This will anger all my lawyer friends, but I just have to say it. Facts may be important, counselors, but only important like the bricks to a building. The bricks themselves aren't the story. It's how different people understand and assemble them into different kinds of buildings.
Take an easy if not sexist example: 38-28-38 may be a beautiful woman to some oglers, to others she's overweight. Take a more serious example: the facts behind today's 1% battle-cry. By protest- sign facts these are today's bailed-out bankers, hedge-fund managers, and other plutocrats from the world of finance. But lets not forget one-third of this 1% are also executives in non-financial firms, one out of six are in medicine, one out of 12 are lawyers, many are information-technology specialists, more are scientists and professors than celebrities from the arts and sports, plus the interesting fact that more than half US Senators and members of the House are also in the mix.
So now you have the facts [based on the Internal Revenue Department]. But once you have all the facts, you have only part of the truth! How does each of us assemble these facts into our own conceptual architecture? If perception is reality like my psychology professors liked to say, then the real meaning to these facts exists behind our eyes. The facts in and of themselves mean nothing until we give them meaning. Our meaning!
Which means to some of us, this 1% are rape-and-pillage capitalists, while to others they're essential job-creators.
Take your choice. I've made mine for some time now. But for those of you worried that American Capitalism may be under siege, not to worry. Robert and Diane Maresca of Long Island NY have already filed to trademark the phrase "Occupy Wall Street." See...? Capitalism is alive and well.
Oh, and as for my lawyer friends, take comfort in Charles Dickens: "If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers..."
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