Donald Trump and the Trumpism movement are not just fighting a war against democracy, anyone who is not a white Christian male, and basic human decency, they are also fighting something else.

Reality.

A shared reality is the ultimate enemy of Trump and the rest of the far-right. The more people who have a shared reality that’s based on, well, reality, the worse for it is Trump. That is the theory behind the strategy known as Flood the Zone with Shit, which is designed to throw so much misinformation into regular media and social media that regular Americans will not know what is real and what is not.

Freeing yourself from the shackles of reality might enable you to ignore things like facts, telling the truth, and making any sense, but the fact remains a nation of thousands of perceived realities is not great for democracy. It is not great for public health, as we saw during the pandemic. And it is not great for mental health, as more and more it seems like a significant chunk of America’s population is outright delusional.

I theorize that this has spread a bit beyond Trumpers. For example, Confirmation bias has become its own pandemic. People freak-rage if you say “what if there’s much more evidence that what you think is wrong and very little evidence that what you think is actually right.” And that leads me to the Trump verdict.

I believe that Trump’s supporters are not handling the results well not just over the fact that their leader was found guilty by a jury of 12 regular ol’ Americans, who spend hours listening to evidence presentations and testimony from a variety of key figures in the case. I believe that both Trump and their supporters are not doing a great job handling a situation where they have to prove their beliefs with facts. You are seeing it now, where they can’t seem to decide whether Trump’s conviction will win him the election or is the most unfair thing ever done to anyone ever.

Many beliefs held by you, me, and everyone else would not withstand close scrutiny. Take, for instance, the conviction shared by fans of every major sports league that ESPN harbors a bias against their favorite team. If tasked with proving this claim before an impartial jury, they would soon realize that anger, shouting “everyone knows it’s true,” and pouting does not constitute evidence. And in that New York court, that was pretty much MAGA and Trumpism put on trial, and it did not withstand close scrutiny.

That’s the problem with living in an alternate reality. Sometimes, you run right into the brick wall that is actual reality, and it does not work out very well. On a personal note, I am dealing with a family situation that has its roots in that concept, but to explain that would require a 75,000 word blog post and a possible Netflix limited series option.

The problem, of course, with the consequences of trying to create your own reality is sometimes those consequences are not limited to the deluded but end up doing as much or more harm to the sane. This is why reality (Trump is a convicted felon) tells us we should Vote Against the Crook, It’s Important.

The last word goes to the birthday boy, Prince, who would have been 66 today.