Imagination is more than extra spice in the press narrative lately.  These days imagination is the narrative.  For example, I have heard accusations in the morning news that Russians interfered with our elections but I haven’t heard any proofs.  Reporters stopped this narrative briefly after Wikileaks showed that hacking by foreign nations can be simulated by the CIA.  And Vladmir Putin has denied Russian interference.  But someone has imagined Russian election tampering and made a declaration about it.  Announcing that U.S. security agencies have become convinced of Russian interference without offering proof doesn’t convince me of anything.  It shows that imagination has become the narrative.  It may also show that news agencies have fully embraced a parody of reality in favor of “make-believe.”  That’s at least one step beyond post-modernism and a step into crazy.  Crazy can be dangerous.  So as a nation, can we take a step toward what’s real and demand proofs for security claims and in reporting?  Right now, especially, it’s wrong for blowhards to hog all the energy in politics and block potential progress.

I’ve also noticed that when Obamacare is defended, it is defended based on people’s hopes rather than on Obamacare’s performance.  People pretend that healthcare can be provided to everyone just because they want that to be true and they pretend this while the U.S. government has a twenty trillion-dollar debt.  When they describe any changes to the ACA, people speak as though there’s been a dire loss of something real that we all have been able to enjoy from Obamacare in its brief mal-implementation.  They don’t seem to acknowledge the failures of the ACA at all.  They usually don’t even acknowledge that insurance companies are abandoning the program.  Isn’t that strange?  I wish that people who want to defend the ACA would look it over more carefully and understand its shortcomings.  I have read that Barach Obama refused to provide information about the ACA despite several Freedom of Information requests.  Perhaps under the new president, that information can be supplied now.  Maybe it would encourage people to look at the facts about the ACA as it exists so they don’t overpraise it based on their fantasies about it.

I’ve noticed that the job outlook is confusing too.  I’m getting two really different jobs reports.  One uses employment agencies’ data and the other uses department of labor projections.  On the one hand, labor projections predict that jobs like data scientist, general and operations manager, information security analyst will grow and have salaries in excess of $70,000 per year.  But probably there aren’t many of these jobs in existence.  And no mention is made of job security for them.  Our labor market is shrinking for many professions right now.  On the other hand, employment agencies report job shortages for jobs that don’t pay nearly $70,000.  These are jobs like barbers, pile driver operators, tax preparers, cargo and freight agents, and skilled trade workers, for example.  Notice how projected jobs pay so well but jobs for which there’s a current shortage pay much less.  There’s an obvious difference between projections and reality.  Fantasy job projections take up space in the narratives about jobs without really offering us anything in terms of real opportunities.  It’s another example of imagination displacing reality in the narrative.

Some of our political discord comes from the conflict we all experience when facts collide with a popularized imagination based narrative.  Fantasy narratives can cause increasing political discord.  If you want to understand more about changes in policies enacted over U.S. history, specific changes that have changed the American political landscape, read Political Catsup with Economy Fries available at Amazon.com, right now.