WE
ALL LIVE DOWNWIND.  It’s the olfactory equivalent of stuff flowing downhill.  You can perform a little two-step, move
sideways, slip on some rubber boots, but it’ll get you eventually, and often.  “It” is insincerity, incompetence,
malfeasance, and outright falsehood.  Some
of us have a better sense of smell than others and so we are more sensitive to
the sickening phenomenon.  Our gag
reflexes activate more readily.  Perhaps
we all ought to carry in our pockets those little blue plastic barf bags,
rolled up like condoms, ready to whip it out the next time our congressman
tells us “I’m on your side.”

Didn’t you smell something fishy watching that
recent coal industry TV ad about “clean coal”?  Or when a Republican verbally assaults the President for wanting to
“raise taxes” without adding the modifier:  “on the wealthy.”  As in most
communication, simplicity can be the enemy of truth, just as specificity can
expose weakness, error, and mendacity. 

This is what George Orwell foresaw in 1984, written in 1949, where there is no
place for truth and propaganda replaces information.  Orwell had written Animal Farm four years earlier, where the leaders – the pigs –
promoted the slogan:  “All animals are
equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” 

One can only throw up one’s arms in helpless disgust
when public figures quote numbers to support their narrow agendas.  “There are three kinds of lies,” said
Benjamin Disraeli.  “Lies, damned lies,
and statistics.”  Put another way, too
often politicians use statistics “as a drunken man uses lampposts…for support
rather than illumination.” (Andrew Lang) 

So here’s a timely statistic for you:  a recent poll shows that three out of every
four people in the country make up 75% of the population.