Someone recently said to me, “It never ceases to amaze me how many people take seriously the fabricated nonsense spewed out by the media. How can anyone possibly believe such garbage?”

I offered a Montaigne quote for an answer: “Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.” Translation: Low-information voters are easy targets for the media and their political allies.

Of course, the corollary to Montaigne’s statement is also true: The better one understands government, the less he is inclined to believe anything politicians or the media say, because government policies are based on an obscene mixture of contradictions, illogical premises, and irrational actions — mixed together with ever-increasing doses of lying, corruption, and crime.