Veryretired made an apt comment:

“But it makes perfect sense. For decades, the progressive, deconstructionist, revisionist, post-modernist intellectual gurus have been telling us that reality is perception, the medium is the message, that everything is subjective, that history is infinitely malleable to current academic fads, that issues don’t actually matter, just how they’re “framed”, and on and on.”

I also found the piece that the Gaghdad Bob links to to be very informative on the mindset behind such thinking as it filters more obviously into the political realm.

Democrats, liberals and left leaning thinkers are not the only ones that fall into this sort of “magical thinking” mindset, which is one of the terms used by Jean Piaget in describing the stages of pre-adult or immature cognitive functioning, but history seems to reveal that when such left leaning magical thinking comes to fruition in real life policies, there are horrific consequences on a much greater scale than would be available to, for example, old-school small governement conservatives. After all, didn’t Joseph Stalin kill millions??

I am, myself, inclined to think that might not be entirely accurate – though as the quote is presented, it doesn’t even mean what the “reality based” people think it does, since it doesn’t appear to be talking about “reality” vs. “fantasy”, but about how political action changes what is real in terms of world politics.

The reasons that analysis is less popular as a cheap joke or blog subhead are left as an exercise to the reader.

On Topic: Discussing politics with a progressive acquaintance, I was assured that “the country” was not only really secretly to the Left of the Republican party (which I do believe, though I don’t think it’s nearly as far left of the Republican center as the Democrats do), but even to the Left of the Democrats, and that Progressives will be controlling the government come November.

My disbelief that anyone could seriously propose that can be inferred.

This does not mean the same thing as “Liberals have a well known reality bias.”

Instead, reality actually transforms itself into whatever liberals believe.

Clear indication that they feel that the medium, rather than the message, is the determinent of success.

Wishful thinking, especially when the film showed other people were taking up law enforcement, as well, following the example of the mysterious Bronson.

We were seriously worried about urban crime at that point.

I want to get some “…because I live in a fantasy world” stickers to put next to them.

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

John Lennon

The fantasy-reality, on the other hand, wants to create a world in which certain things simply have not happened. The Democrats did not lose, Bush did not become President, the people did not vote the way they voted and so on. I am sure there is a medical term for this.

Most artists, being lefties, create art (movies, songs) that depicts the world as they wish it to be.
Does this mean that all lefties are unrealistic ? I don’t know. I tend to beleive this is so, but the art items cited aren’t conclusive proof.

PS Elated to see you poli-blogging again, health and inspiration permitting.

“Dirty Harry” represented the conservative wish for rogue cops to break the rules in a desperate attempt to establish some street justice during an era when the political and criminal justice systems dithered in a relatively dysfuntional state.

For example, you could say Clint Eastwood represented conservative fantasy-making (Dirty Harry) about fighting back against urban crime and anarchy. If there were more Clint Eastwood’s in Hollywood, you would get more conservative wishful-thinking in our media.

Haven’t we been told that rationalism is a dead end? That the scientific method is just a western construct, no more valid than any other cultural myth? That the populace is endlessly susceptible to advertising, helpless before the manipulation of media forms whose powers overwhelm their minds and create desires where none existed before?

Why be surprised, then, when they believe their own press releases. Don’t like the outcome of an election? Invent your own results. Don’t like the policies approved by a majority of the citizenry? Construct a whole new, imaginary country in which things are done the correct way.

Isn’t their fable every bit as valid as the one presented each night on the news?

I bet you could find a whole bunch of trendy academics who would tell you just that—reality is whatever you want it to be.

Such is the intellectual and moral state of a major actor in the most powerful culture on 21st century Earth—the reality based community.

The term “oxymoron” was invented for just such situations.