Wishful Thinking
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride” goes the old Scottish saying. While all of us spend some time riding wish-horses, it seems to me that those who form entire wish-cavalries live on the ends of the political spectrum. This isn’t “If you build it, they will come”– there’s no actual creation of a ball stadium in a cornfield, it’s just “out there” wishfulness in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Look, I wish I were younger and slimmer and more fit and wealthier. I wish everyone would be nice to me and think as I think. I wish a whole bunch more, but they ain’t going to happen. Wishes are like drugs– they don’t improve anything, they just make you feel better for a while. Same harsh come down afterwards.
On the far left, the current wish-horse is that Israel simply evaporates from the planet and the world goes back to 1916, pre-Balfour. Interestingly enough, some of the most shrill left-wing make common cause with their polar opposite Nazi right-wingers and echo the Protocols of the Elders of Zion mythology. After all, why let the absence of fact or consistency get in the way of a good rage?
I shouldn’t even get started on right-wingers, especially those aligned with the Trump-Putin-Orban-Modi axis who crave a strongman who will usher us all back into an age of Father Knows Best (with each of them respectively playing the role of Father). The first clue, vis-à-vis Trump, was the straight-faced introduction of the term “alternative facts”. There is no such thing, an alternative fact is at best simply wishful thinking, more likely simply horse shit, and at worst outright calculated bullshit.
The truth is that facts are hard, life is hard, thinking is hard, making good choices is hard, and being accountable is hard. Wishing away reality doesn’t create an alternative reality, it creates a bad reality.
The world is full of conspiracy theories and wild notions. Fine. If you want to believe the earth is flat, be my guest. Sovereign citizen? Feel free, quit paying your taxes, but also just stop using all the public stuff (roads, hospitals, police services, …) that the rest of us pay for.
Hydroxychloroquine? Go for it, load yourself up, but quit whining when someone else snorts cocaine. You can’t insist on your poison and deny someone else his, can you? And also don’t be surprised if you get a constant craving for oats and an urge to whinney.
I could go on, but you get it. Those who seek your support with a promise of pie in the sky are either (a) fools who believe in simple solutions, or (b) snake oil salesmen who think you’re a fool who will buy what they’re selling.
The antidote for being overwhelmed by purveyors of wishful thinking is the art and skill of critical thinking, an artform disfavored by both right-wing yahoos and left-wing crypto intellectuals for exactly the same reason: it limits their ability to create the world in their own wishful image.
And now it’s up to you.