The Naked Truth

One fable that often confused me was the story about the Emperor’s New Clothes. In case you don't remember, the story is about an emperor who hired a tailor to make him a new suit. The tailor worked for a while (how long was different depending on the version) and was paid handsomely along the way. When the day of the big reveal happened, the emperor was paraded around his empire until only an innocent, honest child pointed out that the he was actually naked, and wore nothing at all. The tailor had tricked him into believing he wore magical cloth that only the righteous could see.

You might think the story is about the tailor tricking the emperor. It’s not. The story is about the way power corrupts. Had he not been an emperor, everyone would have likely pointed out that he was naked. It was his power, and the desire of his people to respect that power, that caused an entire nation, save a small child, to rationalize that they must have been inferior and didn’t want to admit their inability to see the clothes.

In this podcast episode, we cover a similar shared delusion among right-wing Americans. As analogy, Trump is the emperor, the January 6th "peaceful protest" is the new outfit, and like the original story, the emperor has no clothes. Will you call him out on it?