Posted on
July 30, 2012 in
Crime and Federalism‘s tagline: “Because everything I was ever told is a lie.” Scott Greenfield recently gave us a reminder of the truth of the proposition in TWA Flight 800 Remembered. Greenfield was one of the hundreds of witnesses who saw “what [he] thought to be a firework shoot from the water up toward the sky, curve and explode. It was not an explosion in the sky, but clearly something that went from the water upward for a significant distance” off the southern coast of Long Island on the evening of 17 July 1996—an observation contrary to the official “a fuel tank just exploded” governmental explanation of events that night.
Greenfield is a reliable source; if he says that the government is not telling the truth about TWA 800, the government is not telling the truth about TWA 800. And Greenfield says, “It’s not true.”
Why would the government not tell us the truth about the cause of the disaster? It’s easy to think of reasons. But the “why” doesn’t matter; seeking it may even be counterproductive: by imposing our own logic on events we may deceive ourselves. By finding reasons for the government’s deceptions, we might even delude ourselves into thinking that there are circumstances in which our government might be trusted.
We’re better off knowing that government deceives us for its own reasons, and that those reasons are not necessarily knowable. Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus. (Or at least in omnibus propinquus. That the government is not telling the truth about TWA 800 makes it much easier to believe that the government is not telling the truth about 9/11.)
We’re better off always cutting the cards.
Apropos of that, consider the US Department of Agriculture, which we for some reason allow to tell us how to eat. In a demonstration of the politicization of its food recommendations, the USDA endorsed “meatless Mondays” for its employees and then, when the meat lobby complained, retracted its endorsement.
The USDA’s “MyPlate recommends that someone my age eat seven “ounce-equivalents” of grains per day—that’s seven slices of bread, for example, or three and a half cups of rice, oatmeal, or pasta, for example. That’s about 140 grams of carbohydrates. The USDA also wants me to eat two cups of fruit a day, for maybe another 50 grams of carbohydrates. Along with this, the carb equivalent of three cups of Chunky Monkey, the USDA wants me to eat lean or low-fat protein.
I happen to know, because I have experimented, that if I eat lean meat and 190 grams of carbohydrates a day I’m going to get fat. If, on the other hand, I go light on the carbohydrates and get my calories from fat (mmmm bacon) I’m going to get lean and feel good (I’m down 30 pounds in 18 months). I also know, because I have read
, that this is the outcome predicted by sound science.
So here’s the question: if we have an obesity problem in America (we do), and if consuming carbohydrates makes us fat (it does) and if the meat lobby is powerful enough to get the USDA to change its recommendations (it is), what has to happen before the government stops deceiving us about how we’re eating ourselves to death?
Does anyone really pay attention to those government recommendations? I never have.
You sound like one of the plaintiffs in a tobacco case, pretending that tobacco executives were fooling the public by saying we don’t know tobacco is addictive, when in fact everybody has known it since at least 1960 (and the execs were just covering their anatomy, as I’m sure any attorney would have told them they had to).
The connection? Everybody knows that eating too much makes you fat. If it still happens it means that a large number of Americans would rather enjoy the foods they like than be thin.
Who is anyone else — anyone at all — to criticize that choice?
There you go again with your common sense. It’s not “eating too much” that makes you fat, but eating too much of the wrong stuff. The more carbohydrates you eat, the more insulin your body produces to deal with it, and the more calories your body stores as fat.
Whether the government should be in the business of giving health advice is an interesting question. Whether the government should be in the business of giving bad health advice (and indoctrinating our children with it) isn’t.
Becoming diabetic, at 50, of course the Doctors told me how to eat. I immediately went on sugar substitutes, followed the guidelines and got fat as a hawg at 240 pounds. Finally, read up on Adkins, dropped all carbs as best as I could, had the leafy greens and fruit, and three fried porkchops for dinner. I ate meat like it was going out of style. I slimmed down to 170 pounds in 5-6 months. Meat takes longer to digest, so there is less urge to snack. I used less insulin and tried doing completely without it, working hard digging trenches in the yard for wiring purposes. I monitored my blood sugar and a really sweat inducing workout cut my need for insulin by 2/3’s.
Folks, it’s our lifestyle that’s slowly killing us. If I did as my Grandfather did, and stayed behind the southbound end of a northbound mule, I’d live far longer.