The stories we tell each other matter.

How we socially construct our reality.

The stories we tell ourselves about what our lives are about create a moral model of the world that we think we are inhabiting.

Perception is reality. What shapes our perception? The stories we are told about what we are expected to see. Remember the fairy tale of the Emperor's New Clothes by Hans Christian Anderson? 

The stories we tell ourselves and others becomes the lens through which we perceive what we think is real. Remember Plato's cave?

The bumper sticker says "Don't believe everything you think."

And then there is the idea of the "self fulfilling prophesy." The saying is “be careful what you wish for because you might just get it” like the person who hates someone so much that they wish they would die, and then they do, and then the wisher feels guilty as if their thinking it so caused it. Or you fear certain things and the fears seem to draw those things closer and make them more real like the spouse who accuses their partner of cheating on them, and it causes such a breach in their rapport that the partner does actually get involved with someone else.

Stories are an attempt to make sense out of our experience so we can explain things to ourselves and then to others. The postmodernists say that reality is socially constructed.

Trumpists and the MAGA crowd don't seem to understand that lying, cheating, hate, contempt, disdain, abuse, and violence: verbal, emotional, and physical, matter. They create a society of ugliness, pain, suffering, anguish, and death. Thank goodness we are seeing an awakening in America and a new story of hope, joy, inclusion and love for one another is being told.

Which story do you like best? Which story do you think will prevail?