There are things I accept as real. Snow is cold. Mud is a nuisance. Taxes of all sorts rise. And yet there are people who live in a different reality. I didn’t realize how common different realities are until I stepped into an argument with a woman who claimed that there is no election fraud in Montana.
Disproving a negative is a researcher’s dream – all it takes is finding a single incidence and the job is done. One illegal vote conviction disproves the assertion. Naturally, I found it. Showed it. Disproved her belief. She got angry. I encountered a Ph.D. psych who was declaring that Trump had a Narcissistic Personality disorder. I pointed out that the man who edited the journal on personality disorders, and had basically written the definition disagreed – and thought it improper to diagnose folks that you have never met. That one got angry, too. Obviously, knocking cherished illusions off the shelf doesn’t inspire folks to reevaluate their beliefs. Or make friends.
I’m watching reports from the No Kings protest. Fine with me – the only kings I have encountered have been in a deck of cards. England has the un-beheaded King Charles III (not to be confused with the beheaded Charles I) – and I have to admit, I preferred Queen Elizabeth II. All told, my view of kings isn’t something to get me off the place – but if people want to protest kings, fine by me.
Many people argue with economics – and that is hard for me to comprehend. There are communal communities that function within our society – the Hutterites are communal and theocratic. I’ve known several, and have no small respect for them. On the other hand, they operate as a small group within a free market economy. My experience suggests that it’s the religion that makes the commune work, not the other way around. I do know that the Pilgrims started with communism, and a lot of them starved before they gave it up for the reality of free enterprise (not real sure they had Capitalism back in 1620 – I suspect communism existed before capitalism)
We had a climate movement – started out as global warming, but that descriptor didn’t match reality all that well. Not that we might not have global warming, but that we’re in an interglacial. The glaciers pulled out ten or twelve thousand years ago. The reason my place is not under three or four thousand feet of ice is that global warming started about 12,000 years ago. My reality suggests strongly that I’m personally better off because global warming melted the continental glaciers.
There was a simple way to keep Trump out of the presidency – run a better candidate with more appeal. In my reality, I voted against Hilary, I voted against Biden, and in the third election I actually liked Trump more than Harris. But I don’t find him perfect – in a nation of somewhere around 350 million people, it should be possible to find a better candidate. To me, that’s reality.
I like the idea of setting up a solar panel or two and driving an electric car – but the reality is I might be able to get something like the old GEM to charge up and get me back and forth from Trego to Eureka – but my reality is that a gas burner can get me down to Missoula, meet with someone, and get home after dark.
We really need to keep our alternatives as close to reality as possible.
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