People tend to project their bad qualities onto other people, but not so much their good qualities. Why? One explanation is that they are lazy and find it easier to assume that everyone is like them. Freud’s explanation was that projection is a mechanism of ego defense: we can’t bear the thought of our own faults so we transfer them onto others. I think it comes from the fact that people don’t think about others at all: they think only of themselves. They never really try to understand another person because there is no one else. Or better, those people most prone to projection are the people who think mostly of themselves. This applies to the projection of good qualities as well as bad: since no one but yourself is real there is only your own psychology, good and bad. Everyone is like me because no one is other than me. Projection stems from solipsism.

Simone Biles!

He has been remarkably durable, given his failings, but surely now he has no way to claw back the ground he has lost. He lives in a fantasy world; he has no idea when he is lying or not. I am always fascinated by the white circles round his eyes (probably the result of tanning goggles). The rot started with George Stephanopoulos’ interview with him a week or so ago in which he lavished praise on his fabulous temperament. Since then he has seemed absurd and unhinged.

When Wittgenstein said “the world is the totality of facts” he obviously hadn’t anticipated the “fictional turn”: the world is now the totality of feelings, fears, wishes, prejudices, allegations, insinuations, ideologies, inventions. I liked Bill Clinton’s simple contrast in his speech of last night: there is the “real Hillary” and there is the “made up Hillary”. I envisaged millions of people responding, “Say what now?” For many people “fact” is a four-letter word. Don’t bother me with facts I have my beliefs to consider!