The Dangerous Stupidity of the Republican Alt Reality
Sean Spicer has the hardest job in America. He must continuously spin an alternate reality to people who ask difficult questions like “where’s the proof?” And “what did the president mean when he said…?” I imagine his mind must really be battered as he tries to live on both worlds – the one where he tells reporters that Steve Bannon left the NSC because he accomplished his objectives, and the real one. The reality where Trump’s inauguration crowd was the biggest ever, and the actual one.
After a while, it must begin to affect a person in nefarious ways. How could it not? Living a life where you’re continuously required to invent a completely different reality than the one we all experience is nothing short of mind-blowing.
The healthcare law is a ‘disaster’. Climate science is fake. The list goes on and on and on. Daily, the press secretary is required to fib, massage, or outright lie.
Meanwhile, one must ask themselves, who are they lying to? Certainly not the reporters, who shake their heads in disbelief and write things down wondering why they didn’t become a doctor like their parents wanted.
No, the people who it affects the most are the dumbest. Those who don’t have the ability to reason for themselves and walk around thinking Trump and all his nonsense are real. People like Michael Flynn Jr. who thinks General McMaster must be a communist spy and ISIS sympathizer because he refuses, reportedly by Flynn Jr., to use the term ‘radical Islam’. Good thing he’s not in government.
Spinning alternate realities is bad for everyone. It’s bad for the mental health of the perpetrator who must, on some level, begin to lose his grip on reality. It’s bad for the casualties who can’t discern the truth from the noise, and it’s bad for the country as whole. Half the people are walking around living in a completely different reality than, well, reality.