Americans are so engorged with spin, most don't know the facts - this puts our democracy in great peril.

People don't like facing up to the truth and we have become so accustomed to public relations, spin, hype, and let's say it plain, bull shit, that we The People don't know what the truth is any more. This realization has been the basis of comedy like Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, and Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report. Stephen Colbert has even made up a word for it and he calls it "truthiness".

"Truthiness" is flirting with the truth. It is half lying, It is twisting things so they are more palatable. It is a sad day, when we The People are lied to, deceived, not told the truth.

It still is not clear why we have been engaged in a pre-emptive, immoral war in Iraq for over 5 years. It still is not clean why the governments response to Katrina was so slow and inept. It still is not clear why Tom Ridge, the head of Homeland Security, kept issuing color based terrorists threats. It still is not clear why Americans were told to obtain sheets of plastic and duct tape to seal their homes against anthrax. It still is not clear how a President can believe in Creationism and yet NASA is sending robots to Mars which is millions of years old.

As Stephen Colbert points out, people entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. It is a sad state of our democracy, that most Americans do not know the facts, and the fourth estate, the media, do not report them, and that it takes the fifth estate, fake news, to bring it to our attention.

Satire is the elixir to maintain our mental health as a nation. It is the court jester challenging the King's grasp of reality. As the saying goes, "You have to be a little crazy to keep from going insane."