The Exit From Reality Known As La-La Land

It is a tragic irony that in America, cradle of freedom, the most precious freedom of all is being lost: the freedom of the mind.

Anthony J. DeBlasi | August 16, 2026

Liberal intellectuals who could help us glean much of what there is to know about the world frequently mar their messages with nonsense, to put it bluntly. It makes me wonder why they more often than not reach into what many of us call La-La Land for their and our enlightenment.

Such a tendency recalls the atmosphere of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Alice’s adventures there proved to be mind-expanding, but they didn’t make her start calling a spade a club. Analysts, journalists, artists, and other professionals who don’t look at things as they are but abstract a “message” that isn’t there, are apt to invent curious substitutions for reality. The corresponding abstractions frequently obscure clear communication. With skill and humor, such exercises can fill the void with engaging nonsense.

But authors of visual and audio communications that have no interest in clarity, let alone truth, commit their stuff anyway to digital media, paper, or art materials. Their erections may be impressive, but some of us sense the hot air that keeps them inflated. Their dependence on symbol and abstraction parallels that of sociology and other subjective “disciplines” that make them candidates for La-La Land. I cite Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams as an example of digging for what isn’t there to find something serious to deliver.

Angling for what isn’t really there........

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