Imaginary News

Scott Adams has introduced a new phrase—Imaginary News—that extends and amplifies the term "fake news" that is bandied about by people on both the Left and the Right. He notes, correctly, I think, that everyone has a movie going in their head, and that the movie helps a person comprehend the world. He further contends, for example, that it's the movie that causes most progressives and Democrats to view Donald Trump's press conference as a clear example of a president who is a raving lunatic, characterizing the entire thing as a "meltdown." A different movie causes moderates and conservatives, along with some moderate Democrats to see the news conference as Trump being Trump—sometimes incoherent, often combative, frequently hyperbolic—but otherwise suggesting core beliefs (e.g., jobs, border security, appropriate on Islamic terror) that resonate with millions.

Adams asks whether both views can peacefully co-exist or whether one side or the other is hallucinating—driven by the movie that is in their head. He suggests that during the campaign, the preponderance of main stream media, along with virtually all progressive bloggers, journalists, and commentators dismissed Trump with a derisive laugh. Hillary Clinton would win—period. Adams writes:

Then he won.

When reality violates your ego that rudely, you either have to rewrite the movie in your head to recast yourself as an idiot, or you rewrite the movie to make yourself the hero who could see what others missed. Apparently the Huffington Post [Adams example of progressive media] chose to rewrite their movie so Trump is a deranged monster, just like they warned us. That’s what they see. This isn’t an example of so-called “fake” news as we generally understand it. This is literally imaginary news. I believe the Huffington Post’s description of the press conference is literally what they saw. If you gave them lie detector tests, they would swear they saw a meltdown, and the lie detector would say they were telling the truth.

There are two clues that the Huffington Post is hallucinating and I’m not. The first clue is that they have a trigger and I don’t. Reality violated their egos, whereas I was predicting a Trump win all along. My world has been consistent with my ego. No trigger. All I have is a warm feeling of rightness.

The second clue is that the Huffington Post is seeing something that half the country doesn’t see. As a general rule, the person who sees the elephant in the room is the one hallucinating, not the one who can’t see the elephant. The Huffington Post is literally seeing something that is invisible to me and other observers. We see a President Trump talking the way he normally talks. They see a 77-minute meltdown.

The "deranged monster" movie that most progressives see is an example of confirmation bias. They were convinced that their candidate would win, were sure that the record of the previous president was so exemplary that few voters would reject it and the political party that supported it, were confident that blue collar states were behind the Democrat candidate... and then all that blew up in their faces. The movie in their heads had to be re-edited to conform to a reality they could not dismiss. So the new progressive movies sees armageddon driven by a "deranged monster" that is Trump. Like most movies, this one is fiction, but that matters little. Because the movie keeps playing in a continuous loop, everything Trump is really, really bad and is a harbinger of disaster. Imaginary news driven by a disaster movie. I think I'm beginning to get it.