What You Think Defines Reality in America’s Brave New World
By NBP Editorial Board | October 16, 2018, 9:56 EDT
For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
To me, it is a prison.
— Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2; William Shakespeare
The circus spectacle of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation brought out the very worst in America – an America where every single act or thought is now politicized. The Democrats – moderate, left, and far left – united to smear and destroy an honorable man. They sought to use the energy of the #MeToo movement to prevent a conservative judge from being confirmed as a U.S. Supreme Court justice, and in doing so, were ready and willing to obliterate anyone who stood in the way. Fascist tactics of intimidation, public shaming, and violence were evident throughout the confirmation process. And the mainstream media was the willing handmaiden of the Democrats.
It was all painful and depressing. What has happened to our country? The ideological civil war in America reached new heights in the Kavanaugh confirmation process. And there seems no end to this split in the American body politic.
What was remarkable was the insistence by the Democrats that facts don’t matter. All that matters is what you believe. If you think that something is true, it is true. Perception is reality.
Shakespeare illustrated this approach to life in Hamlet’s dialogue with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern four centuries ago. When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern protest to Hamlet that they are not being sent to prison, Hamlet contradicts them by saying that since he believes that all Denmark is a prison, it is, in fact, a prison.
This is exactly what happened when Christine Blasey Ford could produce no corroborating evidence or witnesses for her charges – even from the four supposed witnesses who could not even remember the party where the sexual assault was supposed to have occurred. The foundations of our legal system go back almost 4,000 years to the Torah (the Pentateuch) when, in the Judeo-Christian worldview, there is the presumption of innocence in the court of law. Moses, whose statue adorns the federal Supreme Court building in Washington, also wrote that there was the necessity of two or more witnesses in order to convict someone. Imagine the chaos in the American judicial system if one can be convicted on the testimony of just one accuser and no other corroborating evidence!
But the Democrats, in their drive for political power at all costs, are ready and willing to abandon the presumption of innocence and of due process. We have arrived at a frightening inflection point in America.
If the Democrats, about 50 percent of the nation, have already arrived at Hamlet’s approach whereby mere perception is enough to convict someone, it is a brave new world indeed. Thus, it is all the more important that the Democratic Party not be allowed to grasp power in the November elections. That should only happen after they have they have regained their senses.