Reality and the Narrative

Despite the blandishments of the narrative, which seek to seduce you into acquiescence with rumors of inevitability, we really do not know how this story, which seems so familiar, will end.

Oscar Wilde was such a card. Sitting for his viva voce examination in Greek, he was given a passage to translate from one of the Passion stories in the New Testament. He started in and was barreling along fluently. At some point, one of the examiners interrupted, noting that he was satisfied by Wilde’s performance and that he could stop. Wilde ignored him and kept at it. The examiner interrupted again. “Really, Mr. Wilde, you may stop now. It is clear that you know the Greek.” “Oh please let me continue,” Wilde is supposed to have responded. “I want to see how it ends.”

Yuck, yuck, yuck. Who knows whether the story is true? I like to think it is. It’s not that I believe Wilde was ignorant of the plot of a Gospel story. He knew how it ended all right. But I admire the insouciance of his response.

Many people think the world is in a position akin to Wilde’s with respect to the 2020 presidential election. We’re all assumed to know how it ended. Joe Biden won. Any demurral on that score is put down to feigned ignorance, attempted cleverness, or petulant perversity.

After all, the Associated Press called the election for Joe Biden a couple of weeks ago. Other news agencies, from the Wall Street Journal and Fox News to CNN, the New Woke Times, and the Washington Post were right there on cue, hailing him the winner. Time, the former news weekly, devoted its cover to Joe Biden, “46th President of the United States.” Twitter was on the case, adding little warning messages to tweets about the election it didn’t like, suspending the accounts of people whose opinions it disagreed with, throttling the ability of those who dissented to broadcast their dissent. Who knows what Google and Facebook are doing with their search results. Some secrets are too deep for the light of day.

And that is my point. The strongest argument for Biden’s victory is not the vote tally. It is the monolithic narrative, pumped up like one of those inflatable play castles at a child’s birthday party. With every passing day, that narrative becomes more boisterous, more assertive, more uncompromising. It is a collective primal scream, emitted with eyes shut and ears plugged.

There is a problem for the narrative, however. Or more to the point, there are 73 million problems. A major concession in the Biden-won-give-it-up-narrative is revealed by the hawkers of the “Unity Now” meme. Let us all come together as one nation, under Joe, and reassert the American normality that has been so sorely missing under the despotic reign of Donald Trump.

No. No, that’s not going to fly, and not only because of the snarling viciousness that attended Donald Trump and his entire administration from the moment he was elected until now. Granted, Democrats are masters of hypocrisy. I will give them that. Brazenness is part of the formula. They are utterly unembarrassed by double standards. Indeed, they glory in them.

On November 12, Kamala Harris was happy to emit this saccharine Tweet:

Hope.

Unity.

Decency.

Truth.

These are the ideals that will guide a [Biden–Harris] administration.

An alert commentator provided some illuminating historical context from the Left’s latest how-to manual, George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four:

Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely …

HOPE

UNITY

DECENCY

EMPATHY

TRUTH

EXPERTS

SCIENCE

The inclusion of “Science” is especially nice.

In any event, Harris wouldn’t give Orwell a moment’s thought. Her sense of entitlement is unshakable, beyond embarrassment. “When we do it”—go without masks, eat out with friends after telling hoi polloi to stay home, run a private email server for government business, collude with Russians to...

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