America Isn't Just Divided Over Politics, It's Divided Over Reality

By Derek May:

“I can’t reason you out of a position you didn’t reason yourself into.” —  Anna Connelly Is Cool

That phrase struck me hard when I read it because it touched on an issue I’ve been grappling with for a long time. I’ve watched many a friend struggle to reason with friends and family members on any number of topics, providing well-sourced, documented,

irrefutable facts to try and present a logical, iron-clad argument. What invariably happens is an all-too-common sequence of responses, including links to some fringe or openly biased site with alternative “facts” that “the mainstream media doesn’t want you to know,” personal anecdotes of isolated experiences that clearly refute the general consensus, shifting away from the main argument to dig ever further down to tangential minutia with

demands for instant proof, and, if all that hasn’t devolved into personal insults or “gotcha” claims, a final, simple declaration of “agree to disagree.” And thus, no minds are changed, no middle ground reached. Each side just digging in deeper, secure in the reinforcement of their beliefs.

I’ve certainly experienced this firsthand—over and over again. What leaves me most disheartened, though, is that I just can’t wrap my head around how anyone could not accept the plain and clear truth? How can one just dismiss facts? Why can’t they see reason?

And what I finally came to understand—or at least accept—is that these people ALSO see themselves as reasonable. They have come to their conclusions in the same way I had come to mine. Sure, if you’re a flat-Earther or believe vaccines put chips in you, then you’re beyond rationality. But for the rest that we butt heads against, they don’t understand how we could come to any other logical conclusion than they did. It’s unfathomable! It’s all right there, stop being such sheep!

So I realized that the problem isn’t with our mutual reasoning faculties, it’s with our perceptions of reality itself.

If you insist the seas are calm and the skies are clear while I say we’re in the middle of a devastating typhoon, we are starting from positions incompatible with a rational discussion about whether to go sailing today.

Remember those buzzwords “misinformation” and “disinformation”? Numerous people, including me, have posted articles and discussions trying to both define and confront these tactics. And while both are still very much in use, I feel like their roles have changed slightly. A decade or so ago, otherwise reasonable people were being fed carefully curated lies, sometimes cleverly disguised under elements of truth. They would sort of nudge people one direction or another, planting seeds of doubt or paranoia. In many cases, seeds of hate and fear.

I feel like after January 6th, though, something fundamentally changed. Everyone had access to the same video evidence. It was clear that rioters stormed the Capitol, attacked and injured police officers, threatened elected officials, trashed and fouled the interior, all while being encouraged by the sitting president. Eventually, these people were found, arrested, given due process in a court of law that verified these assertions, and were ultimately sentenced accordingly. But Trump insisted, then and now, that they were patriots, that they were simply peaceful tourists. That it was the Capitol police who instigated any violence. That it was the other side who was, and still is, violent. Somehow, it was even Biden’s fault, though he wasn’t even president yet.

This is way beyond mis- or dis-information; this is a complete reshaping of reality. And after five years of accumulated evidence, people still cling to this alternate version of history.

What was once just sowing seeds of doubt or mistrust has evolved into blanket falsehoods that, if you live in this alternate reality, are taken for granted as truth. It’s so ubiquitous that perpetrators aren’t even trying that hard anymore. While once simply dismissing charges that Trump was in the various Epstein files, they progressed from the client list is sitting on Bondi’s desk to it not existing at all; well, files exist, and he’s in them, but they are a Democratic hoax; to the laziest lie of all that he was an undercover operative. I mean, that’s the sort of half-assery you only think you can get away with if you believe your control is so absolute that reality itself is just another political tool.

And so here we are. It’s true that we are likely more divided today than perhaps at any point in U.S. history since the Civil War. But back then, the conflict was over the right for slavery to exist, not whether it indeed existed.

This tactic is being extended even beyond our borders. That Russia invaded Ukraine seems like a pretty objective fact. Yet, Russia tried to tell its people that, really, it was Ukraine’s own fault that it was invaded. But the U.S. public shrugged off that baseless reality and remained unabashedly united in condemning Russia as the instigator and supporting Ukraine as the underdog victim. And yet now we’ve come to a point where Trump has turned even this upside down. He berated Zelensky, praised Putin, and tried to “negotiate” on behalf of Ukraine by cutting its military support and offering Russia everything it wants.

Changing the reality of that situation would be a good starting point if the U.S. were to, say, invade a sovereign nation itself. Trump said we had to remove the president of Venezuela

because he was a dictator who led a government-sanctioned operation to export drugs to the U.S. But there’s an interesting amalgam of conflicting realties here. First, you’d think Trump would support a strongman who refused to accept the results of a democratic election. But, then again, we can’t allow a foreign power to kill our people with drugs, even though there’s little proof of that and we pardoned a convicted drug pusher in the former president of Honduras. But while we removed Maduro, we left his entire government in place, seemingly to continue supplying drugs. But wait, Trump is now acting-president of Venezuela, just not according to Venezuela. Don’t forget that over 30 boats needed to be blasted to oblivion because they were smuggling drugs, though no proof of that has been given. And while one reality has been shaped over drugs and tyranny, Trump himself negates that by revealing what was already pretty obvious: it’s really all about the oil.

Over and over again we are seeing objective reality collide against a shaped alternative that is easily debunked by facts but astoundingly gobbled up by a not-insignificant populace. This is the fight we currently face and, personally, I’m struggling to figure out how to combat it. More and more I tend to throw my hands up and say there’s no point—perhaps even no possibility—of reaching someone whose reality has been so completely reshaped. To those who have had this done to them, I don’t know whether to feel angry or sad, to pity them or blame them for everything that is happening. And to be fair, I too feel the need to be constantly vigilant about my own perceptions and not get caught up in an echo chamber of confirmation bias. And with the onslaught of generative AI, it’s getting harder by the day.

What I do know for sure is that things in this country are objectively bad, and the mechanisms for holding it together are crumbling. In theory, our three branches of government form a system of checks and balances to prevent exactly what is happening—we’re just not using it. Republicans control the legislature, yet Trump has bypassed them through executive orders and national emergencies to do whatever he wants. Even if Congress agreed with him, you’d think GOP members would be upset about abdicating power, instead they give it up willingly. When they have tried to exercise that power, as in

passing the Epstein Transparency Act, Trump has obfuscated, delayed, or flouted the demands. When judges have tried to exercise their branch powers, such as demanding planes full of immigrants denied due process turn around or that wrongfully detained prisoners be released, Trump has routinely ignored or defied that too. The legislative branch is supposed to write laws and the judicial branch is supposed to determine their legality. But when the branch tasked with executing and enforcing those laws simply doesn’t, where does the government turn? Trump has now said that the only person that can stop him is . . . him.

If the only power Trump acknowledges is his own, if the checks and balances of the U.S. government have ground to a halt, then at what point do we, in reality, live under authoritarian rule? If we already are, or if we are too close for comfort, how do we convince those who refuse to believe that state?

Let’s examine some of this in historical context. Before the 2016 election, many observed that the things Trump was saying and suggesting were eerily reminiscent of Hitler. Those accusations were widely dismissed as fearmongering. The clapbacks to the massive “No Kings” protests invariably asked how Trump could be a “king” if he was elected, ignoring the reality of his actions through the “reasonable” argument of his election. But like Hitler

and other despots, Trump and co. have shaped a reality where immigrants are “animals,” “not human,” and have “wrecked our country,” easy scapegoats for a depressed populace. ICE has been reshaped into something never before seen on American streets. Under one reality, the very suggestion that a masked, militarized force with limited oversight stopping random people and knocking on doors demanding “your papers,” rounding up citizens and non-citizens (even Native Americans) alike and threatening or assaulting anyone who gets in their way might be comparable to a gestapo is not only ludicrous but offensive. In that reality, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Just comply and you’ll be fine (Ann Frank might have something to say about that!). But this changes the reality of an America built on noncompliance, on protest, on resistance.

If the result of noncompliance is arrest, assault, or death, is this still America?

The effect of colliding realities may be seen clearest following the death of Renee Nicole Good. In one reality, she was a lawful and respectful observer (“I’m not mad at you.”) trying to do her part to uphold American ideals; in another, she’s a left-wing domestic

terrorist and attempted murderer (“f*cking bitch”). In one reality the agent who shot her barely escaped with his life and needed to be hospitalized; in another, he casually walked off without a scratch after shooting her from the side as the vehicle turned away. This conflict is playing out as protesters, observers, and bystanders are being assaulted, pepper sprayed, shot, and dragged out of cars. Are they peacefully exercising their constitutional rights or noncompliant agitators? Would none of this be happening if ICE was left alone to do their job? Or would none of this be happening if ICE was doing their job properly? And how do we reconcile Trump cracking down on U.S. protests while encouraging Iranian ones?

These conflicting realities open a whole new can of worms for their creators. Shouldn’t the protestors on Jan. 6 have complied with law enforcement? Shouldn’t the Trump administration comply with court orders and congressional demands? Shouldn’t we comply with international law against invasion and threats to invade other nations as well as refrain from unilaterally killing their citizens? Shouldn’t the federal government comply with bipartisan agreements to fund states and approved programs? Is compliance only mandatory under certain realities?

If leaders do not comply themselves but demand citizens do regardless, what sort of government do we have? By definition, it isn’t by the people. And if that’s the reality, then where are all the “Don’t Tread on Me” folks with the heavy artillery they’ve been stocking up in case of government overreach? If fascism is taking root, then how is it wrong to be anti-fascist? If Senator Kelly and other members of Congress are threatened and labeled traitors for simply reminding troops of the oath they already took, then where are we as a nation? If the government tries to censor comedians and talk show hosts, how does that not violate the first amendment? If they try to control what businesses do and where and how they should invest, does that not reek of state control?

And if all of this is happening while the party of freedom, of small government, of rabid support for the right to bear arms to prevent tyranny, of demands to extricate from foreign wars, of lowering prices and propping up farmers sits back and cheers while the exact opposite is happening, then reality has truly gone topsy turvy.

I think we should have debates and honest discussions about our country. I believe in compromise and rationale consensus. But I honestly don’t know how to meet someone halfway if we don’t start in the same reality. I don’t know how to convince someone that even though it seems rational, what they see and believe is simply not true. Is rationale discourse possible if neither side can agree on what is factually accurate? How can we find a common road if one is on land and the other swimming in the sea?

Each side thinks it’s on the side of right. So debates don’t start from opinion, they start from an entrenched position. It seems logical to assume that maybe neither side is seeing the truth, and there’s certainly a strong case to be made there. But for much of what is happening, there really is an easily observed reality. Sometimes the truth is hidden in plain sight. In Star Wars, there is an evil Empire and there is a Rebel Alliance. But right now, we have people who see themselves as the Rebel Alliance actively supporting the Empire. The structure of our government is faltering under the pressure of one leader’s vision, even if one supports that vision. Certain rights and freedoms are under assault from our government, even if yours may not be for the moment. And a vast populace is fighting back.

So how does one fight? That’s what I ask myself every day. I protest. I share. I write. I donate. And when the latest daily horror comes up, I’m angry at the instigator but I’m horrified by

U.S. Border Commander Gregory Bovino

the supporters. That’s what truly terrifies me. Because I can fight the people spewing the lies, but it’s much harder to fight those who embrace them. As a man from a German immigrant family, I grew up wondering how the Nazis took such complete control of the country, how they could possibly have gotten so many to go along with those ideas and atrocities. And now I see it was through ever-increasing small acts that reshaped reality. Give despondent people a scapegoat, a cause of their misery, and prop up a man who promises to fix it all by hammering these messages until nonsense becomes common sense—Boom, here we are, history repeating itself (literally). There are those who see that process happening in real time, and those who utterly dismiss it. That, too, is a reality.

But I have seen a few things that give me hope that the sand under these false castles is giving way. I see more and more Republicans waking up and jumping ship, even if it’s out of self-interest. I have seen court orders eventually, finally, being enforced. I have seen true believers begin to question their preconceptions over Epstein or ICE or one of the thousand other insanities. I have seen organizations such as Leaving MAGA provide a safe exit ramp for those open to changing their perceptions. I have hope the midterms will provide some relief—if we’re allowed to have them. I have hope in some of the younger-generation leaders who are sick of the status quo from both sides and are ready for something new. I have hope that more Americans will wake up as the pinch hits them where we feel it most—the pocketbook.

It’s just a question of whether the storm can be weathered. Because I’m not sure you can fight someone’s reality. It’s tied to their entire worldview, to their personality and ethics. Challenging it is challenging them, and that’s hard. So like an addict, one has to recognize the problem for themselves. They can’t be reasoned to it. But I think objective reality is starting to break through. People can accept the truth or not, but at some point, what is will be, and maybe that’s the real strategy. Maybe the real fight is hanging on long enough.

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Derek May, of San Antonio, TX, is Editor-in-Chief and occasional writer for Flapper Press. He has written nearly 50 movie reviews for movieweb.com and completed 13 original feature film and television screenplays, many of which have been winners or finalists in such prestigious competitions as the Walt Disney and Nicholl Fellowships, the Austin Film Festival, and the Creative World Awards. He served as a judge for 10 years for the Austin Film Festival and Texas Film Institute screenplay competitions. His latest project is the highly acclaimed stop-motion animation fan series Highlander: Veritas, which released its second season in July 2022.