written 16 October 2022
published 23 October 2022
For decades I have had a beer with dinner. I like ales, and since we moved to Ukiah, my choice has been the Anderson Valley Boont Ale, buying several cases at a time. Last month I went to the grocery store for more, looking for the familiar six pack of bottles, and couldn't find it! After searching several times, I saw a small package of Boont in cans. The brewery has been transitioning from glass bottles to aluminum cans in order to save on shipping breakage and weight, and they finally shifted Boont to cans. I grabbed some, even though they seemed very small compared to the bottles. As I walked toward the checkout, I looked at the package and thought I read they were 6 ounce cans, yet they were priced the same as the 12 ounce bottles. I put them back and went to another store, finding the same situation. Outrageous! I wrote the brewery an email in complaint.
Some weeks later, my wife had bought some, and I poured one into a pint glass, filling it 3/4 full. What! I looked at the can and discovered they were 12 ounce cans! Seeing the cans were smaller than the bottles, I believed the content was smaller as well. That belief affected what I read on the packaging, and I was off and running. I was seeing what I believed. I wrote another email to the brewery apologizing for being an opinionated fool.
Fortunately, I was able to experience reality when it appeared in the glass. No one was harmed by my excursion into fantasy, other than my own sense of self-esteem. But this kind of mistake is very common, and can have disastrous consequences.
For example, Alex Jones, of Infowars fame, recently lost a defamation case and was fined $965 million. Almost a decade ago, a 20 year old man shot and killed 20 first and second graders and 6 teachers in Newton, Connecticut. At his recent trial, Jones stated that as a gun owner, he couldn't believe that another gun owner would do such a thing, so he decided it must be a fake. Using his Internet platform, he acted on that belief and broadcast that it was all staged. He accused the parents of staging the killings, using actors as fake victims, in order to make gun owners look bad. This was all just a liberal plot.
Jones published names and addresses of the parents, and some of his followers began harassing them, sending death threats, and pictures of dead children to show what they really looked like. This has gone on for a decade, because one man saw what he believed, and never really opened to let reality correct his error, while making millions off collective outrage by peddling products on his show.
Another example is Donald Trump, who was raised to believe that the world consists of killers and losers. Trump believes he is NEVER a loser, so the election in 2020 had to have been stolen from him by fraud. The latest January 6th hearing laid out in detail that Trump prepared to stay in office long before the election, and claimed victory before all the votes were even counted. As the confirmation of his loss became apparent, he doubled down of the lie of a fraud, despite contrary reports from his staff. He went to court 62 times and lost. He pressured Republican official in several states to overturn the election results and they refused. He orchestrated fake slates of electoral delegates and they were rejected. He tried to fire the head of the Judicial department and appoint a pliable lackey, but was thwarted by threat of mass resignations in the department. He pressured Vice President Pence to break the law and challenge a few states electors, but Pence refused. Finally, he called on the armed mob at the Capitol to overthrow the government to stop the certification of the vote, but it was eventually put down. In addition, he conned millions of dollars from supporters who believed what they were told. All this because Trump couldn't face that he lost.
This insanity continues. Half the Republicans running for office are election deniers. In a few weeks we will see if the majority of the voters are tired of this authoritarian circus.
