The little lies

...and the big ones they beget

My wife asked me to drive her to a doctor’s appointment at around 2pm. At 2:10, I asked her “so when are we going?” Oh my God, she said, I am late! I am supposed to be there already! We jumped into the car and then the phone rang. The call came from a local number so I picked it up. I thought it was to doctor’s office wanting to know what’s going on.
Only it was not. The call came from an Indian call centre, trying to sell me a satellite radio subscription that I do not need and told so to several salesmen already.
Taking the call only delayed me for a minute, but I worked myself up over it. When I have told about it to some friends, they all had the same reaction:
“What’s your problem? You can just hang up! He’s just trying to make a living.”

I wish it was that easy. If you think about it, I was the victim of a fraud. I got a call from someone who misrepresented himself, making me think that the call is local. The point, of course, is that we are more likely to pick up a local call than a 1-800 one.

I am sure you had similar experiences, and I am sure that you would have the same reaction my friends do: why bother even talking about it?
I’m asking myself the same question: why do I get so angry?
Because I feel violated. Because I do not like obvious lies and detest the expectation that I am supposed to treat it as if there was nothing wrong with it. As if it was normal.

I can imagine the poor sod sitting in that call centre making $10 a day, taking rejections 99% of the time.
I understand. It is not fair pouring my frustration about this world on him, making him feel even worse than he already does in his stupid job.

I know what I should not do, but that does not help my disgust with the world in which this is the new normal.

I just grabbed the sour cream from my fridge.

Look at the label and tell me: what the hell is modified corn starch, skim milk powder, Carrageenan, guar gum, locust bean gum and the rest are doing in my sour cream? (The best information on the label is that it: “Contains: Milk” ….Well, at least that…

I just came back from Europe. They still drink real milk there and the sour cream is still a liquid. My guess is that about 99% of Americans have no idea what actual sour cream looks like.
The point of the additives, of course, is to create the impression of a quality higher than what it actually is. In the case of American sour cream, the result is grotesque.
Just like with food colouring and any artificial flavour.
…and I should not even start on the ‘nutritional facts’ which are anything but.
Intentionally confusing, ill-defined, fuzzy and arbitrary garbage. It isn’t just lies, but a message: we own the fact, we define what they are, don’t even try to understand them.

The lies start with the fake area code of the sales calls and the corn starch in the sour crème, but eventually end up with the bat-virus that had nothing to do with bio-weapon research; the safe and effective vaccines; CO2 destroying the planet (but we can save it by giving up plastic straws and shopping bags); with the US president being a Russian agent and still losing to a mumbling idiot; with mostly peaceful protests except the one that was a violent insurrection; with fascist truckers holding unacceptable views; and the deranged Putin who started an unprovoked conquest of the rest of the world with 190k soldiers; with unprecedented level of debt which is an investment that will help the budget to fix itself and we could go on.
But we shouldn’t forget the now legally uncontestable hard fact (in Canada) that this bloke is a woman:

And you better treat her as a lady, or she will break your arm….

The news is full of lies, a big chunk of the science is fraudulent, politicians do little else than lie, education is just an ideological distortion of reality, and those who stand up for the truth, are censored and beaten down.

We are swimming in the sewage of little lies.
Little lies that are getting bigger every day.
Big lies that are growing out of the fertile ground of the little ones.
The acceptance of the little lies make the big ones appear smaller, less important, less significant.
This is how we end up with my objections about the mutilation of children being treated with EXACTLY the same style of dismissal as my objections about obnoxious, fraudulent sales calls and food labeling.
“What’s your problem? Why can’t you just accept her pronouns? She just wants to be happy.”

I get worked up about the little lies because they are the drops reflecting the ocean.
I get worked up about them because I feel violated by the expectation that I should accept them as normal.
I get worked up about them because I hate living with the lies.
Every bit of acquiescence, every little submission to the oppressive new normal diminishes my humanity.

How do you handle this deep dishonesty in the world? Please share your secret!