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About 530 years ago, Christopher Columbus made a monumental discovery. No, it wasn’t the New World. (That was pretty cool, but c’mon, once you’ve seen one hunk of dirt, you’ve seen ‘em all.) This was something way better: Mermaids!

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That’s right, on January 9, 1493, Christopher Columbus discovered mermaids.

And he was disappointed, too: Those mermaids were butt-ugly! As Columbus bitterly noted, mermaids were “not half as beautiful as they are painted.”

Of course, we now know he was talking about manatees.

Here in Tampa Bay, we see ‘em pretty often. When you go paddling in the water, manatees will swim right next to you. They’re gentle and nice, but they’re not particularly attractive. To be perfectly honest, they look like bloated elephant embryos. Even at closing time, you wouldn’t want to go home with a manatee.

Yet the power of the mermaid myth was so powerful, Columbus and his men swore they were butt-ugly mermaids. 

Personally, I never really understood the appeal of the mermaid legend. I mean, a creature that’s half fish, half woman is kind of interesting (I guess?), but you know what’s even better? A creature whose top half is female AND whose bottom half is female! 

And we already have that: It’s called a woman.

(“But what is a woman?” you might ask. Shh! Stop that! I’m trying to take this article in a gender-free direction. Besides, we oughta go back to the 1990s, when nobody made a big deal about gender: Back then, Janet Reno used to walk around in a dress all the time, and nobody cared.) 

Anyway, you know you’ve been at sea for a really long time if you spot a school of manatees and your first thought is, “Aw, too bad. Those babes really let themselves go.”

Still, the Columbus-mermaid example is important because it exposes an important truth: We don’t accept reality for what it is. Instead, we’re mythmakers. We’re storytellers. We’re fiction writers.

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And the myths, legends, and stories we tell reflect our values, assumptions, and understanding of reality.

It’s why conservatives and liberals see the world so differently.

But every now and then, something jarring happens — something that shatters the walls of our carefully constructed reality. It’s a universal feeling; neither liberals nor conservatives are immune. More often than not, when it happens, there isn’t a political backdrop but a personal betrayal: the man or woman you loved being unfaithful or your “best friend” abandoning you. 

It’s a hurtful, horrible, disorienting feeling because it forces you to reassess your own mythology: Were we ever really in love? Was he ever truly my friend? Am I even worthy of being loved or having friends?

Right now, the Democrats are disoriented.

For years, they rocked themselves to sleep with the following fictions: Donald Trump is a Nazi racist, and only white supremacists support him! Joe Biden is as sharp as a tack! Liberals are in the majority! Kamala Harris is a fine, capable candidate! We’re morally superior to those crass, shallow Republicans because we believe in the rule of law: You don’t see Joe Biden pardoning his idiot kid Hunter, do you?

It’s been a strange six months.

First, Biden wasn’t “sharp as a tack.” He was sick and diminished. Next, Trump wasn’t a Nazi: He’s the president-elect of the United States with a majority mandate. Record numbers of blacks, Hispanics, and 65% of Native Americans supported him. Kamala Harris was a lousy candidate, wasted billions of dollars, and owes her #2 position to her ethnicity and gender. And finally, it’s now perfectly clear that Joe Biden was lying about never pardoning Hunter Biden.

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That’s an awful lot of myths to collapse at once.

Between now and the end of 2025, we’re going to see the emergence of a new liberal narrative. What it’ll be remains to be seen. There’s a chance it will be a dramatic break from the old, tired crap — and the Democratic Party will awake from its doldrums, shake off its far-left taskmasters, and return to fighting for the working men and women of our country.

But there’s a better chance they’ll double down on another supersized helping of left-wing extremism. After all, that’s what their base, the media, and their core activists want. It’s a shame because opportunities to rewrite your mythology don’t come around very often. Not taking advantage of it is a mistake — and will cost them dearly in the midterms.

Frankly, they’d be better off dating a manatee.