In business, politics, everything. It almost seems like everyone is quietly agreeing that "if we pretend the pesky truth doesn't exist for long enough, we can literally change reality to be what we want".
I feel like I'm going crazy. There's no way that's how things can work for long, right?
This is probably why when somebody looks to try to find the cause for e.g. the collapse of the Roman Empire there were a surprisingly large number of potentially serious issues all happening simultaneously.
The reason is that the empire probably collapsed decades before its fall and so the stupid decisions and actions all continued to pile up, seemingly without consequence. All until the inertia finally ran out and suddenly the entire house of cards came crashing down.
This is what happens when bad people capture the levers of power.
When an Iraq War supporting Tory like Niall Ferguson criticizes the US military for being both bloated and stretched thin by underfunding, it gives away that the critique is just disingenuous contrarianism.