Are you a Truman? What's a Swenson?

Two new additions to my glossary…

Are you a Truman?

I met a friend for a drink at a restaurant recently and the fellow next to us chimed in with our conversation. He had heard me say something about the Germanwings crash and how I suspected the true story was being covered up for some reason, mainly because there had been numerous eyewitness reports of an explosion and smoke before the crash, plus a French Air Force report of a large piece of the plane found far from the crash site, both facts that would contradict the official story of a suicidal pilot. (For my reports on this subject, click here.)
I felt friendly enough toward the man interloping on our conversation until he started to condescend, saying, “Oo, tell me more…I never actually met one of these people who thinks everything is a hoax!” I said, “I don’t think it’s a hoax, I think it’s a cover-up.” He said, “Yes, but didn’t you hear, he was suicidal? He practiced the maneuver on a previous flight?” And on and on he went. Despite the fact that he had no actual evidence for the claims he was making, he just couldn’t conceive of the possibility that The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times or even CNN or Fox News could actually be wrong or worse. I myself have caught the mainstream media in MANY lies and inaccuracies, from the simplest things to big things, and in the Germanwings story itself. Once I realized that this guy truly believe the world was exactly as he is told it is in the mainstream media, down to the belief that the Republicans and the Democrats are ideologues fighting for their side with the same purity of purpose as the voters who put them in office, I realized I wasn’t going to learn much from this guy and I lost interest. He was a Truman–a term I coined for the occasion to describe a person like Truman Burbank, Jim Carrey’s character in the movie The Truman Show, who lives in a made up world that he believes to be real.

What’s a Swenson?

A friend of mine is Swedish and told me about an expression they have there, to be a Swenson. Swenson is the most common surname in Sweden and to be Swensons is to have two kids, to have tacos on Saturday, to have wine on Friday, to have the dad be a carpenter and the mom a nurse. It’s a comfortable, low-risk, dull existence. It actually doesn’t sound so bad to me, though my friend tells me that speaking one’s mind is not part of the Swenson model, so I guess I’m not qualified!
I only bring it up because I had a couple of callers recently wonder aloud that even if there is a shadow government and a plan from the top of instituting a fully controlled society, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. I was thinking, hey, I don’t think being a Swenson would be so bad to tell the truth. The reality, unfortunately, in my opinion, is that even if that is the vision for now, the power imparted to that elite few of having a total surveillance, total police state would not let them stop at a world of Swensons…they could not resist the temptation of controlling the number of people, the way to allocate careers, wealth, movement, speech, etc. There would be conflict and the individual would lose. So being a Swenson might not be so bad, but being totally controlled wouldn’t stop there.