The year of making stuff up

Holiday-related stress can weaken our grip on reality. In mid-December I was preparing some Christmas cards, and sat at my desk with cards, stamps, and addresses for friends and family. I opened a fresh card and found myself speaking my message to it, as if I expected the words to write themselves.

I so rarely use old-fashioned pen and paper anymore that I momentarily thought I was using the voice-to-text feature of my smartphone. A short time later, as I returned from the post office, I ran into Al, a waiter at Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse, and told him the story. He said, “Your mind is gone,” and we laughed. He agreed that I needed to “PTFPD: put the effing phone down.”

When I shared this with Cheryl, another customer at the local bakery on the morning of the winter solstice, she told me about the day she tried using two fingers to expand a photo of her grandchildren, as one does to see greater detail — except that it was a printed photo enclosed in her son’s Christmas card, not a picture on her phone. It was a sign, she said to me, that she needed a vacation.

Wandering off track from reality is all too common these days. A recent example is Trump-supporting gay New York Republican Congressman-elect George Santos. The problem is not that he is what I call a Trumplodyte — though I don’t like that either — but that he appears to have invented much of his résumé, from schooling at Baruch College to jobs at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.

Don’t get me wrong. I love magical realism. Introducing elements of the fantastic or mythical can illuminate inner truths. But it works better in fiction, such as Latin-American novels, than in governance. It is one thing to be fabulous, and quite another to be a fabulist — that is, to try to get ahead by making stuff up.

The chief instigator of political fabulism is Donald Trump, the quintessential fast-talking swindler.

A healthy dose of reality was supplied in November by American voters, who rejected most Trump-endorsed election deniers. The incoming Republican majority in the House is already a train wreck, though it won’t take over until January. A handful of far-right members are refusing to support Kevin McCarthy for Speaker. Their entire agenda is revenge and political arson.

McCarthy and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, who is slated to become chair of the Judiciary Committee, are among those referred by the January 6 committee to the House Ethics Committee for investigation. I suggest we call them insurrectionists, since that is whose side they are on. McCarthy showed that he knows better when he rebuked Trump right after the riot at the Capitol. Unfortunately, he quickly backtracked. He is too weak, and holds too narrow a majority, to stand up to fanatics like Jordan.

The crucial thing about reality is that not everything is subject to a vote. Take the formula for gunpowder. If you decide you dislike saltpeter, or if none is available, you can drop it from the formula. The only problem is, the result will not be gunpowder.

Republicans have lied about everything from life-saving vaccines to climate science. A substantial number of people believe the QAnon claim that Democrats are satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is out-polling Trump in the early presidential handicapping for 2024, has weaponized the baseless assertion that gay and trans people are “grooming” children — as if one is recruited into being gay or transgender. In more than forty years of activism, I have not encountered a single person for whom this is true.

No matter how many fearful people with guns are provoked by claims that an otherwise harmless children’s book is magically sexualized by the mere fact that a drag queen is reading it, it is just not true. Such a slander can get people killed.

Republicans’ aggressive flight from reality is deadly and undermines Americans’ ability to work out our differences. It weakens our republic and makes us susceptible to autocrats, theocrats, and grifters.

The Christ of the Gospel teaches us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and welcome the stranger (see Matthew Chapter 25). That is the opposite of what the religious bullies in this country advocate. They are no more authentically Christian than the saboteurs currently driving the GOP are conservative. Let us resolve for the new year to stop accepting their self-descriptions and start speaking the truth.

And the truth shall set you free.

Richard J. Rosendall is a writer and activist at [email protected].

Newsletter Sign-up