Living in a Virtual Reality

David C. Stolinsky, MD
Oct. 1, 2009

French President Sarkozy, speaking at the U.N., tells President Obama, “We are right to talk about the future. But the present comes before the future, and the present includes two major nuclear crises [Iran and North Korea]. The peoples of the entire world are listening to what we are saying, including our promises, commitments and speeches. But we live in the real world, not in a virtual one.” [Emphasis added.]
− News item

It may be that you can’t fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.
− Will Durant

When the French must remind Americans that the real world is a dangerous place requiring strong actions, not just clever words, we know that the situation is serious indeed. When the French must remind Americans that we live in the real world, not a virtual world, we know that the time has come to look at ourselves in the mirror.

How did we get to the point that the French, famous for covering up crises with smooth words, tell us to face reality? How did we get to the point that the French, famous for philosophizing, tell us not to live in a virtual world? How did we get to the point that the French, famous for their ability to accommodate tyrants, tell us to deal with the dangers these tyrants are triggering?

In short, how did we become more French than the French?

I’ll tell you how. We abandoned Americanism for progressivism. We forsook Judeo-Christian values for liberalism. We forgot the biblical command, “Nor shall you stand by idly when your neighbor’s life is at risk” (Leviticus 19:16), so some of us propose that we abandon our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and leave them to the tender mercies of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

We attended the university and came to believe that people who theorized were superior to people who had calluses on their hands from doing the work that put food on our store shelves. We came to believe that people who thought getting a paper cut was stressful were superior to people who had scars from fighting to keep us safe and free.

We came to believe that we could live in a virtual world, where mistakes could be rectified by playing the video game over again. But as Sarkozy reminded us, we live in the real world, where mistakes can lead to irreparable damage − to ourselves and our friends, if we still have any.

The patron saint of progressives is Marx. He came from an upper-middle-class family, but he never could support his wife and children. He thought about money constantly because he never had any. Being a narcissist, he assumed everyone was like him − that all motivation was economic. Religion was unimportant to him, so he assumed it was unimportant. He sat in the British Library all day and theorized about how things should work, but he knew little of how they actually work.

Such an impractical theorizer makes a lousy role model. But he is the role model for progressives, whether they admit it or not. His deficiencies explain much of the trouble that progressives cause for themselves, and for all the rest of us. But chief among the deficiencies is building castles in the air and trying to live in them − or in modern terms, attempting to live in a virtual world.

People who live in a virtual world worry about virtual problems, so they don’t have to deal with real problems.

·         They worry about how to appease our enemies, so they don’t have to worry about how to keep our friends. Thus they make it more dangerous to be our friend than our enemy. If you doubt this, ask the Poles and the Czechs how they feel about our cancelling the missile defense we promised them.

·         They worry about what smooth words to say to Iranian leader Ahmadinejad, who threatens to wipe Israel off the map and is developing missiles and nuclear weapons, so they don’t have to worry about what forceful steps to take to prevent this disaster.

·         They obsess about the Patriot Act, so they don’t have to remember what Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg and Paul Johnson looked like as they were beheaded.

·         They worry about being too hard on detainees at Guantanamo, so they don't have to think about the terrorist acts our security forces prevented − including acts prevented by interrogating the detainees.

·         They concentrate on hypothetical loss of freedom, so they don’t have to imagine the total loss of freedom of the 3000 who were murdered on 9/11.

·         They fret about imaginary problems with library books, so they don’t have to grasp the real problem faced by those trapped on the upper floors of the Twin Towers – being incinerated at 2000 degrees, or jumping and taking 10 seconds to hit the ground at 120 miles per hour. That’s a problem.

·         They lose sleep over racial profiling of airline passengers, which hardly exists, so they don't have to have nightmares about nerve gas, anthrax or nuclear bombs.

·         They worry about being liked by the “world community” of the U.N., so they don’t have to worry about doing what is right − which may be a good deal more difficult.

·         They worry about evil weapons, so they don’t have to worry about evil people − from street criminals to unstable dictators.

·         They worry about Christian extremists, of whom there are few, so they don’t have to worry about Muslim extremists, of whom there are millions.

·         They worry about super-patriots, who pose little threat, so they don’t have to worry about a president who apologizes for America − and who distances us from Britain and Israel, from which (in Noemie Emery’s words) we got our values.

·         They continue to worry about what George W. Bush might have done in the past, so they don’t have to worry about what Barack Obama is doing right now.

·         They worry about the far Right, which is a trivial force in America, so they don’t have to worry about the far Left, which is attempting to take over more areas of the economy, as well as to control our health care − and therefore our lives.

Instead of dealing with the increasing disarray of his own party regarding health care and the economy, and instead of dealing with the threat of nuclear-armed Iran and North Korea, President Obama will be off on a jaunt to Europe in an attempt to obtain the 2016 Olympics for Chicago. Obama was criticized by Republicans for having blurred his priorities.

But the problem goes much deeper. Sarkozy said it: Obama and his fellow progressives are trying to live in a virtual world. Sooner or later, this attempt always fails. Before it is too late, we must make our leaders understand that we all live in the real world. Only then can we hope to deal with the real world’s all-too-real dangers.

When we must take advice from France on facing danger, we know that things have gone too far.

Dr. Stolinsky writes on political and social issues. He can be contacted at dstol@prodigy.net.

www.stolinsky.com