https://www.amazon.com/Dissent-Book-Nexus-Thomas-Olbert-ebook/dp/B01CRCEMQG
The demarcation between fact and fiction is expected to be clear. Only in science fiction stories of time travel and parallel universes do different people live in wildly divergent realities, one person's reality diverging from his neighbor's.
But, life today is not so simple. What kind of reality is it in which the populace of the most powerful nation on Earth can't agree on who won the last presidential election? In which divergent versions of reality conflict on a daily basis?
We have a president who refuses to acknowledge that he lost the election. He cries "fraud" without proof. He refuses to hand the reins of power to his successor, impeding the operations of government while scores of people die of an ongoing pandemic. Our president can do nothing but praise himself for a vaccine in development which he claims wouldn't exist had he not "forced" the FDA to advance it. Also, not true, but of course his supporters believe it, as they believe every baseless claim he makes. He tells us the election was rigged in a vast international conspiracy, and his followers - at least a third of the country - believe him. He could probably say the election was rigged by hostile Martians, and they'd load their guns and point them at the sky. (Why not? Orson Welles accomplished that in 1938 and he wasn't even trying.)
It's as if, in a science fiction story, an alternate parallel universe has appeared in the middle of our reality. An alternate universe in which real news is fake news and fake news posts that claim child pornography rings are operating out of pizza restaraunts actually bring people out of their homes with shotguns. In which global climate change...the evidence of which is a daily occurence...doesn't exist. In which thousands who have died of an ongoing pandemic never really died at all. Like some twisted quantum double take: reality and anti-reality existing side by side. Which will triumph in the end?
The election is over...at least according to the majority view of reality. But, the clash of realities goes on. When the current mad king finally departs, he becomes the rabble rouser leading his followers in the streets. They vote, and the political opposition party now held captive by this newly spawned anti-reality is forced to capitulate. Truth fades, or at least bends, like warping space and time...in some places, but not in others.
Can two realities...Two worlds...coexist in a powerful nuclear nation? When a sizeable segment of the population simply refuses to trust authority, whether governmental or scientific...What then?
The capacity of the human mind to delude itself seems unlimited, reality merely a matter of opinion. Can civilization survive without a common vision of reality?
We'll see.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/star-dancer-tom-olbert/1137460943
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1037624#longDescription
