President Biden’s State of the Union address triggered predictable reactions among his supporters, who described hisspeech as “high energy, forceful” and other adjectives rarely found preceding his name. Naturally, Republicans disagreed. “C’mon, man,” Shmuel Klatzkin quipped: “Was it Adderall, meth, or old-fashioned bennies?” Could’ve been a “miracle, or…better living through chemistry,” but that wasn’t the guy we’ve known since 2020, a man whose mangled syllables tumbled from his lips in batches of incoherence. In other words, the President played a role, a fictionalized version of himself, after which he reverted to form, because he couldn’t keep up the ruse.
In fact, Democratic speeches often reflect an “alternate reality,” as Dan McLaughlin and others put it, that refers to things that don’t exist, or if they do, are linked to reality by the thinnest threads imaginable. To take an extreme instance from the last century, during the Soviet era, Stalin justified his purgesby blaming Leon Trotsky, whose agents allegedly had penetrated every corner of Soviet society, creating havoc and organizing plots against the General Secretary (Stalin’s title). The only link to reality was Trotsky, who did exist until Stalin’s agents tracked him down and killed him in Mexico. But the rest was sheer fantasy, never happened, purely fictitious. Stalin’s enormous subterfuge solidified his power, which was his primary objective.
Since the Democrats’ moral collapse in the sixties, their lust for unchallenged power has reaped whirlwinds of grotesque fantasies that demonstrate the Party’s descent into a totalitarianmode of thinking and acting. The foundation of every totalitarian movement is fanatical commitment to a fictitiousworld, one best described by Hannah Arendt as comprising“fabricated insanity” buttressed by indoctrination and propaganda. Terror, concentration camps, and oppressionpracticed by twentieth century dictatorships have been replaced in America by wokism, DEI, the cancel culture, critical race theory, and censorship policies that eventually will coverthoughtcrimes as well as speech. All of which are incessant, ubiquitous, and shrill.
Following the totalitarian script, Democrats have usedpropaganda that smothers harsh realities with blankets of euphemisms. Thus, “pro-choice,” “mostly peaceful protests,” and “gender-affirming surgery” have entered the American lexicon to mask infanticide, murderous riots, and experiences of poor souls who leave hospitals believing their disturbed mental condition was corrected by a surgical fix. All were rationalizations as well, but fictions, nonetheless. And of course, propaganda oozes from schemes to discredit their opponents, such as Russian collusion accusations that plagued Donald Trump and were revealed as fictitious only after they had smeared his reputation.
Other fictions likely will remain with us for a long time, mostly because the lies and misrepresentations are built into huge organizations with millions of employees who have a stake in their perpetuation. Anthropogenetic climate change is the mother of all fictions, embracing every institution in the United States and Europe, regardless of its advocates’ unbroken recordof failed predictions. Is there actually such a thing as human-caused climate change? Sure, there is, states Stephen Koonin, who served in the Department of Energy in the Obama Administration and authored Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters. Enough to justify apocalyptic frenzies about destroying civilization in order save it? No, he says, the data don’t support such a policy. Doesn’t matter; nearly unlimited power accrues to those who convince the masses otherwise. After all, the fate of the planet is at stake, right? Therefore, surrender your freedoms and eat bugs.
Koonin was labeled a “climate denier” for his troubles, an unscientific rebuke for challenging a totalitarian narrative. But when Harvard Economics Professor Roland Fryer found "no racial differences in officer-involved shootings,” he stated that “all hell broke loose,” and he needed police protection for a month. The deities of totalitarian narratives are jealous gods, indeed.
Which means that Americans who have families, careers, and reputations to protect — practically all of us — must step carefully through the minefield of “alternate realities” that plague the country and have energized America’s oldest political party for the past two generations. Challenging fictitious accounts about the foundations of our lives is a dangerous, perhaps even a life-threatening undertaking. But it must be done. Indeed, the survival of our Republic depends on it.