RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – When we put our observable reality on the shelf to enjoy flying ‘faster than a speeding bullet’ with ‘Superman’ or enter Hogwarts with Harry Potter, what we are doing is suspending our disbelief, turning off our normal observable reality to engage, however temporarily, with another.
The suspension of disbelief is the willingness we all have to happily accept an alternative reality – in the arts, when we engage with the characters and situation of a play or a novel – in life, when we willingly accept as true, something, we have no rational basis to believe. Many so-called ‘reality’ TV shows fit this bill.
In our modern media-driven universe, flooded with a non-stop cacophony of noise coming from all quarters, it is increasingly difficult to decide what is mainstream reality and what is an alternative. It is hard to forget the infamous interview in 2017 when Trump spokesperson, Kellyanne Conway unbelievably credited “an alternative reality’ when insisting that Trump’s inauguration crowd size was bigger than Obama’s, despite photographs affirming the opposite.
Incidents like this would be easy to laugh off if they were the exception. The problem is that they have become the rule. A significant and growing percentage of the world’s population appears to be willing to throw natural skepticism to the wind and embrace the latest and wildest conspiracy theories and unsupportable promises from politicians. They seem unable to separate the ‘show’ from the reality.
Forbes reports that “Some 88% of people who voted for Trump earlier this month falsely believe Biden did not legitimately win the election, compared to just 2% of Biden voters.”
This high percentage of the more than almost 160 million voters cast accepts, with no evidence whatever, that Joe Biden’s five million vote win over Trump is a fraud.
Many of them also appear to be willing to believe that a cabal of all-powerful evil forces managed, with great secrecy and amazing efficiency, to subvert for its dark purposes, an election which included almost 160 million voters. Making that happen is a great trick if you can do it. It’s the kind 007 has to deal with to keep the world from being taken over by the bad guys.
Articles published by Newsmax, a growing and aggressive rightwing media company competing with Fox to be the voice of so-called populists, like many other sites, solicits readers’ comments. Many are little more than vulgar, semi-literate screeds, viral opportunities for readers to gain their own Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame. But we would be amiss not to listen to what they are saying like this length-edited comment from ‘HeavyMetal61’.
´Democrats stole the 2020 election and you cannot convince me otherwise. Nothing adds up and the obvious discrepancies due to dishonest poll workers, managers and politicians says it all…This election has been a concerted effort by the mainstream media, social media, Democrat politicians, Hollywood, dishonest Democrats, ANTIFA and BLM to cheat the legal system of the USA election.´
Hillary Clinton insensitively labeled these people “deplorables”. Elitist commentators tend to dismiss their opinions as ‘trailer park’ chatter. That’s too easy. It is obvious that this is a serious and dangerous misreading of public sentiment.
What’s principally on the minds of this large cohort is deep fear, fear that their world, however uncomfortable now is changing and they are powerless to reverse the direction. Any promise to give them comfort is gladly embraced, even if that means suspending disbelief and signing on to an easy-to-understand, cult-like reality that ignores the pandemic and blames everything bad on the establishment. It doesn’t take very long for these endlessly lies to be accepted as gospel ‘truths’.
As the ‘NY Times’ described the allure of the cult’s beliefs: “The skeleton key of Global Cabal theory unlocks all the world’s mysteries and offers me entree into an exclusive circle — the group of people who understand. It makes me smarter and wiser than the average person and even elevates me above the intellectual elite and the ruling class: professors, journalists, politicians. I see what they overlook — or what they try to conceal.“ It’s very tempting.
Obama won the largest majority of any Democrat since 1964. As Lexington in the ‘Economist’ wrote: “’Race doesn’t matter’ chanted the crowds that celebrated his victories. Yet two years later, Tea Party protesters were waving banners of Mr. Obama with a bone through his nose. The proportion of Republicans who said he was Muslim soared – to around half by the end of his presidency. Whereupon millions of those same rural supporters elected the main spreader of racist lies about Mr. Obama to be his successor.”
Changing fortunes here are not that different than those in Gringoland. Reported ‘The Financial Times’: “In a poll by ‘Datafolha’ published last month, 37 per cent of respondents gave the Bolsonaro administration a positive approval rating, up from 32 per cent in June and the highest since the former army captain took office in January last year.” Like Trump, before he became a ‘loser’, Bolsonaro is revving up for the 2022 elections.
The oft-repeated lies from Trump and his acolytes that the US election had been ‘fixed’, that the Democrats are socialists or worse, communists, and that if elected we’ll have apocalypse now, are likely to be repeated here, especially as the highly efficient Brazilian electronic voting system has come under Bolsonaro’s attack.
However much we may think belief systems are ‘everything’, money often talks louder than words. Buying votes through economic handouts can trump beliefs.
Research indicates that much of Bolsonaro’s recent rise in popularity can be directly traced to his generous pandemic-driven cash handout program for the poor and the promise of more in a new program. Trump’s insistence that the pre-election $1.200 Economic Stimulus checks sent out to almost every American accompanied by a self-congratulatory letter and his name on the actual checks was hardly a turnoff. When the election came around, many voters didn’t forget to say thank you. You don’t have to like Trump or Bolsanaro (or even know what they stand for) if they are putting food on your table. You just want it to keep coming.
Society, not just in Brazil or the US but throughout the world, has entered a period of enormously difficult transition. To survive it, it will be much easier to suspend disbelief and grab hold of the simple answers. The problem will be to know whether they come from false prophets or from real ones.
Author’s Note: For my fellow gringos, despite our pandemic isolation and a world streaming with difficulties, we still have a lot to be grateful for. Not least is that we can freely celebrate a national holiday dedicated to giving thanks for all that we have and for the generosity that lies at the heart of Thanksgiving.