Mike Vargo: Living in the Republic of Unreality

The political situation in the United States reminds me of an episode from my personal life, some years ago. To set the scene: I recently had turned forty and was feeling feisty, but also sensing rumbles of midlife discontent. After a strong early career as a journalist, I had drifted into writing ads and PR material. The corporate gig had its advantages — easier work, nice pay, expense-account flights to faraway places. Yet sometimes it felt like a masquerade that I played, wearing a designer suit. Besides which, my track record already included two ruined marriages. I decided to see a psychotherapist. She listened for a few sessions and then gave me a pamphlet to take home. Inside was an “Are you an alcoholic?” quiz. 

I answered the multiple-choice questions and totaled my score. It came to a number in the high 20s — 27 or 28, I can’t recall exactly. I suspected this meant I was near the upper end of the normal-person range, figuring that 30 might be the threshold for “Perhaps you tend to drink a bit much.” But according to the pamphlet’s last page, that threshold came at a score of 8. Without a 2 in front. My total had placed me far up in the zone marked by sirens and flashing red lights.  

What I did with the information was ignore it. Just as I had ignored the same message when it was delivered by comments from friends, or by regrettable incidents of my own doing. Not until several years later, when a fog of utter despair descended and refused to lift, did I begin to think recovery might be a good idea. 

As for how this ties into current politics: My point isn’t that America has a drinking problem. Our president is a teetotaler. So are many of his supporters in the Christian Right. But one does not need intoxicants to be intoxicated. The point is that it’s all about living in unreality. 

The new regime of the U.S. government pretends that climate change is not a problem. More than one-third of Americans think the 2020 election was stolen, and diehard Trump fans respond to his frequent falsehoods by wearing hats that say he’s been “Right About Everything.” These are examples of lies propagated in an organized, intentional manner. You can question whether the propagators believe the lies they spread or whether they are simply lying to gain advantage. My view is that it doesn’t matter. When people make their way through life on the basis of lies, they are, by definition, living in unreality. 

Having experienced unreal life and having studied it, too, I would like to share my attempt to understand this phenomenon. I conclude that the practice of living in unreality consists of three sub-practices: Denying real reality. Bingeing on pseudo-reality. And adopting a myth. Here are some observations on each.

Denial

Denying real reality is easy. The procedure is not evidence-based and requires no research. It may, however, involve selective filtering of evidence.

Back when I denied I had a serious addiction to alcohol (and to other drugs), I could have found reasons to justify my denial. The stereotype of a decrepit, bottomed-out addict didn’t fit me. I was making money and paying the bills. Despite the occasional transgressions, it had been a long time since I was actually arrested or fired from a job. 

But the fact is, I felt no need for justification. The denial was so deep that it came automatically. Believing I was alcoholic would’ve clashed with the dominant beliefs I had about myself and my problems. Namely, that I was a very intelligent person who meant well, but a troubled soul, too sensitive for my own good. Perplexed by the world. Painfully aware of being an imperfect creature, unable to live up to my ideals and badgered by fears of my flaws being exposed, like a naked head betrayed by a hat blown off in the wind. In the schema of that larger belief system, using intoxicants wasn’t the problem. It was a solution. Giving it up was unthinkable, so the thought never got thunk. 

That is my experience of how denial works. In denial, there is no such thing as an inconvenient truth. Evidence that doesn’t support a larger belief is either irrelevant or untrue. 

Pseudo-Reality

Have people of any era spent as much time as we do consuming fictional narratives and simulations of reality? 

Granted, the taste for pseudo-reality goes far back in history. In the first millennium BCE, Athenians gathered to hear the singing of epic poems, and to watch tragedies and comedies enacted on stage. The Epic of Gilgamesh took shape in Mesopotamia at least a thousand years before. Nobody can date the origins of folk tales such as the West African stories about Anansi, the spider-shaped trickster. And each of these fictional forms probably evolved from primeval forms of recitation or singing or dance that are now lost to us. 

Obsession with pseudo-reality has a long history as well. It seems this obsession took off after the 1400s, as the invention of the printing press made books widely available and helped to promote increases in literacy. If you were able to read, you didn’t need to watch fantasies being performed. You could be a private audience of one, immersed in tales that spoke to you from the top of your lap. Fantasy reading grew to the point where it was parodied. In the early 1600s, Miguel de Cervantes wrote Don Quixote, about a man so enthralled by sword-and-sorcery romances that he imagines himself a noble knight, and proceeds to act out his delusion.  

What would Cervantes think of us today? We watch movies, TV shows, streaming miniseries and more. Statistics on average screen time are hard to interpret, but suffice it to say that many of us spend hours per day engrossed in dramas unfolding in imaginary realms. Meanwhile, book sales keep ticking upward in the U.S. and elsewhere, driven by a surge in demand for romantasy (romance + fantasy) novels. 

I have met teenagers and even preteens who know the lore and details of numerous fictional worlds — from Hogwarts to Westeros to the Marvel Universe, along with the simulated worlds of various video games, and role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. 

Pseudo-reality is not intrinsically bad. Indeed, the human capacity to create and enjoy made-up stories is a marvelous gift. It is the source of all art (or a lot of art, anyway). But immersion in pseudo-reality can be overdone. One risk is that you may reach a stage where you prefer it to actual reality. This I learned during my active addiction. 

Getting high is a quick-and-easy way of creating an alternate reality. I did it because I had found that real reality has a habit of being unsatisfactory. You can’t count on external reality — your immediate surroundings — to exhilarate and enchant you 24/7. Real life is full of repeats, like a TV stuck on a rerun channel. And when external reality does throw a surprise party, chances are the surprise won’t be pleasant.

Nor was my internal reality any better. I was so unsure of myself that I’d walk into a roomful of people as if walking an I-beam on an unfinished skyscraper fifty floors above ground. Workdays at the desk were occasions to slog it out dutifully, often with a fuzzy hangover — I had made a rule not to get high during billable hours — until the time for highness arrived.  

Then it was time to ingest fairy potion. Properly potioned, fifty floors up felt like the right place to be. A wonderful clarity crystallized. Everything seemed simpler and everything (including me) turned exotically beautiful. 

One drawback was that real reality didn’t transform to match my perceptions. Many regrettable incidents were Quixote Moments. The brilliant insights I shared with my fellow lords and ladies turned out to be rude intrusions into their private affairs. The buffet table at a reception toppled and splattered when I inadvertently jousted it. My trusty steed failed to hurdle an obstacle in the road because the steed was an automobile. 

And these days I wonder if a Quixote plague has infected the land. 

Living the Myth

In a famous chapter of the Cervantes novel, Don Quixote, riding in full armor on horseback, comes across a field of windmills. He perceives them as “enormous giants” and vows to slay them all — “for this is righteous warfare,” he says, “and it is a great service to God to remove so evil a breed from the face of the earth.” 

Setting his lance, Quixote gallops at the closest giant. The rotating vanes of the huge machine shatter the lance and leave horse and rider whacked flat in the dirt. While his squire, Sancho Panza, tends to his wounds, Quixote finally admits he’s been whipped by a windmill. Yet he has an excuse. Quixote explains that a wicked wizard “turned these giants into windmills in order to deprive me of the glory of defeating them … but in the end, his evil arts will not prevail against the power of my virtuous sword.”

What we see here is more than denial of an isolated fact. The man has constructed an entire myth — a non-factual story — that defines his role in the world and dictates how he will carry it out. It is a myth that says he’s a good guy anointed to detect and conquer badness. 

Which is the kind of myth now driving many on the extreme right in America. A call to righteous warfare. A call to wield a virtuous sword against the evil arts of wokeness, cultural Marxism, and RuPaul. Ultimately, a call to remove an evil breed from the face of the country. 

The myth is prominent among militants in the Christian Right. Crowds of them took part in the January 6 insurrection, planting wooden crosses outside the Capitol and wearing mixtures of religious and MAGA regalia. Christian nationalists have formed activist and donor groups for purposes that range from winning elections to conquering the “Seven Mountains” — i.e., dominating seven spheres of society, en route to making the U.S. an explicitly Christian nation. (The Seven Mountains movement, popularized by leaders including the media evangelist and writer Lance Wallnau, draws on Biblical sources such as the Book of Revelation and Old Testament prophecies, according to author Johnny Enlow.) In the 2024 election, exit polls showed that voters identifying as white born-again or evangelical Christians voted 82% for Donald Trump. 

Moderate and progressive Christian leaders have started counter-movements. Typically they quote from sayings of Jesus in the Gospels to show that the right-wingers get the religion wrong. And some go further, claiming right-wingers get reality wrong. 

‘Truth Decay’ and Tolkein

Baptist minister Joel Bowman Sr. has charged white evangelical Christians with  “rejection of objective truth” when they buy the Trump party’s lies or fall for absurd conspiracy theories. The result is an intellectually and spiritually morbid condition called “truth decay,” he writes, adding that many “have conflated American exceptionalism with the kingdom of God.” Other observers have said MAGA Christians tend to believe some basic untruths about American history and government, such as “that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation,” by men who were “orthodox Christians.” (A number of the Founding Fathers were deists and/or skeptics of religion, notably Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine, the doubting Thomases.) 

But the most insidious aspect of the myth, by no means limited to the Christian Right, is the Quixotian concept of oneself as a hero combating evildoers. When Mr. Trump describes his political targets as vermin, scum, etc., it’s not only dangerous; it is false. And likewise false when his followers demonize certain groups. For example, gay and trans people are not unnatural or wickedly misled. Gay and trans people are a fact. They exist; have existed throughout history, and as I see it, the only moral issue for the rest of us is their need to be treated as legitimate co-citizens. 

To give another example, I am definitely a life form other than vermin. Medical records confirm this. However, some right-wingers might see me as an orc — one of the subhuman soldiers of evil in The Lord of the Rings. Some powerful men and women in today’s ultra-right world have been influenced by J.R.R. Tolkein’s mythical world. Peter Thiel, the tech entrepreneur and investor who funds neo-neocon causes, has named a series of his companies after magical entities in the Rings trilogy. JD Vance is so deeply into Tolkein that he inspires analyses of how his thinking has been shaped by the stories, and the conservative Tolkein network extends far beyond these two men.

It may seem strange that persons devoted to winning and wielding power would find The Lord of Rings fascinating. In this saga of an apocalyptic struggle against the forces of evil, a key prize is the “One Ring to rule them all” — a talisman with immense powers, coveted by the Dark Lord. The heroes are on a mission to destroy the One Ring, because it will corrupt anyone who wears it. 

Then again, maybe the fascination makes sense if you consider what the Trump coalition has been up to. Destroying the federal government. Rooting out elements of corruption wherever they can be imagined. 

Endgames and Derby Days

The current chaos, believe it or not, is a product of much forethought. Across the country over the course of recent years, in think tanks from the Claremont Institute in California to Heritage in D.C. — as well as in online forums, in multitudes of private meetings, and within the convolutions of single-minded minds — mythical inspiration has been processed into tangible political plans. 

One game plan that’s apparently shaping the Trump regime’s actions can be traced to people in the so-called neoreactionary (a.k.a. “dark enlightenment”) movement. Their philosophy rejects conformity to modern liberal values. Their plan calls for gutting the deep state and scuttling democracy, as both are deemed too weak and inefficient for today’s world. The post-democratic order would be ruled by a strong executive acting top-down, like a corporate CEO — or as critics say, like a dictator. Further, the plan calls for co-opting or capturing seats of influence outside the government, such as universities and news media. 

This seems to track well with the Christian Right’s Seven Mountains movement, where the societal “mountains” targeted for domination include education and media along with government — although the neoreactionary thrust is more rooted in secular circles. (For an in-depth look at those roots, see James Pogue’s 2022 report from “Inside the New Right” in Vanity Fair.) 

Last year’s election opened the gates to an ominous combination: magical-mythical thinking mixed with unbridled power politics. What impels the regime to trample laws, lives, and logic is the vision of a glorious endgame. Details of the vision vary. For militants in the Christian Right, it’s a nation cleansed of sin. For Donald Trump, one cleansed of everybody who won’t believe he’s the greatest. And for many people unhappy with the status quo, neoreactionary or otherwise, it’s a chance to fulfill a fantasy that 1960s radicals couldn’t pull off:  to tear down the whole stinking establishment and replace it with something new and cool. 

One catch. There is nothing really new in these endgame visions. They are essentially rehashes of old ideas that don’t have happy histories — religious states and authoritarian strongman states. Perhaps the visionaries have suffered a failure of imagination. Or perhaps it’s in the nature of myth to imagine a legendary past, stripped of crappy details and glamored up.

Thus one could imagine Mr. Trump and his colleagues as King Arthur and his knights on a quest for the Holy Grail. But to me the spectacle looks like demolition derby. Often, to protect their front ends, derby drivers plow backward into other vehicles, whereby they resemble the president’s brain trust. A bunch of guys wheeling madly in reverse. The scary part is that the political drivers are playing free-range demo derby. Wheeling and reeling around an arena that encompasses the nation, the world. 

Recovery

Now that I have entered recovery from my addictive unreality, and have lived in this state for a while, I wish I could suggest how America might recover. All I can offer are a handful of observations, framed by two caveats. First, I am no expert in political strategy. When real damage is being done, good strategies for damage control are needed promptly, and you’ll have to look elsewhere for them. 

The second caveat is that there are limits to the parallels I can draw from my experience. What’s been true for me as an individual may not always apply to large groups of people, which is the case with recovery. I had only one mind that needed an overhaul. When the time came, I could plug into systems and communities of support for help with the job. Mass delusions present trickier challenges. 

Still, I’ve learned some lessons that should translate. It’s great to get free of living in unreality. But you have to want to do it. And people operating in unreality don’t necessarily change when they’re hit with negative consequences. Losses or screw-ups may prompt them to double down on their delusional strategies. When my circumstances got worse, I drank more. When I slipped into despair, I raged at the cruel world. Similarly, we’ve seen that when Mr. Trump loses an election or blunders into trouble, his followers rally round and rage at his perceived persecutors.  

For me, deciding to start recovery took time, and the decision came subconsciously, almost mysteriously. (The mind is a mystery.) One day it just happened. I suspect my mind just got tired of the unreality joyrides, and truth be told, they no longer sparked much joy. So my mind was ready to try a new way of being. 

The bad news: Many people’s minds never become ready.  

And now to close on the matter, I will point out a big difference between my story and that of the nation. During the years I used intoxicants, my motives for escaping into pseudo-reality were narrowly selfish. I wanted to feel good, and to feel as if things made sense: two classic functions of intoxication. But I had no grand myth of being a crusader-hero destined to stamp out evil. It’s not in my character. My ideal (which I thought I achieved when high) was to be a sort of glamorous genius, admired for my brilliance, but as a creative-analytic type, a penetrator of life’s mysteries. 

Other people have different characters. They’re more inclined to be moral crusaders, religious revivalists, political operatives, social-justice warriors, or radical rebels. They are more likely to impact society, at least in the near term, because (a) it’s what they aspire to, and (b) they are more likely to form, or join, cadres of like-minded persons. These characters — you might be one! — are not going away. Ever. 

Intoxication made me a gross, destructive caricature of my ideal. It does the same to them. 

Recovery didn’t make me a glamorous genius. But it enabled me to be a healthier, happier approximation of the ideal, more effective in whatever I do, and less of a ticking-bomb terror to people around me. The classic benefits of living in reality. 

Shall we wait and hope for the other guys to recover? If they don’t, I think we should try to go easy on demonizing them. It’s bad karma. Better to be sure that whichever side we’re on, we have reality on our side. May the force be with us. 

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Copyright 2025 Mike Vargo. The quotations from Don Quixote are given in the English translation by Edith Grossman. 

Mike Vargo is an independent writer based in Pittsburgh.