Time to believe your lying eyes: an adventure in magical thinking

By Robert M. Levy

It was 1963. The movie was McLintock. The character played by John Wayne was married to the character played by Maureen O’Hara. It was also a marriage not going very well. So, when O’Hara saw her husband “trashed” with whiskey and sitting on the lap of the household cook, Mrs. Warren, O’Hara’s character Katherine was justifiably upset.

Still, Wayne professed his innocence. In a factitious irony, he asked his already untrusting life partner, “Are you going to believe what you see, or what I tell you?” It was a line, first plagiarized and then paraphrased from the 1933 Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup. Today, we know it in a more familiar format. “You gonna’ believe me or your lyin’ eyes?”

Unfortunately, there are too many who are erroneously convinced that their eyes do lie. A lot of politicians, celebrities and social media influencers depend on it.

A few weeks ago, DiJonai Carrington, a Black woman who played in a WNBA basketball game, fouled a White player named Sophie Cunningham. It involved a hit that was so violent, it drew blood. Carrington was ejected from the game.

“White Privilege,” was Carrington’s written response on social media. And it started a fury. The public was convinced that Carrington, to paraphrase attorney Robert Shapiro from the O.J. Simpson case, “played the race card and dealt it from the bottom of the deck.”

Like John Wayne, facing the obvious, Carrington still protested. “I’ve never once claimed that the assessment of the foul was white privilege…That was your assumption…I actually went to school, one of the top universities I might add, to educate myself on this exact subject.”

In other words, her post reading “White Privilege” had nothing to do with “White Privilege.” Or perhaps a better English translation…“You gonna’ believe me or your lyin’ eyes?”

Still, the analysis cannot stop there. To laugh at John Wayne saying something stupid when Maureen O’Hara catches him in a “lap dance,” we have to assume that her character knows that his statement is nonsensical. Similarly, to laugh or even become angry at DiJonai Carrington’s assertion that “White Privilege” does not mean “White Privilege,” we must assume that her audience also knows her assertion is equally absurd. But they don’t. Unlike Maureen O’Hara, the “woke” are “programmed to believe.”

On the morning I wrote this column, I saw a CNN commentator insist that Carrington’s conduct had nothing to do with race. According to the commentator, the idea that Carrington’s post of “White Privilege” had anything to do with race was a myth. It was supposedly an issue conjured up by “privileged” white people. The female commentator’s position was a master class on how to “beg the question” with idiocy. Her statements were a warning that those who believe their “lying eyes” are “lowlife racists.”

It’s not just a problem for “Captain Obvious.” It cannot be solved by booking at his hotel website. It’s a mind virus beyond Trump Derangement Syndrome. It’s really “magical thinking.” It is anti-logic that encouraged millions to believe that Tyler Robinson did not shoot Charlie Kirk and that Joe Biden’s Southern border was “secure.” It is the reason so many believe that there was no Jewish Holocaust, there was no killing of Israeli children or raping of Israeli women during the Hamas invasion of October 7th…And that moon landing…just a hoax.

We live in a society that promises “utopia” but, afflicted with “magical thinking,” delivers a “dystopia”. When, for instance, we see what our eyes tell us is a “man,” we cannot believe it to be true. “Dystopia” demands “myopia.” We must narrowly see only what the government tells us we see, even when our common sense tells us differently. So, when the teacher tells her student, “Give that boy a tampon,” the student must obey. And the student’s parents must not question the teacher’s 20/20 vision of reality.

To the politicians and the celebrity influencers, citizens and consumers are nothing more than William Shakespeare’s “shrew,” independent thinkers who must be “tamed.” In Shakespeare’s play, The Taming of the Shrew, his character Petrucio, inflicted on his independent wife Katherine, the ultimate in mind control.

In the middle of the day, Katherine saw the sun. Petrucio insisted it was the moon. He argued with her, bullied her and badgered her until she finally succumbed. When Katherine admitted that the sun was the moon, she surrendered her eyes to Petrucio’s lie. She was, as are many of us today…“tamed.”

When we listen to Hassan Piker on the left or Candace Owens on the right…or even President Trump…we must be confident that the truth can only be found when the assertions of others are filtered through our own eyes and evaluated by our own common sense. We must have the courage to believe what we see, not what others say we see. We must look at the sky just as we look at video of Biden’s Southern Border or Trump’s Strait of Hormuz. Is the Border secure? Is the strait open? Tis the sun? Tis the moon?…We should never let others tell us what we see.

Aug. 16, 2026

ROBERT M. LEVY

Robert M. Levy grew up in Moore County and graduated from Pinecrest High School. He earned a BA in history and sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where his honors thesis on the Wilmington Rebellion of 1898 became part of the university’s library collection.

Admitted to the California State Bar in 1978, Levy practiced law for 40 years in California and Maryland, focusing on family and criminal law, including work with juvenile offenders and abused children. His writing on affirmative action appeared in the San Fernando Valley Law Review, and he authored Divorce: A Cynical Experience. He later earned a North Carolina teaching certificate from UNC Charlotte and taught high school social studies across Moore County.

Levy has served as chairman of the Moore County School Board, president of the North Carolina Electoral College, chairman of the Moore County Republican Party, and a columnist for The Pilot in Southern Pines. He lives in Pinehurst with his wife, Linda, and they have three children and four grandchildren.

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Robert M.Levy RobertReports@substack.com