Ye Shall Know Them by Their Fruits
Fantasy Prone Personality Disorder is real, and it is a problem.
In the Book of Matthew, Chapters 15-20 read:
15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them.
Salt Lake City mayor Erin Mendenhall and the priggish progressives on the city council just declared racism a "public health crisis" in the city.
This is just another example of the triumph of emotion over reason in our contemporary culture. In the former, what is said is more important than what is done, in the latter it is the opposite.
And this is not just virtue signaling, it is vice signaling was well - in my lexicon, vice signaling is when progressives claim the existence of a problem with little or no evidence the problem exists. Like their "virtue", the "vice" exists simply because they say it does, because it fits their narrative. The fact remains that fake emotions about resolving fake problems is nothing but performative politics, Kabuki Theater for weak-minded people who prefer fantasy over reality.
I didn't post about it when it happened because things like this are all too common these days - and quite frankly it is embarrassing to see the mayor of the largest city in our state, the city that is our state capital, engage in such silly and vacuous performance art. I am not personally embarrassed; mind you, my embarrassment is reserved for her and the members of the council.
In the body of the resolution, they provided no details and no goals for what they are going to do about it or hope to achieve. It is just a bunch of left-wing lunatics who think by saying they are more righteous and virtuous than you, because you are not obsessed with race every minute of every hour of every day and they are, their words make it true.
This was such an obvious “look at me/please like me/I’m just like you” moment, it was painful to watch, made more so due to the fact they were so pleased with themselves that they were “doing something” that amounts to less than nothing. All they managed to do was insult the people of Salt Lake and the state.
By their fruits you will know them. What they do matters more than what they say about what they might, possibly at some point, if they feel like it, will do about it. It is nothing less than building an alternate reality, imaginary brick by imaginary brick.
A while back, I pointed out that the thing about living in an alternate reality is that when you no longer control it, that reality ceases to exist. Maintaining an alternate reality takes energy and when you lose the power to drive your narrative into the culture and protect it through “alternate truth” and rationalization of failures into successes, you are now forced to live in in a world in which you are no longer are equipped to live.
That seems to be happening to the progressive left now. The reason they sound so irrational is that they are trying to continue to force their reality on the larger population and they have lost control of government, their primary tool to create and sustain that reality. Another aspect of this President’s agenda that has them really shaken are the efforts to weaken the deep state through regulatory reform. As any good socialist knows, the real power is not in a democratic voting process, it lies in the creation of regulations by a bureaucracy.
The WTF moments are coming with so much frequency, they are easy to treat as white noise.
I get a kick out of poking around looking for information on alternate realities and I ran across something that was sort of comedic - and get this – there really is something called Fantasy Prone Personality Disorder. It’s not some sort of evil psychosis, although I suppose it could lead to more serious mental issues, but people who have FPPD lead a rich fantasy life and seem to blur the lines between fantasy and reality.
There are supposedly 14 identified characteristics of fantasy proneness: (1) being an excellent hypnotic subject, (2) having imaginary playmates as a child, (3) fantasizing frequently as a child, (4) adopting a fantasy identity, (5) experiencing imagined sensations as real, (6) having vivid sensory perceptions, (7) reliving past experiences, (8) claiming psychic powers, (9) having out-of-body or floating experiences, (10) receiving poems, messages, etc., from spirits, higher intelligences, and the like, (11) being involved in “healing,” (12) encountering apparitions, (13) experiencing hypnagogic hallucinations (waking dreams), and (14) seeing classical hypnagogic imagery (such as spirits or monsters from outer space).
There is also a supposed high correlation between fantasy prone personalities and highly creative people, people who are neurologically predisposed to fantasy. It also appears there is a high degree of loneliness and an unrequited need for acceptance, so either they retreated into a fantasy world to cope with their loneliness and desire to be accepted, or they manufactured those conditions because they prefer their fantasy life to interacting with others in the real world. Additionally, in a fantasy world, a person can be important, powerful, and the moral authority – what you say goes in your own reality – and beyond that, you matter in your own world even if you are somewhat less in the real one.
This might be one possible explanation why there always seems to be a high degree of panic and hysteria within the Hollywood community every time their manufactured reality is shattered.
All fantasies aren’t of the Disney variety – there are dark, dystopian fantasies as well. Our friends on the left seem to have retreated into their dystopian worlds where they can matter – where they are important, powerful, and the singular moral authority.
The trouble with that is that their world isn’t real, and it has collided with the real world. They aren’t liking it. Like a Martian trying to breathe in Earth’s atmosphere, it appears for the progressives with Fantasy Prone Personality Disorder, living in true reality stings more than a bit.
That is why they avoid it like the plague.
Matthew was right, we will know them by their fruits.