When our kids were little, we would make Santa's magic boot prints from the front door to the Christmas tree by sprinkling baking soda around a crude cardboard cutout. This explained how the presents showed up on Christmas morning, since we didn't have a fireplace. It was cute to watch our daughters react back when they believed it was all true. But as they got older, logic began to creep in—how did Santa get past the locked front door? And why didn't the dog bark?
That's how the real world works, sad as it can be to see them grow up. Logic overcomes belief. Otherwise you'd be 45 and still wondering why Santa didn't eat the cookies you left out.
The bad news is that magic is back, at least in terms of politics. And it isn't the good kind, the one that makes holiday marshmallow memories. It's the bad kind, which turns rational people into blithering idiots ready to believe anything that supports their point of view. Accusations become evidence, for impeachment or harassment or Islamophobia or a society gone white nationalist wild, and the more accusations, the stronger the evidence seems to be. Simply filling a bus with people claiming without evidence that someone did something should mean nothing, but it now means more than ever.
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