Dems Can No Longer Suspend Their Disbelief

Sorry, Joe

In fiction, there’s a thing called “suspension of disbelief.”

For example, off the top of my head, take E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. It’s a movie about a little space alien with a funny-shaped head and big eyes who helps a little boy by making his bicycle fly in front of the moon. (It’s been a while since I’ve seen it; I know there’s more to it than that. Something about phoning home?)

It’s patently ridiculous. It’s very, very silly. Yet Steven Spielberg is such a skillful filmmaker that the viewer is drawn into the story and made to care about the characters.

Our disbelief has been suspended. We want to be entertained, so we ignore logic and reason. We turn off that part of our brains and just go with it. That’s part of the deal: We give Spielberg money, and he makes us believe in impossible things. Everybody wins.

Something very similar has been happening ever since Joe Biden announced his candidacy for president in 2019.