In The Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo “You’ve been living in a dream world.”  The past month has revealed this quote as true. So many elements of American government and society, once presented as and presumed to be honest, have been exposed as anything but. 

The votes were finally found to reopen our government. But shutdowns aren’t unusual. Since 2013, there have been only five formal budgets passed by Congress. Everything else has been a continuing resolution, maintaining status quo spending without debate on budgetary priorities.  In so doing, Congress has abrogated its greatest power and duty. There is no budgetary process. No one is truly guiding the nation fiscally. The idea of a representative Congress setting funding priorities reflective of America’s wishes, is pure dream fantasy.

Another recent example is the arrest of Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier on charges of interstate wire fraud and money laundering. Another 30 arrests have been made, amid claims of links to organized crime. The NBA responded with typical corporate legalese and assurances, but in the background, they are scrambling, and the story has disappeared from a compliant media while everyone decides on just how far to press this.

This is a real problem. Point shaving is very easy in basketball and the NBA generated 11.3 billion in revenue in 2023–24. There are now prop bets placed on individual player scores, an area ripe for fixing. In college ball there have been six known point-shaving scandals since 1979. How many more must there be?

The NFL is an even riper target, generating $22 billion in revenue last season. It has gambling sites as its sponsors. NFL fantasy revenue was $13.2 billion. Legal gambling on the NFL is estimated to reach $30 billion in revenue in 2025, $1.4 billion on the Superbowl alone. In one day. Can you seriously imagine that there is not an effort to fix prop bets and games?  Every 4th-quarter comeback is now in question. Between the ads and the legal gambling associations, it has come to feel like I’m watching WWE rather than real competition.

It is too easy to pay an unsung lineman to miss a block, or a role player to fail to catch a pass. The 1919 Black Sox scandal altered the World Series by changing only a few pitches and hits.

The broad associations of gambling with sports leaves all leagues open to questions of probity, especially when there are unusual results. And televised sports are the new opiate of the masses, replacing religion. 24 million watch the NFL on Sundays, 21 million watch on Mondays. We are happy to ignore the money, and the gambling, just another ad in a slew of in-game ads, as long as we get to cheer for something.

There are multiple other major issues now being revealed as manipulated or simply created out of thin air.

James Comey is now under indictment for making false statements to Congress. He “investigated” Clinton’s email practices and found no wrongdoing. Additional material surfaced and was briefly reviewed, but no charges brought. Of course, because it’s normal to destroy private email servers carrying Department of State emails, and to use special software to wipe the hard drives. One legal vagary and “investigation” after another. All showing carelessness, or extreme carelessness, but no intent to manipulate, hide, or defraud. Of course not.

Yet another false story surrounds the Steele dossier. John Brennan claimed in front of Congress that he had not seen it until after the election. This is evidently false: Brennan allegedly recommended it be included in briefings over the objections of the other CIA personnel. The dossier was funded by the DNC and Clinton campaign. Its allegations were completely false, even as Trump was derided for calling it a hoax.

Joe Biden’s decline during the presidency was obvious. Despite this he was asserted to be competent and as good as ever. An investigation into his handling of classified material nibbled at the edges of competency but stopped short, saying Biden’s memory was “significantly limited”. Even this careful wording could not hide that he could not recall the year his son Beau died, or why Afghanistan policy was so important to him. Biden’s 2020 campaign involved almost no public appearances, rather making video appearances from his basement. It took the June, 2024 debate appearance to destroy the lies in less than two hours. Now, not only do we realize we had no functioning president, but that he did not even oversee the use of his autopen for pardons.

Finally, we have the Covid catastrophe. Well before the pandemic, Fauci predicted the risk for a global pandemic with a death rate of about 0.8%. Covid’s death rate as of 2025: 1.0%. Wild, alarmist claims of death rates propelled rash and ineffective measures. Contrary data was deliberately ignored, its authors ridiculed and sometimes stripped of academic titles. Masks, heretofore found ineffective for viral illness, were suddenly required by CDC decree. Public gatherings were forbidden, including work and church. Unless of course you were a grocery clerk or in healthcare, in which case there was magically no risk. Church was forbidden, protests permitted. Policies entirely contrary to the established methods of spread were pursued. Elderly cases were placed in nursing homes, ravaging the already-vulnerable tenants. Children were not at risk but schools closed, costing an entire generation a year of learning.

Then came the vaccine. It was promised to prevent 80% of infections. Then it was going to prevent hospitalizations, then prevent mortality, prevent spread via herd immunity. Experts who warned all prior coronavirus vaccines had failed were ignored. Vaccination became required in some industries. Refusal led to firing and ostracization.

And then it all unraveled. Masks aren’t effective. School children weren’t a vector and were rarely affected. Mass gatherings like restaurants, aircraft, church services, etc were safe after all. And the vaccine didn’t work any better than any other attempt at coronavirus vaccination. Coronavirus is a mass mutator, and no vaccine can counteract this.

Let’s not even talk about Hunter Biden’s Burisma salary, or his laptop (what IS the Democrats’ problem with handling emails?), or Wiener’s laptop, or Ukraine policy.

Our media has put forward as real the most obvious distortions and lies. Our nation is functioning, in the sense that people go to work, our stores are full, our roads traveled. But in a greater sense we are grossly mis- and un-informed, living in a dream world where we imagine we have a functioning central government headed by an honest president and congress. In reality we have no budgetary process, stories are manufactured and sold as fact, and influence is being peddled nationally and abroad. Our politics is as corrupted as our sports entertainment, both awash in money, both putting out a shiny product for hypnotizing consumption by a media that cares no more for truth and honesty than the organizations it reports on.

Trump’s great crime and threat is that he simply speaks honestly. Crudely, badly, but honestly. It is a terrible, and I fear irreversible, failure when we condemn the truth and celebrate the lie. I am reminded of the hymn Turn Back, O Man:

Built while they dream, and in that dreaming weep.

Will man but wake from out his haunted sleep?

Would that we would as well.

Image generated by AI.