On Accepting Another's Delusion.

We are living in a world where delusions spread so quickly and are so easily accepted thanks to the power of social media that it is hard to know what is true and what is false, and that may be just the way the world wants us to think.

Take the recent controversy over NFL players kneeling or staying in the locker room during the playing of the National Anthem for example. This type of "virtue signaling" has become a phenomenon that all of the sports networks are fawning over. Sportscasters are afraid to criticize the protesting players, while coaches, owners and teammates, with a few notable exceptions, are joining in,  and I believe a large part of the followers are doing so because of team/herd mentality.

Or is it mob mentality? There is a fine line between herd mentality and the stampede of a mob, and that is a line I hope they do not cross.

The footballers keep telling us that they are not protesting the flag, the country or the National Anthem. They claim that they are the true patriots, but when they say this, they are offering up a delusion. I am sorry, but protesting during the National Anthem is not patriotic. Whatever they say it is, it is disrespectful of our military veterans and their sacrifices without which these athletes would be out of a job, working in the salt mines serving under a king or a dictator.

"... keep trying to tell us that protesting the flag and the national anthem is really an expression of patriotism and not of disrespect. It isn’t, and it insults our intelligence to tell us we have to treat it as if it were. It insults OUR dignity as people to tell us we have to see your protests as something other than what they are." - attributed to Brian Troyer.

The delusion that the players' protest is not disrespectful is not the only delusion being spread thanks to the age of mass communication. Think, "the right to choose", "marriage equality", and the transgender nonsense among other things.

William Kilpatrick has more on modern delusions and how they are enforced in his recent piece, "The Normalization of Delusional Thinking" which focuses primarily on the delusion that Islam is a religion of peace,

"...All of a sudden, a significant percentage of our social and intellectual elites have succumbed to the delusion that a girl can be a boy, and a boy can be a girl, or whatever he, she, ne, ze, zir currently desires to be. This is not merely a rebellion against social convention, it’s a rebellion against reality. It’s a rejection of basic biology."

"...There are several parallels here to what has become the standard response to Islam. As with transgenderism, we see an official denial of reality: Islamic terror has nothing to do with Islam, the terrorists (who are only a “handful”) “misunderstand” their faith, Islamic values are just the same as Christian values, and so on."

"Likewise, just as you’re not allowed to call Bruce Jenner 'he,' you’re not supposed to say 'radical Islamic terror' or 'migration invasion' or any other words that might be offensive to Muslims."

These days, we not only must live with another person's delusions, we must affirm them. According to one congresswoman, it is racist to disagree with the football players' protests. Even Fox News is afraid of the consequences of going against delusion when it comes to transexualism and has its newscasters referring to Bruce Jenner as "she". The power of the delusion is absolute,

...“making [others] agree to something they know is a lie is a hallmark of totalitarianism.” - Matthew Hanley

How did we get here?  William Kilpatrick claims that it is a result of the attack on objective reality which had as one of its goals the toppling of our belief in the reality of God,

"...Another objective reality that came under attack during the self-esteem era was the existence of God, or, more accurately, the existence of the God who reveals himself in the Old and New Testaments—the God who make demands on the individual self. In his place, many substituted vague, New Age-ish forms of spirituality. Either that, or they began to conceive of God as a servant of their emotional needs—an all-understanding therapist in Heaven who just wants everyone to feel good about himself, herself, zeself, zirself."

"The famous maxim attributed to Chesterton applies here: 'The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.' Once you lose sight of the central objective reality in the universe, it’s easy to lose sight of all the other realities, and you end up believing in anything—no matter how counter-factual the 'anything' might be. You might believe that same-sex couples are truly married, you might believe that males can become females. You might even believe—heaven help you—that Islam is a religion of peace."

You might even believe football players are true patriots when they disrespect our veterans.

You shouldn't have to accept another's delusion, and you shouldn't be forced to affirm it either. That is why I had to break from Bishop Waldo after he published his delusional justification for proceeding with same-sex blessings in Upper South Carolina.

I found out then that you can't reason with the deluded, and humoring them by accepting and affirming the lie just results in the delusion spreading to others. At some point you have to make your point and leave, another runaway slave from another delusional dictator.