Realitätsflucht

Another of those kraftvoll German words that grips you viscerally and won't let you go, like Schadenfreude (memes).  Naturally, you could also say "Eskapismus", "Wirklichkeitsflucht", or "Weltflucht" to get across roughly the same idea, but it just wouldn't have the oomph of Realitätsflucht.

What made me think of "Realitätsflucht" at the present juncture?  This article by john Schindler:

Top U.S. Spies Warn: War with China Looms…And It’s Not Looking Good

The intelligence alarm is pinging Red in the Western Pacific – but is anybody, even the White House, paying attention?

Top Secret Umbra (7/18/23)

The operative sentence is this:

Realitätsflucht (“flight from reality”) is a fitting German word that English lacks a precise equivalent for, but which the Pentagon needs right now to describe its official attitudes towards the rising storm in the Western Pacific.

Given that contemporary English speakers are increasingly allergic to foreign words, I doubt that there's much hope we'll borrow this one, even though both constituent components have close cognates in English.

 

Selected readings

• "Schadenfreudeful" (4/20/19)
• "Googlefreude, Googleschaden, Schadengoogle…" (1/02/07)
• "The Germans have a word for it" (9/9/09)