Letter: Trump needs to grasp real reality

It feels like we have crossed over from real politics to “Reality TV Politics.”

In reality TV, the facts are whatever the producers say they are and the participants are shielded from the consequences of their actions. The rules established for the show don’t apply anywhere else and decisions don’t affect anyone outside of the “world” created for the show. It doesn’t really matter to most of us if Kim Kardashian makes a bad decision or Donald Trump “fires” someone on “The Apprentice.”

In the real world, facts are stubborn things. We may have different opinions on how to interpret or react to a fact but we cannot decide that a fact is not a fact. We may differ in how to react or not react to the fact that the warmest 10 years on record have all occurred in the 21st century, but that does not alter the fact that the climate is changing.

We have now elected a Reality TV star as our next president and the consequences are becoming realer every day. When spokespeople for the president-elect say that “there’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts” and “you guys took everything that Donald Trump said so literally,” it is becoming apparent that reality TV rules are starting to bleed over into the real world.

The president-elect can say that millions of non-citizens voted, but that opinion doesn’t change reality.

Let’s hope that the reality of living in the White House will alter Trump’s view of the real world.

This story was originally published December 15, 2016 at 2:13 PM with the headline "Letter: Trump needs to grasp real reality."