Americans have a huge problem. It manifests itself in our politics and we see it in our daily lives. It is exacerbated by the commercials on television, the internet and our cell phones.

Many of us can no longer tell the difference between appearance and reality — if in fact we ever could.

This inability explains the appeal of Donald Trump, why some people believe professional wrestling is “real,” why some of us won’t take a COVID vaccine and why some of us will take a deworming drug meant for horses versus a vaccine designed by scientists for humans. It enables people to scream out “I don’t trust the scientists,” while at the same time checking themselves into the hospital if they get sick.

Flooded by a glut of misinformation that overwhelms actual facts, the American public seems to have reached a new level of mistrust and arrogant stupidity, further eroding our ability to take on problems and thus increasing our chances of a calamity heretofore unseen except in gothic horror stories or “Mad Max” movies.

It is why as recently as […]