Defend Reality, Slap a Republican

 We have a problem with reality in this country. In the the post-Trump era, facts are downright unwelcome among many of our citizens if they don’t fit their preconceived world view. Instead of changing the worldview to fit the facts, citizens dispense with the facts, preserving their world view. We are left to chart our course by what, astrology? 

This hostility to facts thrives among the COVID deniers, the anti-vaxxers and the “Goop” devotees. And of course Trump’s Republican Party. It’s there in Steve Bannon’s strategy to flood the zone with bullshit. It’s there in the GOP’s insistence that Trump won the election in spite of the mountain range of evidence to the contrary. It’s there in their resistance to a commission to investigate the events of January sixth, when we all saw a right-wing mob storm the Capitol building. A mob now being transformed through the magic of GOP hindsight into a bunch of hyperactive tourists instead of the terrorists they were. 

This eagerness to put party above reality is unpatriotic. Bullshit and hysteria are not the best foundation on which to build. A country cannot have contempt for reality and expect to prosper. That connection between reality and patriotism prompted the image of the famous poster by James Montgomery Flagg on which this cartoon is based. The entire predicament makes me want to slap a Republican to bring them around. Maybe it wouldn’t help, but it might make me feel better.