“As I get older, after much careful research, after critical thinking, the more I have come to understand I’ve been lied to all my life.” — David T. Young

My almost life-long search for the truth received its first blows below the belt many years ago in my childhood.

Perhaps I was over sensitive or naïve, but I began to question my elders and superiors after learning they conspired to lie to me about things that seemed far-fetched to begin with.

I was lied to about Santa Claus. I didn’t learn the truth until I was 8 years old when an elementary music teacher inadvertently blurted out that St. Nick was just a myth during the singing of Christmas songs in the classroom.

What followed quickly afterward were realizations that other things that seemed magical rather than realistic also were just lies grownups told me. The deceit included the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and that awful embarrassing yarn about the stork. In fact, grownups for the most part just couldn’t handle properly telling us where babies came from so that many of us eventually learned the awful truth on the street.

At first, I was able to let it go, telling myself that parents and adults told kids these fibs so they could experience magic and wonder before growing up.

But my keen interest in history as a child only made things worse as I grew older. I suppose I should have become more interested in academic subjects that didn’t lie, such as science or math.

I spent too many childhood years believing in notions that Christopher Columbus was a terrific and brave explorer who discovered the “New World.” It wasn’t until I took history courses in college that I found out he opened the door to the oppression and near extinction of the people we incorrectly have called “Indians” and now accurately refer to as Native Americans.

It wasn’t until 1968 when I heard the Firesign Theatre’s landmark “Temporarily Humbolt County” that I came to understand that our ancestors invaded this land and pillaged, raped and conquered the people who already were living here. I wasn’t taught that in grade school, junior high or high school.

I also grew up falsely believing in the greatness of military hero and later President Andrew Jackson, “Old Hickory,” who triumphed in the Battle of New Orleans. As a child and young man I didn’t know about his brutal treatment of Native Americans with the “Trail of Tears.”

I did not do enough critical thinking in my earlier days to face the bitter truth that America was among the last countries finally to abolish slavery. Yet we touted ourselves as the “Land of the Free.”

I didn’t understand that the coveted Bill of Rights only applied to free white males at least 21 years old and landowners when the Constitution was adopted.

I didn’t understand that Americans’ thirst for more land and conquest drove the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War, both of which were started with the flimsiest of reasons.

I did not understand that the United States was one of the very last of the civilized countries in the world to permit women to vote. Once again, the myth and propaganda of the “Land of the Free.”

I did not understand we put Japanese-Americans into camps in 1942 during World War II, denying them rights as citizens.

So when President George W. Bush made the horribly off-base pretense of weapons of mass destruction as a reason to invade Iraq, I shouldn’t have been surprised it wasn’t true. We’ve spent our entire lives swallowing lies told to us to get us to do things we wouldn’t normally do.

And, as “Deep Throat” said during the Watergate scandals, “Follow the money.”

These are only some examples. The truth is hard to find. It shouldn’t be any wonder then that I’ve become such a skeptic, a cynic, mistrustful of so much American exceptionalist propaganda and magical thinking that has done much more harm than good in our lives.

My parting shot is from President John F. Kennedy, in a speech he made in 1962 at a collegiate commencement:

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”