State Constructed Reality

The Russians have lived with a state-constructed reality for hundreds of years. Under the influence of the Republican Party, the United States is now experiencing what that feels like.

Putin creates a narrative to serve his purpose. The Soviets did too. So also did the Czars. Facts do not matter. The public record does not matter. What matters is the Story. Naive people consume the narrative like so much cotton candy. It is reinforced everywhere by media controlled by Putin.

What First Channel or Russia 24 is to Putin, and what Pravda was to the Soviets, Fox News is to the Republican Party. The story Fox News (and lesser brands) spins seduce the naive and the simple.

The GOP story cannot be refuted. It cannot be challenged. It creates its own "facts." It creates its own think-tanks and experts and advocates who get interviewed on more traditional channels. The story is as consistent as it is self-referential. Those who live in the world of the Story, see nothing else.

The Russians came to this practice honestly. It is embedded deeply in Russian culture. It comes from the elaborate ritual and iconography of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is itself a constructed reality centered on a certain framing of the story of Jesus that coopts the gospel in support of the Emperor/Czar/Party Secretary/President.

It begins with Theodosis (4th Century) who was the last Emperor of the Roman Empire before it split between East and West. He was the first Emperor to openly and unapologetically use Christian themes to consolidate and advance his political power. His hammer was the Council of Nicea. His nail was every person, every community, who could not in good conscience consent to the new orthodoxy.

What was "new" was not the ideas. These had been formulating and had been in discussion for over 300 years. What was new was the authority (and muscle) of the State to enforce this orthodoxy on the culture of Rome and Constantinople and all points in between.

Institution-bearers in the church celebrate Theodosis as a champion of Christian faith. Prophetic voices in the church grieve Theodosis. Did Christ transform Theodosis? Or, did Theodosis transform Christ?

More recently Post-Modernism defines a school of epistemology that asserts that all of reality is internally constructed without an external reference. It is all ritual and iconography all the way down.

There is no objectivity. There is no world "outside" the mind of the perceiver. All that exists is the Story, a narrative that is disconnected from any check or limit anchored in evidence-based reality.

The chief antagonist to Post-Modernism has been and continues to be Science. Science claims to say something true about the world outside of our minds. Science shakes its fist in the face of Post-Modernism and says, "There are limits set by reality beyond which the construction of your imagination may not go."

What is the proof of this? Satellites, Smart Phones, and Google Maps. If there was no there, there, as Post-Modernism claims, all of us would be lost on an imaginary highway that directed us to anywhere our fancy wanted us to go, but our bodies would never arrive.

We are now engaged in conceptual combat.

On one side are the Post-Moderns: The Republican Party, the American Evangelicals, Fox News and the lesser media. They deny science: Climate change is an "inconvenient truth". Evolution undermines the controlling authority of Evangelical pastors. Abortion is baby-killing. They embrace Trump and his lies because lies are not lies. They are simply Trump's narrative. ("He was joking." "He doesn't mean what he says." "He is a straight talker.")

On the other side are Evidenced-Based Realists. We reject the narrative of Trump and the GOP not because we lost the election, but because it does not square with reality. The GOP attack on the economy. It's dismantling of Medicaid and Medicare. It's assault on the Middle Class, the Working Class, and the Poor has REAL world consequences. How do we know? We look at the evidence.

But evidence is irrelevant to Trump and the GOP. This is what makes them so dangerous.

Kick the rock Sam Johnson, break your bones, But cloudy cloudy is the stuff of stones.

We milk of the cow of the world and when we do, We whisper in her ear, "You're not true."