Article: Reality matters most in this time of universal deceit

There arent two sides to a lie
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When I'm writing these monthly editorials I try to bring something useful to the table by avoiding shallow partisanship and addressing the deeper meanings behind the headlines, the bigger principles at play in or behind the politics. I'm not always successful but sometimes I am, and again, I do always try. I continue to believe that while many ideas are debatable, many are provably right or wrong. There is a such thing as Reality. It amazes me that saying something this basic could bring anything useful to the table at all, but it might be the single biggest assumption being questioned in today's political theater" some things are provably wrong in Reality, and that matters. We might argue which things are provably right, but pursuing a world based on the provably wrong is insane and self-destructive.

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Today's Republicans have built the idea of a Radical Left (defined, always loosely, as anyone with views other than Republican party dogma) intentionally supporting a blood-libel ring of pedophilic child traffickers and organ harvesters. The proof is always coming, but an organized conspiracy reaches from the highest levels of every government to the lowest tiers of Antifa in the streets, changing the results of the 2020 election and overthrowing the United States in a coup. Major corporations exist to pervert your children through cartoon characters. Your teachers, despite all evidence, are part of a massive, coordinated plot to androgenize and furry-ize your children. The neighbors you've known for years are kiddy-diddling slavers. Your LGBTQ family and friends, though they've pretended otherwise, are grooming your kids. These may (or may not) be the Republicans' most delusional accusations but each is sadly and unsurprisingly taken from Reality.

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For all their faults in Reality the Democrats have no equivalent sin, making an attempt at non-partisanship difficult. We can't, in Reality, just cynically mourn the fact that 'everyone does it'. These proven delusions form the fundamental basis of a large chunk of the Republican party and the rest of the Party is going along with it. The Democrats may be incompetent but they aren't provably, systematically, and strategically lying, at least not like the Republicans. Everyone isn't the same.

Republicans have dropped even the pretense of Reality, openly embracing the classic 'alternative facts' and deriding the 'reality-based community' as idiots. But Reality doesn't matter if they can find enough dupes. In the name of election security, a doubt Republicans seeded, nurtured, and harvested based on a lie, they can disenfranchise millions of voters and ensure one-party rule. In the name of avoiding indoctrination, they can force students to toe the party line by learning a provably wrong and dangerously distorted worldview. In the name of smaller government, they can use the power of government to whip businesses into line. In the name of justice and principle, they can

Unbiased Cons
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cripple legitimate, reality-based investigations and advocate using the justice system as a bludgeon without barely a pretense of legitimacy. I could, all too easily, go on.

While we deal with this intentional Unreality, Reality itself marches on and governments, worldwide, are crippled in acting on any of the problems Reality is spitting at us. The world is already dealing with the devastating consequences of climate change with more to come. Nuclear war in Europe, despite the propaganda, is a legitimate fear. Every country from repressive thugocracies to putative democracies is dealing with income inequality funneling political power to the hands of a very few, perhaps irretrievably. Again I could go on, but you get the idea" all these are problems that, in Reality, aren't being addressed.

Orwells command
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Orwell warned about a Party forcing us to reject the evidence before us but he didn't say why. It's because every lie is an admission that you wouldn't support the liar if you knew the truth. Today's rhetorical war isn't a legitimate difference of opinion, it's a conscious strategy of lies and distortion that have been proven wrong. In Reality. Repeatedly. But the liars know you'd never support their agenda otherwise.

Orwell had another quote, "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act". Reality exists. Be a revolutionary.

Make a great day,