It works the other way too. You can bullshit and operate politics without the skill, until one day reality catches up to you and people see your ”work” for what it really is.

I've seen this happen to people. They couldn't get another job -- ever. They happily lived in their massive homes and retired early. One sails boats. Doesn't seem like a cautionary tale, as long you can stomach being a fake.

sometimes at 70, when you're the most powerful man in the world.

And sometimes never, and you will be even eulogized post-mortem by clueless crowds

> It's a nice thought, but proves to be difficult to implement long term ...

It's actually the only long term approach -- literally. It's not ignoring reality, rather, it's choosing not to lose hope that we can create a better future.

Because, as we've seen, the world is what we make it, for better, and for worse.

Sure, you can choose to filter out certain things from your reality. Eventually you'll get railroaded because you failed to factor in certain things which someone whose able to adopt a realistic frame of mind would've captured.

If we look at WW2, you see Neville Chamberlain, the optimist, pursuing a policy of appeasement giving Hitler the benefit of the doubt and proclaiming "peace for our time" after signing of the Munich agreement. Meanwhile, Churchill, a realist, realizes that Hitler is not going to stop until he's dominated all of Europe.

So who do you prefer to be in this story, the naive optimist Chamberlain, assuming everything will be okay? Or the realist Churchill who recognizes the threat, and takes the necessary evasive action.

I didn’t say filter out.

Churchill was a combination of a realist and an optimist / idealist.

One method to distinguish between the things we think are real, but are not, is to see what you can change by pretending things are actually like X. Whatever doesn't change - that's evidence that's "real".

To paraphrase, "reality is that which, when you pretend otherwise, continues to be the way it is."