Ignoring Reality Catches Up With All Of Us

“When dreams become more important than reality, you give up travel, building, creating. You even forget how to repair the machines left behind by your ancestors. You just sit, living and reliving other lives left behind in the thought record.” – Star Trek (The Cage)

After creating the Nile, God became a podcaster, “Check out my stream!”

Philip K. Dick said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

It’s a pretty simple definition, and it mostly works unless you have really persistent hallucinations.  Persistent hallucinations just like Philip K. Dick probably had.  This may explain a lot of his fiction and his fascination with reality.  And as for 2021, I’d say reality has great graphics, but horrible gameplay.

In 2022, though, we live in a world where reality seems to be split, and split along ideological lines.  One generally reliably Left member of the media (but I repeat myself), Bill Maher, just gave up on the fiction:  “It’s just gone on too long, nobody cares anymore.  I don’t want to live in your mask paranoid world anymore.  You go out, it’s silly now.  You have to have a mask, you have a booster, they scan your head like you’re a cashier and I’m a bunch of bananas.  I’m not bananas, you are.”

Still not on your side.

With that, the cracks of reality on where we’re at with COVID have swung wide open.  There is the fiction that has the single, double, triple, and mega-vaxxed living in constant fear.  The Mrs. was reading the comments to me from some Lefties on a website she frequents.  One particular set of comments was of Lefties looking for test kits like they were looking for crack.  One commenter had consumed at least four instant kits (without a positive result) because they were certain that they had . . . the Rona.

I have no idea what induces that level of fear in a healthy person.  When one of them pointed out that they were consuming tests that could have been better used by people in nursing homes, this entirely common-sense idea was shouted down by a sea of Leftist fear.

This is a denial of reality.  COVID has killed quite a few people, but it’s no Black Death.  Everyone in my family has had it, and for us it ranged from two or three days in bed (The Mrs.) to an afternoon of fever (me).  I’d go so far as, having had it, to bet that millions of people have had it and don’t even realize it.  For two years, these people have managed to live every moment dripping in abject fear.

How a Leftist imagines a trip to COSTCO®.

Beyond the impact of the fear, there’s the impact of the Vax itself.  There is more than sufficient anecdotal evidence that the mRNA shots have significantly more complications than any vaccine ever delivered.  No one can say what the long-term implications are.  With any luck, the negative health impacts are over more quickly than the protections offered by the shot, but there are no guarantees.

Especially not a guarantee from the manufacturer.  Hmmm.

The “adverse health impacts”, of course, are being denied as well.  But such an overwhelming amount of data leads to even the monolith of “jab good, deniers bad” being breached at an official level.  The current shot does nothing against the current strain of COVID, and it appears the current strain of COVID leaves those that get it immune to certain other forms of COVID.

Huh.  It’s almost like the virus is attenuating like, oh, every virus, ever and becoming progressively more infectious and less lethal.  Even Bill Gates is ready to call this one over.

We know that Bill Gates didn’t invent COVID – none of his other products come up with new versions this frequently.

This isn’t the only reality the Left is denying.  It’s not even the most important reality that is being denied.

What’s falling apart, that Leftists say isn’t?

Well, the economy, but I’ve been on and on about that, so I’ll give you a rest.  Besides, Wednesday is a better day for bikini economics.  For whatever reason, Biden owns the economy now.  In this, I’ll give him a pass.  He’s like the last player in a game of Jenga® where you know the tower is going to go, but he’s gotta try to make it one peg higher.  More on that later.

Our border.  The character of a country is in its people, and so is the success.  I do believe that the traditions of our great nation led to the great prosperity that we had.  That, and having thousands of nuclear warheads.  Yeah, having great traditions is nice, but having the ability to obliterate anyone who disagrees with you never hurts.

Regardless, there’s a group that actively says that the United States, “has no culture” which is like a fish wondering what water is.  The fact is that the culture of the United States was so successful and pervasive that people didn’t recognize its influence because it is literally everywhere.  Is American culture perfect?  No.  But it certainly has remade the world, in some ways for the good, in others for the not so good.

I killed an Australian spider with my shoe.  I’m glad he wasn’t big enough to carry both of them.

But if you replace the people, you’ve replaced the culture, and the Magic Dirt won’t make them prosperous.  Just like if you replaced the Japanese with (spins wheel) Argentinians, it wouldn’t be Japan anymore, you can’t replace Americans with (spins wheel) Japanese and expect anything but another Japan.

The Left somehow thinks the thousands of people in the medical professions (doctors, nurses, administrators, etc.) are magically going to be replaced when they refuse the Clotshot®.  No.  These are skilled positions requiring education and practical training.  Replace these professionals with idiots like me, and you’d end up with every solution being amputation.  They don’t call me “John Wilder, Civil War Surgeon” for nothing.  It did cut down on the owies my kids brought me, though.

Our relationship with each other.  At every level this is breaking down.  That’s not fair.  At every level, people are being pushed apart.  On a racial level, everyone is being taught that, even when there’s no intent, one group of people is awful and the other is blameless.

One of the most pernicious things that can be done is to create a victim class.  No matter what happens, they are told, they have no responsibility.  If they behave badly, well, it couldn’t be helped.  Why not?  Well, something happened three hundred years ago, you see.

It’s nonsense.  I know Scott Adams has been taking a few lumps recently, but a while back he had a thought experiment I felt was interesting:  what would happen if you asked an alien about the situation of blacks in the United States and if reparations were owed.  If the alien looked over the situation, Scott seemed to think that it might say, “Well, comparing your life span, material goods, and general standard of living compared to if you had stayed in Africa, you probably owe the white people.”

Women drinking coffee.  My three favorite things.

Probably not a popular idea to float in 2022, but the constant stream of victimhood replacing any sort of rational assessment will end up doing only one thing:  tearing us further apart.  Which is just what Leftists want.

We are on the road to many reckonings.  From the looks of them, they won’t be delivered sequentially.  I tend to think the big trigger will be the economy, but regardless of the trigger, there comes a point where, regardless of what we believe, reality will set in.

I hope it doesn’t have too much Kardashian.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

37 thoughts on “Ignoring Reality Catches Up With All Of Us”

  1. What ought to concern sensible people is that the trigger is likely something no one saw coming. In 2020 I expected some chaos from the election but the “pandemic” and the riots? I didn’t see that coming and no one else did, other than people like Bill Gates since he planned at least one of them.

    2. Agreed. But the trigger (IMHO) is less important than the conditions. If there’s fuel and oxygen, any old spark will do . . . .

      1. This week I’ve been overf on You Tube paying my respects to Meat Loaf. He and Emily were on the same page.

        https://genius.com/Meat-loaf-bat-out-of-hell-lyrics

        (Actually, pretty much the same story line as Yellow Rose of Texas, when you stop and think about it…)

        But since today’s topic is “reality”, let’s not forget Meat Loaf’s masterpiece and a personal favorite of mine, Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Life, one’s whole life stretching from teen to old man, doesn’t get more real or true than that song. RIP, Michael.

  4. The Gods of the Copybook Headings can never be appeased, but must always be obeyed.
    There is nothing new under the sun. Don’t blame me, I voted for Ross Perot.
    Demography is destiny. The future belongs to those who show up.
    We have, at most, until 2030 to fight for everything, or we will be left with nothing.

  5. Great post.
    Exec summary: Time to tribe up. Everyone else did long ago, and we are behind the power curve.

  6. I should be serious. I really should be serious. I know that. And, I swear, in two minutes, I will be.

    But first, the last. That last meme. Technically not a bikini, I suppose. Very, very agreeable, nonetheless.

    Okay, game face going on … now.

  7. Our culture is like a large, awkward, balloon. When not disturbed on a flat surface, the balloon will come to rest. Pushing it in any direction causes an ungainly shifting in the direction of the push. Trying to pick it up is a lesson in futility, since it’s too heavy, and unbalanced, to control. The balloon will fall, and probably burst.

    That’s where we are. Too many are trying to pick up the balloon, and carry it in the direction they want. In the end, nothing is gained, and in reality, leaving it alone, or agreeing in a certain direction, will accomplish change, and avoid bursting the balloon. Unfortunately, there are many that consider the burst balloon an acceptable solution.

    1. For some, it’s a goal. They want complete destruction so they can rebuild as they wish. See: Pol Pot.

      1. To be fair, many on our side see that as the only hope as well. They just wish that a natural event causes it.

  8. Just got a call from my dentist office reminding me of my appointment tomorrow. I thanked her for the call and asked, “Hey! By the way, are we still pretending face masks work?”

    She answered apologetically, “Yes. You have to wear a mask in the lobby but can take it off when you sit down in the exam room.”

    Science.

  9. Just in case you all missed it, the new Lt. Governor of Virginia, Winsome Earle-Sears, is the first woman of color to hold state-wide office. She’s a conservative, Republican, Jamaican, ex-Marine (if there is such a thing), 57-years old, married, Christian (who once ran a prison ministry) and of ambiguous vaccination status. It’s kind of amazing to me how this achievement in the former capitol of Confederacy doesn’t get the attention it deserves from the diversity enthusiasts in the press. (No, not really amazing.)

    1. The Left doesn’t have any principles or ideology, their only goal is power. Internally consistent principles get in the way of power. Accepting their narrative that diversity is our strength gives them more power, as it is a principle they can try to get us to hold to while they themselves will discard it the instant its inconvenient without even a sense of irony or shame.

    2. It got plenty of attention. They attacked her as being racist. Not kidding. It took several weeks before the flames died down, probably about the same time that she started really emphasizing her 2A support and credentials. Love the woman. Should have voted for her twice.

  10. John, another well thought out and reasoned piece. To think that somehow I should find myself on the same side of an argument with Bill Maher is perhaps to truly signal the Apocalypse is near.

    I do not wonder that we are also living out Ayn Rand’s famous dictum, “You can choose your actions, but you cannot choose the consequences of your actions”. Every outcome you have listed was the result of a policy choice, the impacts of which we are just beginning to feel (and will feel for years to come). In a way, this was played out in DC over the course of a week: In the midst of being assured supply chains are fine, there is the call to only take what you need – a backhand acknowledgement that there is a problem, but no acknowledgement as to why the problem exists.

    And so it will continue: consequences will flow from actions and those that are enabling such policies will be shocked, both that the events are occurring not in the way that they had imagined and that they have less and less control of the outcomes.

  11. Reparations might be a bit more difficult than people might think. It wasn’t just whites owning blacks, blacks bought their way out of slavery – and then bought slaves for themselves. There were 180 black slaveowners in South Carolina alone.

    “Large numbers of free Blacks owned black slaves in numbers disproportionate to their representation in society. According to the federal census of 1830, free blacks owned more than 10,000 slaves in Louisiana, Maryland, South Carolina, and Virginia. The majority of black slave-owners lived in Louisiana and planted sugar cane.

    Slave holding among the mulatto class in South Carolina was widespread according to the first census of 1790, which revealed that 36 out of 102, or 35.2 percent of the free Black heads of family held slaves in Charleston City. By 1800 one out of every three free black recorded owning slave property. Between 1820 and 1840 the percentage of slaveholding heads of family ranged from 72.1 to 77.7 percent, however, by 1850 the percentage felt to 42.3 percent.” http://www.slaverebellion.info/index.php?page=the-black-slave-owners

    So that kind of muddies the waters as to whom pays reparations to whom. And then, there are the Indian tribes – Cherokees, Choctaws, Seminoles, and a few other tribes owned black slaves – one Cherokee chief owned 400 slaves, whom he was allowed to take with him to the Indian reservation in Oklahoma – https://www.vocativ.com/usa/race/five-things-probably-dont-know-descendants-cherokees-black-slaves/index.html So history isn’t as convenient or cut-and-dried as people might think.

    1. Another interesting factoid:
      Those most likely to be descended from slave owners are blacks, as only a tiny % of Whites owned slaves (even in the South), while most blacks were owned by Whites.

  12. “We know that Bill Gates didn’t invent COVID – none of his other products come up with new versions this frequently”.

    Wrong his products constant security updates slowed his computers down in less than 6 months. I despise this man and his products. Thank God for Apple and my mac mini which is years old and still a few OS versions behind and the only thing that slows it down some is the antivirus operation. Wish I could us it on bill and quarantine his ass. I feel sorry for the worker of the world still using broken windows spyware.

    2. Linux has come a long, long way. I “transitioned” in December, and haven’t regretted it.
      Give Zorin a try. You can run it from a thumb drive to test it out.

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