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White to move and mate in two #526 - where American exceptionalism gets you only so far... [1]

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Date: 2024-06-23  

By my reckoning, the more or less solidly reality-based are a minority, maybe a third of us but almost certainly fewer than half. Only a third of us, for instance, believe with some certainty that CO2 emissions from cars and factories are the main cause of Earth's warming. Only a third are sure the tale of creation in Genesis isn't a literal, factual account. Only a third strongly disbelieve in telepathy and ghosts.

Two-thirds of Americans believe that "angels and demons are active in the world." At least half are absolutely certain Heaven exists, ruled over by a personal God — not some vague force or universal spirit but a guy. More than a third of us believe not only that global warming is no big deal but that it's a hoax perpetrated by a conspiracy of scientists, government, and journalists.

A third believe that our earliest ancestors were humans just like humans today; that the government has, in league with the pharmaceutical industry, hidden evidence of "natural" cancer cures; that extraterrestrials have recently visited (or now reside on) Earth.

A quarter believe vaccines cause autism and that Donald Trump won the popular vote in the 2016 general election. A quarter believe that our previous president was (or is?) the Antichrist. A quarter believe in witches. Remarkably, no more than one in five Americans believe the Bible consists mainly of legends and fables—around the same number who believe that "the media or the government adds secret mind-controlling technology to television broadcast signals" and that U.S. officials were complicit in the 9/11 attacks.

When I say that a third believe X or a quarter believe Y, it's important to understand that those are different thirds and quarters of the U.S. population. Various fantasy constituencies overlap and feed each other — for instance, belief in extraterrestrial visitation and abduction can lead to belief in vast government cover-ups, which can lead to belief in still more wide-ranging plots and cabals, which can jibe with a belief in an impending Armageddon involving Jesus. Fantasyland operates like the European Union, a collection of disparate domains of various sizes overlaid with a Schengen Area that allows citizens of any of the dozens of lands to travel freely among the others, the way Hungarians and Maltese can visit France or Iceland at will.

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