This just in from the always-worth-reading Dr. Victor Davis Hanson:  Ahmed and the Art of the Psychodrama.  Excerpt:

During Pope Francis’s parade in Washington, 5-year-old Sophie Cruz suddenly dashed up to the popemobile and handed His Holiness a note about the wretched plight of her illegal-alien parents from Los Angeles, who are apparently terrified of all the recent talk about deportations. The media loved the spontaneity and courage of 5-year-old Sophie.

But that was not quite the whole story. The entire event reportedly had been scripted for about a year by a group called “Full Rights for Immigrants Coalition,” which, in actuality, is not about immigration per se, but rather full rights for illegal immigrants. According to spokesman Juan Jose Gutierrez, the group had carefully planned Sophie’s dash: “We planned to do this from the moment we learned he was coming to the States….We have been working for a while now trying to sensitize the American public that dealing with immigration is not just dealing with the people who came in without proper documents but that we also have … countless children whose parents are undocumented.”

Using a 5-year-old girl under the false pretenses of a spontaneous outburst of emotion seems about as authentic as deliberately conflating legal immigration — the United States accepts more immigrants than does any other nation — with illegal immigrants who deliberately and knowingly break federal law to enter the U.S.

This is, after all, the age of the manufactured political narrative.  It’s not just about political correctness; it’s about dishonesty.  It’s about the elaborate kabuki theater that discourse in American culture has become.  That which is culturally acceptable is true and good, no matter the facts behind the case; that which is not culturally true and acceptable is false, no matter how events actually may have unfolded.  It’s a nasty, pernicious kind of dishonesty, and it is the rare individual in American political discourse that has the stones to challenge The Narrative.  That’s part of the appeal of a Donald Trump, who is largely seen as one how eschews the line of bullshit that passes for dialogue in American cultural issues.

Dr. Hanson concludes:   Apparently that crushing reality persuades some to seek a refuge from responsibility for their own fates by writing a false racist message, or constructing a fake racial identity, or concocting a savage and brutal frat rapist, or conjuring up a cadre of premodern Texan bigots masquerading as school officials who would destroy our next Steve Jobs simply because he is a Muslim.

Yet a politically correct fake world is still a fake world, and noble lies remain lies —  nothing more, nothing else.

You can’t really add anything to that.