When winter turns frigid, it's time to bring out my Russian hat, which has a benefit beyond keeping my head very warm: It reminds me of the power of self-delusion.

The hat is known in Russia as a ushanka, which literally translates as "ear-flap hat." You can spend hundreds of dollars for a ushanka made of silver fox fur, say, or go for something less pricey, like my shearling model. I got it in Moscow, while reporting there during the waning days of the Soviet era.

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Here's why my hat warns me of self-deception: It was produced when the Soviet economic bureaucracy set rigid quarterly production quotas in every factory. The quotas were universally regarded as impossible to meet, yet were seen as crucial to the career advancement of local officials. So at the end of each quarter of the year, work would speed up in every factory in vain attempts to meet the quotas. As a result, shoddy products by the millions - appliances, clothing, even automobiles - were produced during the final weeks of each quarter for years.

The Soviet establishment wouldn't admit to this, but consumers knew to check the labels specifying dates when products were made, and to avoid buying anything manufactured at the end of a quarter. The label in my hat reveals that it was made in November - not as sturdy as a hat made in October, perhaps, but surely better than a sloppy ushanka from a December production line.

The fact that generations of Soviet apparatchiks clung to the notion that the quotas supported the communist system's great productivity, all those second-rate ushankas aside, is a testament to the power of self-delusion. We humans are agile in our ability to believe what we wish, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Dr. Freud and his progeny say that self-deception is one of our most effective shields against the shame or embarrassment we might otherwise feel constantly as a result of our human fears, selfishness, cruelty and the like. But being more accepting of reality is an essential element of growth, and something we have a right to expect of adults.

Yet in this frigid season - did you know the term "bomb cyclone" before the weather pattern gripping the Northeast arrived this week? - it is chilling to recognize how skilled our own American government has become at self-delusion. Better to think of it as that, anyhow, than to chalk up what's going on in Washington to an epidemic of cynical mendacity on the part of a generation of public servants. If we blame the politicians' subconscious for turning them away from reality, it's less quarrelsome than accusing them of being liars.

Case in point: We're told the new tax law will add $1.4 trillion to the deficit, but that's actually a low estimate, achievable only if the tax cuts accelerate our economy's growth rate by 0.4 percentage points or more per year. No tax cut has ever generated that much growth, and no independent study projects this one will. Even if it does, the true cost of the new law would be $1.9 trillion if various provisions set to expire in the law actually continue, as seems likely.

Yet one after another, proponents of the new tax law chimed in last month about how much it would surely stimulate the economy and wind up paying for itself. It is pretty to think so.

There's also no factual basis for Attorney General Jeff Sessions' claim that marijuana is a dangerous drug akin to heroin, nor to marijuana being classified under federal law as a Schedule 1 drug, defining it as having no accepted medical use. Marijuana is legal in some form in 29 states, including for medical use in New York. Now federal prosecutors have a green light from Washington to once again go after marijuana sales, which generate billions of dollars of tax revenue, as though it's as serious as pushing opioids. In fact, it's not.

Maybe we should take heart when Washington delivers even small victories for truth over fantasy. This week the White House shut down a commission President Donald Trump had created to investigate his claim of massive voter fraud. Yet the president refused to concede the commission had been unable to find such fraud. In a Twitter post, he again said the voting system "is rigged," and added in a statement that there is "substantial evidence of voter fraud," a claim that might be described kindly as beyond the range of reality.

Nobody in politics these days displays quite as great a capacity for self-deception as the president, but the malady increasingly seems contagious. It takes considerable courage to be brutally honest in politics, no less than in our own confrontations with our inner selves. But failure to do just that leaves us vulnerable to the ethic that produced flimsy ear-flap hats. That can leave us out in the cold, indeed.

Rex Smith is editor of the Times Union. Share your thoughts at http://timesunion.com/rex_smith.