Who are you? You are self-made, lifting the truth up by its bootstraps, that’s who!/Image: Licensed Shutterstock stock, eldar nurkovic.
Salutary salutations, traditionalist health-seekers. This week in Wellness, we want to cover a topic of vital concern to the mental health of all those on the right of the political spectrum: self-deception.
Mark Twain noted, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” One would think President Donald Trump would favor the truth, then: it’s easier! But, oh, no! He is known for challenging himself to be a better person, for asking tough questions, even if they force him outside his comfort zone. And so are you, aren’t you, Spread Your Right Wings (SYRW) readers? Yes, you are. As long as that belief serves your self-involved life project in some way.
Now, everyone tells themselves certain things to be live a happy life. We’re all constructing reality to some extent. But the curation of reality to suit each person’s purpose has taken on new levels in the right-wing world of 2018, let’s face it. If we don’t continually change what the truth means to us, we couldn’t continue to stick behind the most deceptive, chaotic, all-over-the-place pubic figure in recent memory, Chairman Don Jon.
Perception vs. Reality?
Scientists are even finding that perception, the apprehension of our environment with those handy, dandy five sense’s is our mind’s best guess as to what its experiencing, as an article in Scientific American (SciAm) by authors Timothy Brady and Adena Schachner pointed out. This is one reason why eyewitness testimony is notoriously suspect (excuse the pun) in criminal law, where agreed-upon definitions are key.
The Wellness Lesson for You: The above SciAm article reminds us it’s even “relatively easy” to make people remember things that never happened to them. Well, we’re off to a great start!
Where Did It All Begin?
To know where we’re going, we have to know where we’ve been–or, some other trite, meaningless segue.
The United States of America has a special, i.e., embarrassingly loose, relationship with this little thing called the truth, as documented in a “500-year-history” of our national delusions penned by author Kurt Andersen. From the divine mission of the early colonists, to P.T. Barnum’s sleight-of-hand shows, and now with the Sarah Huckabee Sanders daily spin on reality, American’s have always favored living in Fantasyland, as the title of Andersen’s book goes.
The second sentence of the book, along with every other one, is a study of our national dysfunctional relationship with what is real. But we on the right, and at SYRW, of course, are going to go ahead and use it as a self-help how-to manual,
“In the late 1990s, I wrote a few articles pointing to it–about American politics morphing into show business and baby boomers trying to stay young forever, about conspiracy theories being mainstreamed and the explosion of talk radio as it became more and more about the hosts’ wild opinions,” writes Andersen.
The Wellness Lesson for You: You’re following in a grand, patriotic tradition, and you should be proud, not totally embarrassed at what an ass you are!
Philosophical Underpinnings
Literary criticism, the intellectual domain of radical left thinkers, can be said to be the place where the “single-truth concept,” as author David Frum puts it in his book, Trumpocracy: the Corruption of the American Republic, began its devaluing into uselessness. The work of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and other post-structuralists set the stage for the validity of a many-narratives account of reality. To be sure, literary critics of the 1970s and 80s were accused of dangerous cynicism and nihilism for their calling into question what were once taken-for-granted assumptions. But liberal academia was smart enough to progress in its thinking, keeping the illuminating and enlightening aspects of post-structuralism. We on the right, however, are not that smart.
“But if there is no truth, there can be no lying,” writes Frum in Trumpocracy.
The Wellness Lesson for You: Language is your friend. Use it and abuse it, as you would any friend. It’s a tool to help you shape your version of reality, using semantics, syntax, and linguistic context to make any word mean anything.
Liberals Got It Right–This One Time
Did we just say that? Yeah, we did. Here’s why.
Author Bruce Bartlett compiled a handbook for determining what is true in the always-on mass media of contemporary life called The Truth Matters: A Citizen’s Guide to Separating Facts From Lies and Stopping Fake News In Its Tracks. We use it as an anti-guide, of course, given that we just want to do anything it takes to select what we want to believe.
“The core problem is that people like fake news when it is interesting or titillating or when it confirms a core belief–especially one that is under attack–or scores points against a political or ideological opponent,” writes Bartlett.
The Pizzagate conspiracy theory has all this and more, for example. It held/holds that Hillary Clinton (political AND ideological opponent) ran a child sex ring (titillating) out of a pizza parlor in D.C. (yummy food loved the world over). It confirmed our Trumpian “core belief” that establishment politicians need to be drained out of the swamp and replaced with…people who are worse, apparently.
The Wellness Lesson For You: This pithy quote by Andersen, and Pizzagate, remind us of a key fact about self-serving truth projects. What we choose is to believe is all about what we like–I, me, mine. They called the 1980s, “The Me Decade.” They had no idea what was to come
It’s an Art, Frankly
Reporters Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker, and Philip Rucker wrote an analysis in The Washington Post titled, “From ‘Access Hollywood’ to Russia, Trump Seeks to Paint Rosiest Picture.” Precisely!
The Wellness Lesson for You: We are artists–Picassos of pick-and-choose, Warhols of wonder, and Michaelangelos of me! Artists create beauty, and beauty is good. At least for today, that’s what we’re saying.
We just want to feel good–is that so wrong? So you, dear readers, just keep snorting your drug-like version of reality until your nose bleeds without ceasing and it degrades your mucosa to the point that you get a hole in your septum.
And: Read about the new right-wing dating app you’ve gotta try: Dividr.
Never, ever give up. Even when you’ve admitted something, it’s not too late to go back and change your story completely, as Trump’s treatment of the Access Hollywood tape shows us.
The Sky’s the Limit
The book that sent shockwaves throughout the D.C. political establishment last month upon its release, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, by Michael Wolff, despite SYRW’s best efforts to replace it in the national conversation with, yes, an alternative picture of reality, Love and Light: The Real Story From Inside the White House by hack, seventh-rate journalist Michaela Fflow, contains an instructive lesson in healthy,right-wing self-delusion.
Wolff recounts in his tome that Javanka came to an agreement, which was that in 2020, Ivanka would run for president and be the first woman Commander-in-Chief.
The Wellness Lesson for You: Even the truly bizarre isn’t off-limits as you search your mind for direction in your journey to the now nebulous place called Truth. Ivanka, who is even less qualified than her dolt of a dad, can convince herself that she’s presidential material. So, basically, if you need to, you can convince yourself that you’re capable of flying, reading people’s minds, and turning everything you touch into gold.
The Company You Keep
You, dear self-obsessed readers, must surround yourself, as President Agent Orange does with sycophants, acolytes, and yes-men. With their support, your delusional beliefs can take on the air of gospel truth that much faster and with that much more vigor.
Take our Dear Trump’s first official lie as president, which was about the size of the crowd at his inauguration. This was followed by Sean Spicer’s first dancing-as-fast-as-he-can routine in the White House Press Briefing room.
“Spicer’s job would be defined by his willingness to back up Trump’s fictions and, when this failed, to deflect, distract, and confuse,” write E.J. Dionne, Norman Ornstein, and Thomas E. Mann in One Nation Under Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet-Deported.
The Wellness Lesson for You: Your self-misleading is only as good as the fellow liars you use to cushion your experience of reality. Find people who are invested in supporting your version of events. Pay them, if need be.
When All Else Fails
If nothing else is working, it’s time to panic. This is not a drill. Drop everything, figuratively and literally, and make for the hills. Run. That’s right–run, don’t walk, away from this annoying pest called, “The Truth.” When the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feel of your outer environment won’t conform to your wishes, just bolt. God gave you two legs–now use ’em! Of course, you have to run somewhere, don’t you, though? We want you to run to any place that appeals to you. Set up shop there and get to the business of constructing the truth–the one you want to believe. That’s all there is.
Also: Three cosmetic surgeries the Alt-community must know about,
Until next time, dear SYRW readers, go forth and be well, whatever you want that to mean.
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© 2018 Akbar Khan
