Cognitive Republican dissonance


I don't envy my Republican friends and relatives. If this is what they call winning, why isn't the country and the world in any better shape?

Talking with a friend at work today, a registered Republican, he expressed some misgivings about George W. Bush. "He spends too much," he said, "but, he's a moral man." The unspoken inference was that the man that Bush replaced was not a moral man. "Do you really think he's a moral man?" I asked. "I mean, he's seen in the company of religious leaders, and there's a lot of public piety, but don't his actions speak louder than his words? From where I sit, he's led us into one, possibly two, resource wars. He appears set to bankrupt the federal government so as to cut the health and human services budget." My friend acknowledged that he had recently heard that Bush was pushing to restrict overtime, and that seemed ill-advised. From there we agreed that both political parties had seemingly stupid policies.

Lobbying someone to change their political affiliation, or even their political views, is like pulling teeth. There is something about us as humans that makes us want to stick with the team. And I don't envy Republicans at this point, who must be feeling some cognitive dissonance. Here they are, identified with the winning team, yet continually assaulted by those of us who refuse to give in and believe good of those in control of this country.

Personally, at this point I would willingly give in and lose the political battle on every major hot-button political issue (abortion, taxes, privatization of Social Security) were it to be exposed, discussed and debated that Bush and DeLay and the rest of the Republican leadership are

a) not moral men
b) serve their wealthy constituencies first and foremost (and often, solely)
and
c) are bent on world domination through the control of resource-owning nations like Iraq.

We laugh at him when we see Lex Luthor fumble with pronouncements in the movies while his plans to take over the world unfold. In real life it turns out that we take him seriously and print his words in headlines on the front page. We're seeing the same drama played out in front of us on a daily basis, and yet we take pains not to notice.

Posted: Mon - March 1, 2004 at 10:48 AM        

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