Sharing Realities, Or Nonsense

ONE OF MY FRIENDS, and I have precious few friends these days, made a point to inform me that Michelle Obama is a man, that her husband was born in Kenya, that Jared Kushner is the Antichrist, and that she herself, during the unvaccinated pandemic year of twenty twenty, had no intention of wearing a mask, because she heard and firmly believes that masks force one to inhale one's own carbon "monoxide", and harm one. When I tried to help her with her chemistry and modern history, and to disabuse her of racist notions if not tendencies, she disowned me. She was intent in her alternative realities, could not be disabused, and any future friendship was problematic, as we like to say, becasue I am resolved to tolerate no nonsense, having tolerated it all my life, until recently. Her decision to end our friendship was wise, upon reflection. Another friend bet me a case of imported beer that before the end of twenty twenty one Trump would be back in office, the oval one. I didn't ask how this might happen, to my credit. Presumably he believed that election theft would be proven beyond doubt, and the Supreme Court would kick Biden out and put Trump back in, or something like that. I trust he wasn't relying on another angry capitol-storming mob; that tactic already failed. I'll have to force myself at gunpoint not to try to collect on the wager come January first twenty twenty two, and the best way is to avoid all future contact with this currently delusional former friend. This is the way my friendships end, not with a bang, but a whimper, to quote Eliot, which too few do these days. Another friend disowned me when I told one of our mutual friends that the scientific method is the only way to advance knowledge, that, in esssence, all claims of fact must be accompanied by proof. This was in response to an assertion made by our mutual friend, who also adandoned me when he said that "there are many species of intelligent life in the universe which are genetically related to human beings. My crime? I asked him how he knew this. I can only guess that my comments and questions were too blunt, too direct, insufficiently tactful. Spouting racist claims about Michelle Obama is just normal free speech, it seems; challenge it, and you're gone. Unproven claims about not only the existence but the chromosomes of extraterrestrial beings is fine, evidenly, but must not be questioned or challenged without extreme caution and courtesy. In our United States of Acrimony the conservatives hate masking up, don't trust vaccines or science or expertise of any kind, which they call "elitism", meaning that higher education and post graduate studies are pointless, and consider Covid 19 but another variety of flu. The liberals mask up religiously, vaccinate assiduously, and declare scientific expertise the source of all truth. We the American people are divided into two opposing camps of separate realities, one of which is well armed, angry, and unafriad to bear arms or to skin smokewagons, as they used to say in the wild west. The actual number of camps and conflicting realities is much greater, probably equal to the total number of people in the United States; placing them in two categories is purely arbitrary, an attempt to simplify and categorize, like Aristotle. All realities, whether unprovn or nonsensical, are created equal in the land of individual liberty, where one's fredom to embrace idiocy may not be infringed. Lost amid the tnd talk is a simple fact; that without at least some fundamental shared reality throughout society, civilizaton cannot endure.