Remembering What's Real

Why Democratic Survival Depends on the Refusal to Forget

Photo by Tobias Bjerknes on Unsplash

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And in a time when reality itself has become contested territory, remembering what's real is not just a personal discipline but a political necessity.

This is not about partisan positioning. It's about the fundamental ground of shared perception that makes democracy possible at all. When a government can deport a man with legal protection against deportation, when it can defy a unanimous Supreme Court order for his return, when it can publish a family's home address to millions while knowing they face threats—and then tell you this is all normal, all justified, all within bounds—we have crossed from policy disagreement into reality distortion.

Remember what's real.

In Orwell's 1984, Winston Smith commits his first act of rebellion by writing “2+2=4” in his diary. This wasn't simply a mathematical statement but an assertion that some truths exist independent of power's ability to manipulate them. “Freedom,” Winston realizes, “is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

When the Party later tortures Winston to accept that 2+2=5, they're not trying to change mathematics. They're breaking his connection to reality itself—forcing him to surrender his perception to authority. The goal isn't belief but submission: “Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.”

This is precisely what's happening now. Not through torture chambers, but through a thousand small surrenders of perception, a thousand moments where what you see with your own eyes is contradicted by official narrative, and you're pressured to accept the narrative over your perception.

When you see children separated from parents at the border, remember: These are human beings, not abstractions. When you hear officials call this “deterrence” or “consequence,” remember the reality beneath the sanitized language—the terror of a child who doesn't understand why they're being taken, the desperation of parents who may never see their children again. That reality doesn't change because someone in power gives it a different name.

When you hear economic hardship dismissed as “temporary disruption” or “necessary adjustment,” remember the family unable to afford groceries, the worker whose retirement vanishes, the small business owner facing bankruptcy. Their suffering isn't theoretical. It doesn't become less real because it's reframed as strategic sacrifice.

When you see the machinery of state turning against those who speak truth—polygraphing employees for suspected leaks, investigating whistleblowers, doxing critics—remember what this is: not security but intimidation, not accountability but control, not governance but dominance.

Remember what's real.

This isn't about developing new insights. It's about refusing to surrender the knowledge you already possess. You already know that separating children from parents is cruel. You already know that ignoring court orders undermines the rule of law. You already know that exposing a family's address to public threats is wrong. You don't need specialized expertise to recognize these truths. You simply need to resist the pressure to forget them.

The most insidious aspect of authoritarian governance isn't that it forces you to believe what isn't true. It's that it pressures you to question what you know is true. It works by creating enough doubt, enough confusion, enough fear that you begin to distrust your own perception. It succeeds when you say to yourself, “Well, maybe it's more complicated than it seems. Maybe I don't understand the full picture. Maybe what looks like cruelty is necessary firmness.”

This is how reality dissolves—not through the big lie, but through the accumulation of small doubts that erode the firmament of shared perception.

Remember what's real.

The call to remember what's real isn't naive realism. It acknowledges that meaning is constructed, that perspective shapes perception, that truth is complex. But it insists that not all constructions are equal, not all perspectives are coherent, not all claims to truth deserve equal weight. Some statements align with the fabric of reality; others tear at it.

When someone tells you that a free press is the enemy of the people, that judges who rule against the government are traitors, that critics should be investigated and silenced—they're not offering an alternative perspective. They're attacking the conditions that make perspective possible at all.

This is the boundary we must defend—not between competing policies or ideologies, but between governance and its dissolution, between the difficult work of democratic accountability and the false simplicity of authoritarian control.

Remember what's real.

This remembering isn't passive. It's an active resistance against the pressure to normalize what should never be normal, to accept what should never be accepted, to forget what must never be forgotten. It's a daily practice of reconnecting with the reality that exists beyond power's attempts to reshape it.

When you hear that Harvard must screen international students for those “hostile to American values,” remember what's real: This isn't about protecting values but controlling thought. When you hear that Kilmar Abrego García's deportation is a “distraction,” remember what's real: A man taken from his disabled children is imprisoned in a foreign country while the Supreme Court's order for his return is ignored. When you hear that these are just isolated incidents, remember what's real: They form a pattern, a direction, a transformation of governance into something unrecognizable as democratic.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And no amount of power, no presidential order, no media spin can change these truths. They exist independent of authority's attempt to redefine them. They remain true even when denying them becomes official policy.

Remember what's real.

This isn't just a philosophical stance. It's a practical lifeline in times of disorientation. It's what allows you to maintain your moral compass when everything around you seems to be spinning. It's what connects you to others who also remember, creating islands of clarity in a sea of confusion.

The center must be held—not because it is easy, but because it is ours to hold. And holding it begins with this simple, radical act: Remember what's real. Not what power tells you is real. Not what is convenient to believe is real. Not what you wish were real. But what is real—in your bones, in your conscience, in the evidence before your eyes.

The ground approaches. And in this moment of acceleration, of increasing pressure to surrender your perception to authority, of growing penalties for those who insist on seeing clearly—remembering what's real isn't just resistance. It's survival. Not just for you as an individual, but for the very possibility of democratic governance itself.

Remember what's real. Pass it on. Hold the line. For in remembering reality, we keep alive the possibility of restoring it.