In Denial in America Now

There’s a very apt American expression for the current position in the USA: IN DENIAL. This means not just denying one or two true facts on certain occasions, but living in a state of denial about a situation of some significance for your own life and those of others. The Germans have a great word for this that says exactly what it is: Lebenslüge or life-lie, i.e. a life based upon a lie that infects every part that life. However, we’re now learning about a form of being in denial that goes even further than that, in fact, one that takes it as far as you possibly can. I’m not talking about those mild cases who are simply continuing as before as if nothing had changed. It’s plain that some of them know all they’re doing is keeping up appearances; an activity that helps maintain the popular delusion they recognize for what it is. Their collusion in this process is the thing they’re really in denial about. However, for the hardcore cases it’s a completely different ball game, because their gripe is not with certain real world events, but with the real world, period. Their goal is a wholesale substitution of “alternative facts” for reality. I’m not comparing them morally with the most extreme 20th century authoritarian regimes – left or right – that attempted this trick, but I am pointing out that some of the same psychological mechanisms are involved (see Losing Reality by Robert Jay Lifton for more on this). It’s hard to imagine how they could succeed in their project for any length of time or to any great extent, but so many people are involved in this thing and it’s hard to imagine them all accepting – at some point – that the game is finally up. Surely, in-denial-groups will continue to reject the real world out of hand and clinging together if only not to feel alone in the face of reality. In a virtual space of their own they could realize their goal in a kind of parallel universe and a lost world far removed enough from reality to be inviolable. I’m not sure that I like that idea, but it would be preferable to the present situation.

For another take on this battle between the people of the United States of Fantasy and the American Reality Based Community see this brilliant story by Bruno Macaes in the New York Times of 12th November 2020:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/opinion/donald-trump-reality.html

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