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By David Charbonneau

Eyeview

CHARBONNEAU: Shared delusions in Lee Creek and the USA

Dec 3, 2020 | 12:23 PM

IT’S AMAZING WHEN TWO OR MORE PEOPLE share the same delusion. You have to wonder how that’s possible.

Look at what happened in Lee Creek. Police were called to the small community on Shuswap Lake where they found two men barricaded inside a house, firing guns at imaginary creatures. The men were relieved when the police arrived because they were surrounded by hundreds of wild animals. They told their detailed observations with police:

“They described in detail having seen cougars kill deer and moose in the front yard,” said Sgt. Barry Kennedy in a news release. “They reported seeing the cougars drag the dead deer and moose up into the tree canopy, where the dead animals were purportedly still hanging. They also believed there was a pile of dead bears in the backyard.” (CFJC Today, Nov. 25, 2020)

Well, you might say, we all share a reality of the world we consider to be true. It’s the only way societies can function. Who’s to say what reality is true and another delusional?

That’s the beauty of the scientific method: investigate and gather evidence.

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Police found no piles of bears and concluded that the two men were suffering from a “health crisis.” Their shared reality was a delusion.

In the U.S., and Canada to a lesser extent, millions of people share the perception that the COIVD-19 pandemic is a political ploy. Jodi Doering, an emergency room nurse in South Dakota, told CNN of patients who refused to believe that they were dying of COVID-19. They preferred to believe that it was lung cancer or pneumonia because COVID-19 didn’t exist.

“Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real.’ And when they should be… Facetiming their families, they’re filled with anger and hatred,” said Doering.

Why would someone die of COVID-19 believing that it doesn’t exist? Well, their president told them so. The Outgoing President (OGP) said that after the election over, the virus would simply disappear. You see, the pandemic is just an election ploy by the Democrats.

Where is the evidence to support that claim?

If the RCMP were called to the emergency room in South Dakota, they would be justified in concluding that the COVID-19 deniers were suffering from a “health crisis.”

It’s all part of parallel information machine. In one of the parallel tracks is the news covered by reporters whose job it is to dig up the facts and investigate claims. The alternative track to the news is the opposite; I’ll call it ‘swen’ (‘news’ spelled backward). What would be facts in the news is conjecture in the swen. What is an investigation in the news is a conspiracy in the swen.

Swen has a magical quality to it. You can bring truths into existence just by saying they are so.

Look at what happened when a supporter of QAnon tweeted that Wayfair Furniture was involved in a sex-trafficking ring involving children. Bingo. It was ‘true.’ Believed by millions. It was even circulating in Kamloops social media circles.

QAnon, itself, became swen after a mysterious one or more people said it was true.

What the QAnon believers of the Wayfair swen is a fiction within a fantasy. The fantasy is that QAnon is an underground network of Democrat pedophiles. The fiction is that Wayfair is selling children, not furniture.

Like parallel lines, these parallel realities will never meet. One of the “gifts” of the internet is that millions of swen believers live in a delusion totally foreign to news followers.

There aren’t enough RCMP to round them up.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.