The Coronation of King Charles the Third last week was obviously viewed by a huge worldwide audience who tuned in for all the pageantry that could be packed into the crowning of Charles and his Queen, Camilla. It was, as made-for-television spectacles go, a resounding success, although the obvious age and frailty of the new King made the event less suggestive of a new Camelot and more reminiscent of the Inauguration of a certain superannuated American President in 2020.

The Coronation was, in addition, a reminder of another royal extravaganza back in 1981, the wedding of then-Prince Charles and Diana Spencer, which may have been one of our last moments of pure innocence before we began to face up to the many official lies that have dominated and destroyed our lives for a very long time.

The Royal Wedding was itself built on a stupendous lie that was carefully concealed from the public. Diana Spencer was chosen to be a suitable and virginal breeder of future English monarchs in a cold-blooded bargain of which she was wholly unaware: that she was a thoroughly unloved bride. The Prince—and future King—of her dreams was desperately in love with another woman, who is now his Queen Camilla. This cruel betrayal of innocence certainly explains at least part of the disdain many now feel toward the British Crown.

The magic of public relations and selective media amnesia explain a lot of our world and nation today. It is almost too bizarre to watch Randi Weingarten insist she was advocating against school closures and Anthony Fauci spew his own outrageous lies regarding his actions during America’s recent misadventures with lockdown liberalism. However, the sad reality of our world is that bald-faced official lies are now as common as blades of grass in the summertime, and what passes for leadership today is typically an extended exercise in passing the buck onto others and shirking responsibility for one’s own role in policy failures.

Think carefully: When is the last time you heard an elected official take responsibility for a mistake? You might end up with a migraine before you come up with a single example.

If truth is the first casualty of war, it might be the case that we have been at war among ourselves for many, many decades, and this unending conflict has worn our nation down to the nub. Our raw nerves and angry discourse could, in fact, be characterized as battle fatigue, which has created a nation that is now devoid of sense, reason, or hope.

Our innocence—and trust—has been stripped away, and what remains is debt, dysfunction, and despair. This perhaps explains why the political center has evaporated and those shouting at the fringes have no interest at all in a productive dialogue. You cannot work with those whom you do not trust, so the outcome of every problem facing America today is the same: gridlock. Everyone is dug in to their own non-negotiable position, and there is no interest in debates based on facts. 

Instead, all discussions devolve into a personal attacks intended to inflict maximum damage and forestall any possibility of compromise, which leads inevitably to more lies that cause even more conflict by shrouding the truth. This is politics in America today, and few are frustrated bystanders in this horrific process.

The cure for what ails us, to be both blunt and honest, is hard to discern. Extremists now run many—if not most—our institutions of government, law, medicine, education, journalism, and mass culture. Many of the controversies now roiling our nation seem to boil down to the impossibility of reconciling versions of reality that are fundamentally irreconcilable.

Think for a moment of the many questionable realities we are now being told we must accept; the list is long and beggars belief.

That our communities will be made safer by not enforcing our laws and allowing criminals to roam the streets.

That our children will be better educated by abandoning academic standards in favor of a depressing equity that leaves our children equally ignorant.

That America will be made more secure by opening our borders to illegal immigrants, human traffickers, and drug runners.

That our nation’s future will be made more secure by running up our national debt to insane and unsustainable levels.

That life will be made easier for Americans by pursuing inflationary fiscal policies that are increasing financial distress for American families each and every day.

That our national cohesion will be improved by turning every problem and disagreement into a racial battleground that sows suspicion and anger throughout the land.

That we can run a modern industrial economy on windmills and solar panels, and the stupendous shortfall between the generation capacity of renewables and our nation’s actual energy needs can be ignored without consequence.

That our children will lead happier lives by being encouraged to both lie to their parents and allow themselves to be pumped full of hormones by gender bending extremists who see no problem whatsoever with lopping the genitalia off confused and anxious adolescents.

This is a heck of a lot of nonsense we are being asked to swallow, and is unsurprising that our political, social, and cultural tensions are at the breaking point.

The gulf between slap-happy illusions and grim realities has likely never been greater during the course of American history, and this judgment can be easily supported by counting the number of outrageous lies we are told every day to conceal the many disasters now unfolding in our nation. 

Our daily dose of extraordinary mendacity is on par with, to take an facetious and absurd example, Franklin Roosevelt standing before a joint session of Congress in 1941 and declaring the attack on Pearl Harbor to actually be a resounding American victory. We are being torpedoed and dive bombed on a daily basis by Senators, Representatives, Cabinet Secretaries, District Attorneys, Mayors, Judges, Educators, Celebrities, Social Scientists, Doctors, and many other supposed leaders who are destroying our families, communities, cities, states, and nation with lies that destroy both our trust and our belief in America. 

It is painful and disheartening when illusions are shattered—just ask anyone who was shocked by the breakdown of the marriage of Charles and Diana—but no nation can long survive if it exists on a tissue of illusions stitched together with a frayed thread of lies. We are very near to the edge of numerous calamities that we might not be able to easily recover from, but many Americans still fail to recognize the numerous dangers facing us because they ostill believe in the illusions and lies being peddled today by those who want money, power—or both. 

As awful as it might be for many to become acquainted with the grim and unforgiving realities facing America today, which would require a personal reckoning of incredible proportions in order to to abandon their belief in the propaganda that has defined their lives for years, this kind of shock is a necessity for a great many of our citizens. 

Fairy tales are fantastic for children, but we need reliable, sensible, thoughtful adults to steer our nation back on course—before it is too late.