The Parallel Universes of America

Trump is not blind to reality; he just understands that it’s not important, which is not unrelated to the fact that he was a reality TV star. Reality TV shows, in reality, are scripted, or the narratives are sculpted from what was captured on camera. What shapes human history is not reality but narrative, which is a human reality that many Democrats don’t seem to understand.

In the past, history was written by the winners. What actually happened has never been particularly important; it’s how the events were interpreted. The fragmentation of the media made it possible in recent decades to have multiple narratives dominating the opinions of subgroups without ever converging, as in parallel universes.

Let’s take the 2020 election as an example. Democrats might rejoice in the fact that the final count of votes would force Trump to confront the reality and his “lies” (or narratives) but that would not happen. Millions of Republicans would simply narrate this event in history as a “stolen election.” It doesn’t matter how much investigation is done to prove there was no widespread fraud; what matters to human existence is the narrative that explains the observed phenomenon.

The key thing to remember here is that scientific or mathematical explanation is only one of many narratives we use to manage our realities. This is the part that most many on the Left have a hard time accepting. To them, science is the absolute truth, the words of God, that we humans have been looking for in our whole history, by which we can resolve all disagreements and determine the “true” winners once and for all. But scientific truths are constantly evolving. What used to be true yesterday will no longer be true tomorrow. Yet, they cling to them and think they are being rational.

Many on the Right have never felt that science can dictate their truths. For the most part, the traditional concept of God still determines the truth for them. It’s like Democrats think we are playing poker whereas Republicans think we are playing blackjack with the same deck of cards.

The number of votes is not what matters; it’s the narrative that determines the winner.

Democrats’ narrative is that the rise of Trumpism is caused by the stupidity of uneducated, ignorant rural Americans. The past four years were an “apocalypse” creared by these fascists and white supremacists. That’s the narrative of the Left.

The number of votes is not what we humans would regard as a “truth”; it’s only a piece of data. What we call “truth” is always interpretive. It is, therefore, inevitably malleable, and multiple versions can coexist. The Left want only one truth, but those days are over. There is no “mainstream media” anymore that can convince the entire population with one dominant narrative or “truth.” Everyone is listening to different narratives and truths. Trump knows it. We should not underestimate his intuitive understanding of “reality.” Scientific God is now dead.