end of active hostilities in the Korean War nearly fifty years ago. They push, the U.S. and other nations agree to some form of a deal, then North Korea gets the goodies from those concessions - and then North Korea begins the cycle again.
Whether it's extremist Republicans in North Carolina threatening to pass an unconstitutional law declaring an official state religion, or the legislature in Connecticut passing strong new gun safety laws, or people like President Obama and Sec. of Defense Chuck Hagel taking a cut in pay in solidarity with all those Americans who will be affected by sequester furloughs, people all over America and the rest of the world are letting their true colors leak out all over the place.
Even simple, methodically tested numbers are giving up the truth more easily than they seem to have in the past. For example, in a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday, it's obvious that 43 percent of Americans would support a Democratic U.S. House candidate in 2014, but only 35 percent would support a Republican candidate for the same office. However, the numbers also show that gerrymandering - effectively, cheating by changing the boundaries of congressional districts - will make it nearly impossible for the will of the American people to be accurately reflected in the makeup of the U.S. House.
If you're looking for the truth, as we've always said, you simply have to open your eyes. Now that it seems to be leaking out everywhere, seeing the truth should be easier than ever. Seeing isn't really the problem, though.
The problem is that far too many people keep seeing the truth, yet refuse to believe.
At least we know who they really are. They keep showing us every day.
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