Terabithia? Is That Anywhere Near Terre Haute?

It's way too tempting to think that imaginary worlds are neatly walled off from reality. Everyone's world is to some extent imagined. It can be imagined in a healthy and optimistic way, with some grounding in reality, or be a playground for vanity and insecurity and fear.

The cool thing about accepting the creative aspect of one's outlook is that it can then be managed. If it's creative and subjective and chosen it might as well be productive and pleasant. The way things are seen, in other words, isn't about establishing objective truth. 

There is no objective truth. Not at our level of discernment. It's all muddled. So the way things are viewed is more a matter of belief and expectation. Seeing nastiness has little to do with discerning it but a lot to do with its creation, helping to will it into existence. 

Ronald Reagan's imagined world was pleasant. But it was exclusive. It was pleasant only for his clan of insiders. It was contemptuous of everyone else. That's the world Republicans have been creating by believing it already existed: judgmental, segregated and polarized. 

It's an unpleasant place and we're stuck in it. It's a sham world created by power-hungry people.