Do you get frustrated when you realize that most of your life you have been carrying around a lie that was given to you by your society and you found that lie constantly reinforced by text books and repetition?
I first faced this perennial lie problem with the Rosenbergs. They were an accused pair of husband-and-wife spies. In the early 1950's they were executed. For most of my life the entire media, based on a Leftist pro-USSR analysis argued that the Rosenbergs had been innocent of treason and falsely executed. By the end of the 1990s the basic Russian documents and the original Venona codes had become public. The Rosenbergs were totally guilty of espionage for the USSR.
There is a comparable lie that comes from all sides, the government and the Leftist world. That lie is that the democratically elected president and government of Iran, known as president Mosaddeq, was overthrown by the CIA and replaced by the Shah.
That is a 98% lie. The 2% that is not a lie is that the CIA did try and foment the overthrow of Mosaddeq at the same time that the British MI6, supported by a British embargo on Iran, tried to do the same thing. But they failed.
At the time, despite an embargo, Mosaddeq was popular. It took another six months before Mosaddeq was overthrown by a popular uprising based on the merchants who were tired of the embargo and realized it was only in existence because of Mosaddeq's vanity as well as support from the clerics who were hostile to Mosaddeq 's socialist programs. The Shah was not a replacement, he was already in place and merely stepped up to accept a responsibility that was handed to him by popular demand.
Not only have I been living with this CIA lie most of my life but the clerics in Iran have been promoting this lie for their own benefit in order to generate hostility to the United States. Even worse, president Obama, who had access to the truth repeated this lie with an apology from the United States. He apologized for something we didn't do.
It is my hope, that I don't have too many other official lies rolling around in my head.