The word “pretend” is defined as speaking or acting so as to make it appear that something is the case when, in fact, it is not. Isn’t that exactly what much of America is being asked to do today by the mainstream media, progressive politicians and woke celebrities?
We are being pressured to pretend to believe things that defy logic and common sense. If we refuse, we risk being labeled racist, bigot, Nazi, homophobic, fascist, climate denier—or worse.
During the Biden Administration, we were told to pretend that inflation was “transitory” and not a serious problem, even as prices soared. We were instructed to ignore “our lying eyes” and accept that everything was under control. For example:
- We were expected to pretend that the southern border was secure, despite more than 15 million illegal migrants entering the country and a record amounts of deadly drugs being smuggled in by Mexican cartels.
- We were urged to pretend that abandoning reliable fossil fuels in favor of intermittent “green energy” would solve global warming.
- And we were told to embrace the notion that biological males could become women, compete in women’s sports, and that sex is a fluid social construct rather than a biological reality.
Common sense had been replaced by partisan politics in service of a progressive agenda — one that asks us to pretend that wrong is right and that reality itself is negotiable.
A striking example occurred at Stanford Law School, where radical students shouted down an invited Federal Appeals Court judge, falsely labeling him anti-LGBTQ and a bigot. Instead of upholding free speech principles, a law school administrator appeared to pretend that the students had done nothing wrong, and even berated the judge. The irony was lost on no one: students claiming to exercise their own free speech rights were actively denying that same right to a invited speaker. These are future lawyers and judges who will one day swear an oath to uphold the Constitution — including the First Amendment. Yet the left asks us to pretend this behavior was legitimate “dissent.”
The word “pretend” has taken on new prominence in recent years. A vocal segment of the political left — particularly in media, academia and the Democrat Party — routinely inverts logic. Consider just a few examples:
- A Supreme Court nominee who, when asked to define “woman” during her confirmation hearing, claimed that she could not, because she was not a biologist.
- Militant activists insisting that biological males should compete in women’s sports.
- Calls to abolish ICE and leave the border wide open.
- Denials of massive fraud in government programs, even when the evidence is overwhelming.
- And the reflexive, knee-jerk opposition to anything President Trump says or does — a condition often diagnosed as Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). Some observers believe this unhinged hostility has contributed to the three assassination attempts against him in less than two years.
We were also told to pretend that the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan was a “success,” even though it left American citizens and Afghan allies stranded under Taliban rule and abandoned billions of dollars in military equipment to America’s enemies.
Hellbound and Down 