by Noah Sunday Thoughts:Believe it or not (You can look it up), there is a medical name for seeing things in the clouds. It's called Pareidolia, a generalized term for seeing things in random data. The imaginative, if undeveloped minds of children often process random shapes in the sky's clouds as dragons, monsters, or other entities that inhabit the nightmares of a child. In the adult world, Pareidolia is best exemplified when people see the image of a man on the Moon, Jesus in the sky, or Jesus in the icy frost of their windows. The weird thing about us is the role of the power of suggestion in these things. Presentation matters. If you say "Look, up in the sky, it's Jesus," a lot of people will see Jesus in the sky where they may not have seen him if no one had said, "Hey look, it's Jesus!" Mob mentality? Go along to get along? Wanting to belong to the club? Peer group pressure? You decide. The thing is, there ain't no Jesus in the sky and there ain't no man in the moon, no matter how many songs we write about such things.Pareidolia is a form of Apophenia, the perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated things. At its worst, Apophenia can indicate paranoid schizophrenia. One might think it could explain the rampant conspiracy theorizing of the Trumpists. Q-Anon, anyone? Republicans love to connect the dots of random data into their whirlwind of insanity. A lunatic basketcase named Kellyanne Conway dubbed that "Alternative Facts."If all of this does start to remind us of what we see if we watch a televised Trump rally, well, let's just say that we are either having our own Paredolia moment by seeing something that isn't there or, we are seeing something that is all too real. Since we know the crowds at Trump rallies are real and the venues they are held in are real and the object of the audience's worship is all too real, I will opt for the second possibility. I haven't seen monsters in the sky since I was 6 years old but I can turn on my TV news channels and see one anytime, and the monster has a name.We all know his name. To Republicans, he is "The Chosen One." To republicans, he is their Jesus, their Messiah, come to save us all. He is what they see in the sky. Praise be to Trump, Heil Trump, and all that. God knows what Trump sees in the sky when he looks up (Putin? Porn stars?). We only know that his mind is completely gone, if it was ever there in the first place. What dragons and monsters did he see in the sky as a child? What happened? What pushed him over the edge?Meanwhile, we are stuck with "The Chosen One" and when he sees clouds, he thinks nuking them is a swell idea. And still, the alarm bells don't go off. Some dots actually do need to be connected. Washington is in denial. They are guilty of gutless irresponsibility and more.
Source