Just Making It Up

Being unemployed allows me to listen to the news on television in the background.

For all of the values-based sermons we get from politicians, this political season is awash in one lie after another, apologies for the lying, and then a resumption of the same lies. A recent study whose link I have long lost explained that once a lie is assimilated into the brain, it's difficult to dislodge.

Ergo, a tsunami of political lies that stick so well that the conversations we hear pundits discussing sound like a lost Lewis Carroll novel.

Likewise, on CNBC today I listened to one clueless commentator after another fabricate a future that is possible but improbable. Early in the day the market rose and the commentators declared that we "avoided a depression". By noon, they even questioned the depth of a looming recession. Late in the day, they decided the recession would be a correction.

On occasion an expert would talk about inflationary holocausts which seemed to make the commentators heads explode. Won't shopping solve that? When do we shop again? Is it safe NOW? (As if the utter dissolution of capitalism were a video game in which you just get up after dying and jump back into the market after a week of false regret).

By the end of day trading, after a $250 Billion dollar infusion of cash, the market closed down approx 70 points. Go figure. Maybe it means the recession will be not so mild as thought at 4 p.m.

I guess we so often worry that students copy the good work of others, we fail to realize the fabulism required to function in a society lying its way though life. Science and reason have long succumbed to just making it all up.