Reimagining Reality

By Peter Pavarini

We continuously hear that the way to solve any problem is simply to “reimagine” its cause. You know, the solution to rising crime rates is to reimagine policing; the solution to failing schools is to reimagine K-12 education; and the solution to just about everything else is to reimagine the underpinnings of the American system.

The word “reimagine” first appeared around 1825 (a century and half before John Lennon penned his iconic song “Imagine”), but the frequency of its use today should make even the “most unrepentant jargonist wince with awkwardness.”[i] The expression has become the favorite of Leftists. That alone should tell you what you need to know about its vapidity.

Nothing Gets Solved by Reimagination Alone.

In the real world, nothing gets solved or improved by reimagination alone.  Fixing a problem takes time and effort – something politicians and pundits often overlook. Nor does “reimagining” imply that what’s being reimagined will be any better than what we already have. Only one thing is certain. The reimagined result may be different but not necessarily in a good way.

It’s also important to know who’s doing the reimagining. The spark of creativity is a gift not everyone is born with. Steve Jobs reimagined the personal computer with universal consequences. Had that job been left to IBM’s engineers, we might still be carrying our mobile telephones in shoulder bags and building additions onto our houses for the family’s mainframe computer.

There’s also the question of political bias.  To a Leftist, any novel idea or explanation offered by a right-of-center American is immediately labeled a “conspiracy theory”.[ii] Once a somewhat neutral term (back when we only had to worry about Bigfoot and Area 51), the conspiracy theory pejorative has become a phrase that the government and media routinely use to suppress opposition. [iii] The Biden Administration’s recent report, “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism”[iv] declares that enhancing trust in government requires “finding ways to counter the influence and impact of dangerous conspiracy theories.” Conspiracy theories have certainly multiplied but not any faster than the number of government lies and cover-ups. Coming from the White House, rhetoric like this only means one thing – challenges to the ruling elite will not be tolerated.

The Erosion of Trust in Government.

Trust in the federal government began to erode after the Warren Commission issued what historians now acknowledge was a whitewash of the Kennedy assassination. If an inquisition needs to seal its official records for 75 years (after everyone involved has died), there is reason to suspect a cover-up of some kind.

But it’s the CIA that should be credited for popularizing the current use of the term “conspiracy theory”. In 2014, the agency admitted in a heavily redacted report that it had withheld certain “incendiary” information from the Warren Commission.[v] To deflect any blame it deserved for the Warren Commission’s bogus findings, the CIA launched one of the most successful propaganda campaigns of all time.[vi]

My own personal experience with conspiracy theories began when I served as government lawyer during the Carter years. By handling hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests, I learned how the federal government systematically shaped public opinion by selectively withholding key official documents. Later, during the summer of 1996, when I first heard of the crash of TWA flight 800 off Long Island and the subsequent FBI and NTSB investigations, I began to understand how previously trustworthy federal agencies had frequently betrayed the American public for political reasons. The basis of my first novel, The Test of a Man, stems from those experiences.

Is Government Entitled to the Benefit of the Doubt?

To be sure, even in a free society, we generally owe the government the benefit of the doubt when it comes to matters of national security and other complex issues, especially when nobody has all the facts.  However, presumed respect for those in authority does not equate to passive acceptance of Orwellian thought control. If the First Amendment stands for anything, Americans are entitled to voice opposing viewpoints even when they are not popular.  In a very short period of time, we have gone from the government accusing conspiracies theorists of mental illness[vii] to jailing the 1/6 protestors who stormed the Capitol as political prisoners because they had the audacity to believe that the 2020 election had been stolen (just as Hillary Clinton and Stacy Abrams did following their respective losses in 2016 and 2018).

Not only does it now appear that conspiracy theory-based charges will give FBI instigators a “get out of jail free” card for their role in the events of January 6, 2021, but there is now incontrovertible evidence that the Wuhan lab leak conspiracy theory was used offensively to deny Donald Trump a second term in office.[viii]

Some of the Lies We Are Being Asked to Believe.

In any political war of words, sloganeering and name-calling is to be expected, I suppose. But if only one side of an argument gets to accuse the other of being wing-nuts or worse, it seems fair to point out how detached from reality the accusers are. For instance,

• Dr. Fauci knowingly lied about the effectiveness of masks
• Scientists lied about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID
• CDC, Fauci and others lied about COVID coming from a Chinese wet market
• The corporate media refuse to cover widespread anti-Semitic attacks in the US
• Fulton County election officials knowingly lied about a water main break so they could stop counting ballots until morning of 11/4/2020
• The ACLU said absolutely nothing about Dr. Suess books being banned
• MLK, Jr.’s admonition to judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin is now considered “racist”
• The US Military says it is more concerned about the nonexistent threat of global warming and the barely existent threat of white supremacy than the real threat of China, Russia and Iran
• School boards and teacher unions demand that Critical Race Theory be taught to students over the objections of the overwhelming majority of parents
• Non-historians demand that students be taught America started in 1619 with the importation of slaves not when we declared our independence from Great Britain in 1776
• Blue state governors shutter churches and schools but leave open alcohol and cannabis stores during a pandemic
• The Biden Administration encourages unaccompanied small children to cross the border illegally despite the dangers of child-trafficking
• The Democrats’ infrastructure bill calls for billions to be spent on charging stations for electric cars but nothing for the power plants needed to supply the energy for them
• The RINO and Never Trump leadership in Washington somehow convinced themselves that America would be better off with Biden in the White House than Trump
• The NCAA acts as though an athlete born as a boy has no advantage over one born as a girl once the erstwhile boy declares his female identity
• Voter integrity laws in states narrowly won by Biden are somehow Jim Crow 2.0 when they are in fact more permissive than those in many blue states
• Progressives believe crime will subside once we defund or otherwise cripple law enforcement
• The US Supreme Court punted rather than tackle the Nation’s greatest Constitutional crisis since the Civil War, apparently on the belief that others were in a better position to determine the legitimacy of the executive and legislative branches of government.

A Brainwashed Public Can Be Made to Believe Anything.

Needless to say, the list goes on. A brainwashed public can be made to believe anything when they ascribe to no moral code or set of principles other than to make themselves happy.  For instance, as the wellness section of the Washington Post puts it, you can manage these troubled times by trying “guided imagery” a/k/a reimagining.  “Visualizing positive outcomes can help clamp down on the intense emotions that might make you more vulnerable to harmful conspiracy theories.”[ix]

Under this soft form of totalitarianism, Americans are expected to engage in 1984-style “doublethink”. During the past 18 months it has become clear that an “unholy alliance of tech, media, academic, corporate and political powers … [stands] eager to punish anyone brash enough to express un-woke opinions above a furtive whisper.)[x]

Today, the construct of social reality (i.e., “my truth” vs. “your truth”) serves as justification to deny the existence of any objective reality. You are entitled to reimagine any reality you wish so long as it conforms with the ever-expanding Progressive agenda. Of course, since everything is now “relative”, Progressive thought is not fixed but remains malleable as political needs require.

Just remember, Winston, “Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia”.[xi]

---

[i] A.K.Walker, “2019’s Top Jargon Nonsense Word is ‘Reimagine’”, www.killdozer.mediuandm.com (9-27-2019).

[ii] Wikipedia defines “conspiracy theory” as an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation when other explanations are more probable. The term has a negative connotation, implying that the appeal to a conspiracy is based on prejudice or insufficient evidence A conspiracy theory is not simply about a conspiracy; instead, it refers to a hypothesized conspiracy with specific characteristics, such as an opposition to the mainstream consensus among those people (such as scientists or historians) who are qualified to evaluate its accuracy.

[iii] J. Bovard, “The ’Conspiracy Theory’ Charade”, The American Conservative, June 24, 2021.

[iv] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/National-Strategu-for-Countering-Domestic-Terrorism.pdf

[v] https://politico.com/magazine.story/2015/10/jfk-assassination-john-mccone-warren-commission-cia-213197/

[vi] J. Bovard, supra. For entertainment purposes only, I’d recommend the Mel Gibson/Julia Roberts movie “Conspiracy Theory” (1997) about a NYC cabdriver who assembles a grand unified conspiracy theory from listening to talk radio.

[vii] R. Hoftadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1965).

[viii] Another example of conspiracy theory claims being used to defuse criticism of the “Great Reset” is discussed from a leftwing perspective in the BBC’s “What is the Great Reset- and how did it get hijacked by conspiracy theorists?” November 22. 2020.  See also, K. Rogers & J. Mithani, “Why People Fall for Conspiracy Theories”, www.five-thirty-eight.com (June 15, 2021).

[ix] https;//www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/why-uncertain-times-make-us-vulnerable-to-conspiracy-theories -and-how-to-protect-yourself/2020/10/16/21becf08-0f1a-11eb-8a35-237ef1eb2ef7_story.html 

[x] R. Kirk, “Are You Living by Lies?”, American Thinker, June 26, 2021.

[xi] George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four.