The Progressive Flight From Reality

RealClear Politics ^ | 3 Oct, 2025 | J. Peder Zane

[MtnClimber]

Progressivism isn’t just an ideology; it’s also becoming a mental health condition.

Spiraling past the tendentious spin and lies that have long shaped American discourse on both sides of the aisle, the loudest voices on the left are losing the capacity to grasp reality. As a character in a recent Wall Street Journal cartoon put it: “You’ve got it all wrong. What I’m saying isn’t misinformation. It’s denial.”

Take Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s recent denunciation of “White House senior aides” for “sowing fear, intimidation and vision” by, among other things, calling Democrats “fascists.” Given not just his party’s but his own frequent use of such rhetoric – comparing ICE agents to Nazis who disappear immigrants and vowing that Republicans “cannot know a moment of peace” – the jaw-dropping irony of his complaint was lost on no one, except, apparently, Pritzker and his allies. It raises the question: How did he think he could get away with this?

He is not alone. In recent weeks, progressives have been assailing President Trump’s very real attacks on free speech, without wrestling with the fact that they have long been the driving force behind cancel culture, hate speech codes, and broad-based censorship efforts.

They have been attacking Trump for weaponizing the justice system against his political enemies without coming to grips with the fact that they did exactly that during the Biden administration.

These efforts seem darker and more disturbed than the old political tactic of telling small lies to achieve larger truths. More than simply Trump Derangement Syndrome on steroids, they reflect the progressives’ flight from reality, into a world of their own making, a belief that the visions inside their heads are truer than what the rest of us can plainly see. Where sane people try to work through the ineluctable contradictions

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TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: leftism; liberaltruth

[MtnClimber]

Progressives are having a war against God and the truth.

[bert]

Panic results in the total loss of reason.

[DeplorablePaul]

Pritzker is no different than Putz in MN. Both are psychopathetic liars. On the bright side it is easy to debunk their propaganda with video.

[ClearCase_guy]

progressives have been assailing President Trump’s very real attacks on free speech

I'm gonna need an example.

[Jeff Vader]

Yeah, I was wondering WTF that was as well

[ROCKLOBSTER]

President Trump’s very real attacks on free speech

And that would be what exactly....calling out the "Fake News"?

attacking Trump for weaponizing the justice system against his political enemies without coming to grips with the fact that they did exactly that during the Biden administration.

The RATs "weaponized the justice system" by persecuting and prosecuting Trump and his supporters by charging them with imaginary crimes, imprisoning them and even using violence and assassination attempts. Meanwhile they were unleashing real crime and violence on the American People by allowing violent criminals to run free and looking the other way. Those actions are actual crimes in themselves.

Trump is merely resetting the justice system and holding those bad actors accountable, where they previously could get away with anything.

He is NOT "weaponizing the justice system" but simply letting it operate as it was meant to. It is not "the same thing".

[Does so]

I see Trump as a contractor—surveilling great building opportunities...

[SunkenCiv]

...the tendentious spin and lies that have long shaped American leftist discourse on both sides of the aisle...

[Ignatz]

The Left thinks that the Right will remain peaceful and reasonable no matter what atrocities are committed against them; they are wrong.

[The Great RJ]

My wife’s leftist friends in Des Moines, IA told her that the Des Moines School Suprentendent found to be an illegal alien with a criminal record and phony academic credentials lost his job because Iowa Republican Governor Kim Reynolds and Trump wanted him gone. Reports of him being an illegal alien and fraudster were all fake news.