After watching some of the congressional hearings yesterday and reading some of the news coverage, I can't wrap my head around how anyone can take this seriousl

After watching some of the congressional hearings yesterday and reading some of the news coverage, I can't wrap my head around how anyone can take this seriously anymore - it feels like I am living in a simulation, or a movie of some sort like The Truman Show. I think what has enabled this must be something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#As_metaphor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#As_metaphor The boiling frog story is generally offered as a metaphor cautioning people to be aware of even gradual change lest they suffer eventual undesirable consequences. It may be invoked in support of a slippery slope argument as a caution against creeping normality. It is also used in business to reinforce that change needs to be gradual to be accepted.[6] The term "boiling frog syndrome" is a metaphor used to describe the failure to act against a problematic situation which will increase in severity until reaching catastrophic proportions.[7] It thereby encapsulates the barely noticeable impact of slow environmental degradation that has been described by Daniel Pauly as shifting baselines.[8] The story has been retold many times and used to illustrate widely varying viewpoints: in 1960 about warning against those who are sympathetic towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War;[9] in 1980 about the impending collapse of civilization anticipated by survivalists;[10] in the 1990s about inaction in response to climate change and staying in abusive relationships.[11][12] It has also been used by libertarians to warn about the slow erosion of civil liberties.[6] In the 1996 novel The Story of B, environmentalist author Daniel Quinn spends a chapter on the metaphor of the boiling frog, using it to describe human history, population growth and food surplus.[13] Pierce Brosnan's character Harry Dalton mentioned it in the 1997 disaster movie Dante's Peak in reference to the accumulating warning signs of the volcano's reawakening.[14] Al Gore used a version of the story in a New York Times op-ed,[15] in his presentations and the 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth to describe ignorance about global warming. In the movie version the frog is rescued before it is harmed.[16] This use of the story was referenced by writer/director Jon Cooksey in the title of his 2010 comedic documentary How to Boil a Frog.[17] Law professor and legal commentator Eugene Volokh commented in 2003 that regardless of the behavior of real frogs, the boiling frog story is useful as a metaphor, comparing it to the metaphor of an ostrich with its head in the sand.[6] Economics Nobel laureate and New York Times op-ed writer Paul Krugman used the story as a metaphor in a July 2009 column, while pointing out that real frogs behave differently.[18] Journalist James Fallows has been advocating since 2006 for people to stop retelling the story, describing it as a "stupid canard" and a "myth".[19][20] After Krugman's column appeared, however, he declared "peace on the boiled frog front" and said that using the story is acceptable if the writer points out that it is not literally true.[21]