There is Only One Reality
There is Only One Reality
America is a land of wildly diverse values and priorities. While we’ve always had robust debates about the solutions to our problems, we collectively accepted scientific reality as the basis for our discussions. Hucksters and liars who have tried to game our public dialogue for private gain were taken down by a skeptical, well-informed press.
Not anymore.
Americans are now inundated with stories designed to stir tribal instincts and inflame emotions. Critically-vetted reporting is losing out. On television and streaming outlets, people imitating real journalists mouth carefully-crafted scripts from behind the “news desk.” They nod and smile in interviews where fantastical statements go unchallenged. Evidence-based sources of information, such as science and the courts, are frequently delegitimized, undermining the ability to hold public debate based on shared facts.
This new construct has allowed Donald Trump, Republican leaders and their accomplices in right-wing media to amass profit and power. Knowing their pronouncements will not be examined, their fabrications become ever more brazen and absurd. “Fact checks” come too late — if at all — often by different organizations and presented to different audiences.
After a New York jury considered the evidence and found Trump guilty of 34 felonies, Republicans responded with a nonstop flood of widely-reported accusations that the case was “rigged” and a “sham.” Despite the current prosecution of Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Henry Cuellar (D-TX), and the recent conviction of Hunter Biden, Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) made the outlandish claim that the court system “hunts Republicans while protecting Democrats.”
Similar tactics and subterfuge are used to attack climate science. Trump insisted that the ice caps were growing and told the California Secretary of Natural Resources in 2018 that there was no need to worry about more forest fires in our warming world. “It’ll start getting cooler, you just watch.” We did watch, and the reality is that 2023 became the hottest year ever, and now 2024 is on track to exceed that.
Wanting to sound scientific to bolster his lies, Trump just makes up numbers, knowing he won’t be challenged (warning to young people: don’t try this on your middle-school teacher). In 2022, he stated “the ocean will rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 200 to 300 years.” Last April he changed that to 1/100th of an inch over the next 350 years, but then said in June that sea level will rise by one-eighth of an inch over the next 400 years.
These predictions were absurd inventions, as their inconsistency with each other demonstrates. They were also contrary to all available evidence. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average sea level has risen by one-eighth of an inch per year since 1993. And across the American South, sea levels have risen about six inches since 2010 (you can watch a recent high-tide flood in North Carolina).
Disdain for empirical reality was also on pathetic display when Trump used a Sharpie to alter a map of the projected track of Hurricane Dorian — a picture he then broadcasted to the world from the Oval Office. The map represented a remarkable triumph of science, combining satellite measurements, meteorological models and cartography to produce in near real-time an illustration that showed millions of Americans how to stay safe. #Sharpiegate, as it came to be known, was called a fundamental attack on science and “a defilement of a sacred trust.” (Perhaps in keeping with his narcissism, this map was one of the things Trump took illegally from the White House.)
This onslaught of deceit, amplified by “imitation journalists” and social media algorithms, has resulted in Americans being unable to distinguish truth from fiction. Anywhere from 6-20% of Americans think that the moon landings were faked, and 30% think the 2020 election was rigged. This is debasing our discussions of virtually every public policy, and it is putting lives at risk.
Trump told a frightened country that the coronavirus would “go away” when the weather warmed along with multiple other misleading statements. Tens of thousands of Americans died as a result. If he regains the White House, his denial of climate change will bring about unnecessary death and destruction for generations. As Chris Hayes noted, the Republican climate-change policy is essentially “to hurl ourselves into the fire.”
Tragically, the independent media frequently report on Trump’s fictions as though they represent legitimate points of view rather than ludicrous improvisations. They brand his concoctions as “conservative,” when they’re actually radical. When did rejecting established facts become conservative? The insular nature of our new media ecosystem causes many analysts to just throw up their hands and conclude: “Americans now live in two different realities.”
But as Jon Stewart recently reminded us, there is only one reality. It is constrained by the laws of physics and thermodynamics, which predict how greenhouse-gas emissions will disrupt our climate. John Adams said, when defending British soldiers on trial for the Boston Massacre, “facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
Indeed, heat, drought, flooding and other undeniable climatic changes are making it harder for people to accept the nonsense offered by Republicans through right-wing media outlets. People are beginning to realize they have been deceived (just as occurred with the linkage between smoking and cancer), and that climate change is not only already underway but on track to seriously impact the very systems on which future generations will depend.
We must insist on a return to reason and logic. Speak up, write your newspaper or your elected officials. Subscribe to fact-based media outlets to rebuild their power. Vote for measures that will fortify the institutions and government agencies that are critical to helping us make wise choices. And, most importantly, actively support candidates who speak the truth and answer questions with integrity.
A lot of damage has already been done. How much more will be up to us.