Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?

My assignment was to recap Westworld, and for six weeks that’s what I’ve been doing, happily. The show was fun, it was interesting, it was complicated in all the right ways—with the usual HBO caveats (gratuitous nudity, gruesome violence).

But something funny happened on the way to episode 7: Donald Trump was elected President of the United States of America.

Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?

What a question, now. Who isn’t questioning the nature of their reality? For many, the key takeaway of the election of 2016 is that America currently lives in alternate realities, in impermeable bubbles of culture and narrative. One half of the country was certain that Clinton would win, that a superior ground game, clear-headed rationality, poll numbers, and American decency would take the day. The other half looked at the size of Trump’s rallies and thought the numbers were surely on their side. The results—an electoral college win on one side, a commanding popular vote win on the other—can give a shock to both sides. Now the residents of one bubble are elated; the residents of another are fearful, and taking to the streets in protest.

And Stephen Bannon, as Breitbart head a key architect of one of those bubbles, is now the President-Elect’s lead strategist; in the role he’ll no doubt have many opportunities to help the Trump Administration create its own realities in service of power, of empire.

Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?

Stories don’t reflect reality, they create new realities. This is true of fiction, true in different ways of journalism, of punditry.

And so we have choices. This is one thing that’s as true today as it was last Tuesday: we, the media consumer, can choose which stories we tell ourselves, the narratives we fill our minds with, the alternate realities we inscribe on the inside of our eyelids, and through which we view the world around us. We can console ourselves with the notion that our opponents are all dumb plebs who don’t know what’s good for them, or immoral urban sophisticates who despise us and all that is good about America.

Or we can create new narratives that bind the world together in ways that once seemed impossible.

And so we come again, at last, to Westworld.

Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?

Westworld is a show about the creation of an alternate reality: a reality that is made by some (Ford and the park staff), for a lucky few (the rich tourists who come to the park), and against many others (the hosts). On a meta level, the show itself is an alternate reality constructed along the same lines: by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, for HBO subscribers.

And this is all very fascinating. But is this reality any good?

Aesthetically, yeah. Westworld is gorgeous, well-shot and designed, peopled with interesting characters played by capable actors, with a well-structured and philosophically sophisticated story.

But morally? Ethically? Is it capital-g Good?

Let’s consider. Last night’s episode featured an exhilarating horseback chase with members of the “Ghost Nation,” a Native American tribe who were portrayed not as living characters with stories and complex interior realities of their own, but as faceless, whooping savages.

We also saw a woman, Clementine, being mercilessly beaten by a man while others observed. Later, as punishment for her lashing out at the man who’d beaten her, she was lobotomized while sitting nude on an examining table. The simultaneous sexual objectification and cold-blooded murder was particularly nauseating, this week.

Lastly, we saw Teresa Cullen, a capable female leader, beaten to death by a man she’d once been intimate with. Her only sin had been to oppose a powerful man—a man who chose not only to defeat her, but to destroy her.

Are these the narratives we want right now? Are these the narratives we need?

Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?

William realized this week that the park doesn’t cater to its guest’s basest impulses—rather, it reveals who they are, deep down. The alternate realities we choose to live in, the bubbles we choose to inhabit, reveal who we are.

So who are we? Who will we become?

There are only two things to do when your reality has been proven to be insufficient. You can fight it, like Maeve does—try to escape, try to get out to a better reality. Or you can deny it and say, when presented with evidence that defies your programming, “It doesn’t look like anything to me.”

To quote Orwell: “To see what is in front of one’s nose requires a constant struggle.”

Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?

No. The world is as doomed as ever.