Lying or Delusional

Whenever the dotard gives  speech the fact checkers point out all the lies, but is it a lie if you actually believe what you're saying?

I'm pretty convinced that he really believes most of the things he says (although he also lies a lot) because his megalomania convinces him that his version of the facts are true.

Of course he gets some ammunition from the silly news he watches on cable. but when he says that he won the popular vote despite all evidence to the contrary he actually believes it.

Unfortunately he is the only delusional person around.

Too many people are willing to ignore reality for their own version.

Politics don't change facts, and even if Al Gore is championing climate change, it doesn't make it political.

We live in a world where things that would have been absolute miracles are now commonplace with airplanes, instant communications, space exploration, computers everywhere, etc. etc.

This was because of science.

People who use the results of these wonderful inventions then question the scientific validity of scientific experiments.

Its OK to have some skepticism, but to simply ignore or deny repeatable experiments that prove a theory is, well insane.

Similarly we have people who actually believe the mass shootings were all staged as part of the gun control agenda.  Really?  If the entire Government and Media was working together they would have already taken all the guns.

No one, or at least almost no one, wants to take everyone's guns, they want to use common sense safeguards to prevent these massacres that keep happening.

They are very real and denying them and harassing the survivors is dastardly.

His Fantasy World

Maybe I was naïve but I used to think that once people got elected to office the idea was to ignore politics until the next election and try to get things accomplished.

Clearly now it is about politics and nothing but politics all the time.

Some of this is clearly related to our dotard of a president who has no idea what public service actually means and seems to believe some of his own lies.

The problem is that the things he says are simply not possible and that he seems to simply want to undo anything that his predecessor got credit for out of jealousy is not a way to get things done.

Of course some of what he wants would be wonderful if it was close to possible.

Eliminate all environmental regulations but get a cleaner environment.

Pass a health care bill that reduces cost, improves care and covers more would be nice.

Reduce taxes on everyone but don't increase the deficit.

Repudiate all our trade deals but have improved trade.

Fail to honor our foreign obligations but get greater respect from the people we have betrayed.

Only mine clean coal (most call this natural gas) and create lots of jobs.

Treat everyone equally once you eliminate all diversity in the country.

Is Anyone Actually There?

Nobody knows everything, some like to pretend they do, but nobody does.

Now this is normal and you need to rely on other people who actually know things you don't.

Reading the stuff that gets tweeted by our president makes you wonder?

Is anyone telling him how stupid he sounds?

I mean, yes lot of people are talking about it, but is there anyone he trusts telling him?

For example, he accuses Hillary of breaking some imaginary law about deleting e-mails.

Now first it was her legal team who decided what e-mail are indeed private and secondly her obligation to turn them over is hardly a crime, unless they are proven to be Government records.

They were after all on her private e-mail server.

Then he rants about her contacts with Russia and Iran which occurred while she was Secretary of State.

He can't even come up with the right crimes that she was investigated for which were release of secret information, of which she was never charged.

Talk about fake news!

He repeats things that his base listened to in the past figuring they bought this crap once, maybe they will again.  Although his base isn't his problem.

Its everyone else.

Denying Reality

In Alice in Wonderland, you have a girl transported to a world where reality is different.  Its a fun book and its been turned into a number of movies because the world created has few boundaries.

Now a lot of fiction is like that, depicting alternate realities that create a world which while sort of like ours is just different.

Of course, the general theme is that we leave this reality and go to that one.

Now our alt right friends and president inhabit such an alternate reality which has evil characters who are trying to destroy the life they cherish.  They have invented things like the "deep state" which is supposedly the entrenched liberal behemoth that runs things, the fake media which to most of us is the legitimate media, and a world where the undeserving get massive help while deserving people have to pay for it.

There are other aspects and the world they have created is still developing.  Of course they are certain that it is the correct reality, and in their own minds it is.

It is easy to do when developing these ideas late at night on the web when you don't actually have to face the real world.  However, when exposed to the sunlight of reality these things start to fall apart.

Take climate change. Now science is generally accepted as being non-partisan, but not in this reality.  In this reality the facts and figures are manipulated to promote a theory that allows the Government to interfere in people's lives.  We have the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency disagreeing with the consensus scientific view that carbon emissions are a leading cause of climate change.  He probably also thinks cigarettes are good for you. 

If you simply believe you can create the reality you want and then dismiss whatever disagrees with that view, you are delusional. 

Reality has to be supported by empirical proof to be well, reality.  The world appears flat until you get a larger perspective.  The sun appears to circle the earth, but we now know better.  If you continue to believe the earth is flat or the sun circles the earth, there are things that can only be explained via a conspiracy theory.

So conspiracy is the primary reality of these people.  For some reason a large number of people are distorting evidence and creating facts that aren't real.

Its almost impossible to argue with people who refuse to acknowledge that the laws of the universe are valid.  Eventually of course reality will prevail, it always does.  The consequences of that might be felt by all of us unfortunately,

Delusion in the White House

When you can simply believe totally unsubstantiated stories that are actually pretty ludicrous its hard to know how to react.

Our President like to say he is the one being persecuted when in fact he is simply a paranoid delusional person.

Yes, many people think he's a complete idiot, with a lot of justification, but the fact that he is now President means his actions have repercussions.

Back when he was a B List Celebrity he could engage in things like birther conspiracies and get away with it, but he is starting to expose himself to the ridicule he deserves.

He has supporters who believe these rantings, but those who were giving him the benefit of the doubt, have to rethink that.

Of course some of his supporters believe that there was a sex ring under a pizzeria in the District, so they believe all this crap.

However, if you have even half a brain, you should be able to see what he is.

He is delusional, and thinks the late night Internet stuff is the real news while all the well established reputable news outlets are fake news.

This is a sick man and where it can end up is anybody's guess,

America should be concerned, and maybe afraid.  What late night news story could lead to a war?

I don't care what your politics are, this is a delusional person.

Delusion

We used to inhabit a world where reality was what we experienced.  However, going back to our earliest times we seem to have had story tellers who spun tales which allowed us to escape it and imagine worlds of Gods and monsters, heroes and villains.

The real world demanded a lot of attention as we had to struggle to eke out a living, protect ourselves and survive.

As civilization progressed, some of those things got easier and various inventions allowed us easier access to the delusional world.  First the written word replaced story telling and we developed theater and the arts.

Improvements in the world gave us more security and a greater supply of food and better housing to make the amount of time expended on these things less pressing.

In fact, human history can be measured by charting the amount of time we need to spend on basic survival versus entertainment or recreation.

Now it also obviously varies a lot based on economic status, but the one thing that kept expanding was where our stories came from.  Obviously in primitive times, everything was very local, with possibly the occasional stranger passing through.

But as we developed media, we were able to hear from farther and farther away, from people we never met or even from people long dead.

If you consider our situation today, we have more access to more information than ever before, which greatly increases how much we can be lied to.

Now people are essentially very gullible.  Not everyone, but we have grown used to accepting things we can't verify ourselves (consider the various religions of the world).  We did however tend to rely on certain people of prestige to tell us what was true and what was false.  Respected authorities could help us determine what was real and what wasn't.

Now there were always people trying to take advantage of us and sometimes they succeeded.  As Lincoln pointed out you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

However, we have a lot of people believing things that simply aren't' true and the delusion goes all the way to the president.  However, the world has become so delusional that claims of things like uncovered terrorist attacks or widespread voter fraud are pronounced even though they are totally delusional.

We may be in the most delusional period of human history and there doesn't seem to be a path back to reality for many, since the delusions are now considered real while reality is considered false.

Sadly, reality is what is going to happen, no matter what delusions people believe.