How Do We Make America Strong Again? Start Telling the Truth

You want to make America strong again? The only way to do so is to start telling the truth and insisting on the truth.
“Making America Strong Again” is a potent political narrative. But what does “being strong” mean? For some, it’s a code-phrase for bullying–forcing other nations to do our bidding.
For others, it describes a re-emergence of widespread domestic economic vitality.
Another audience sees the rebuilding of a social contract and social cohesion as the essence of strength. As laudable as some of these interpretations of strength might be, to me “being strong” boils down to one principle, and only one principle: tell the truth, however painful and unwelcome as it might be. The essence of weakness is the cowardice of avoiding the truth. We as a nation have grown accustomed to the cowardice of half-truths, half-confessions, half-apologies and a financial system that rewards fraud in all its variations of artifice, deception and lies.
What’s presented as “fact” is actually a spectrum of manipulation and lies. Does anyone with a basic grasp of the economy really believe unemployment is 5% or less? Does anyone seeking the truth believe that a person working one hour a week is equivalent to someone working 40 hours a week? Isn’t counting both of these positions as equally statistically important jobs a form of not telling the truth?

This post was published at Charles Hugh Smith on JULY 24, 2016.