I was only half-listening in that long-ago college class
"Half-listening" is kind of my thing
And the professor in my Psych 101 class mentioned how people who were popular in high school often had a difficult time coming off that “pink cloud” (that’s how he phrased it) of adulation out in the real world (which included college, I think). I locked in, because I’d been popular in high school (don’t ask me how) but locking in afforded me the opportunity to hear another phrase that would stay with me lo these many decades:
I tucked that phrase in the back of my brain and I pull it out every once in a while to examine it like a seashell I just found. In general, cognitive dissonance is:
…a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance.
Somehow in my head (again, “half-listening”) I turned that description outward, where the beliefs and ethics I believe we all (should) possess are flouted repeatedly. Take the bearded uglies who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. We pride ourselves on a peaceful transfer of power, a phrase so beloved we almost say it as one word, peacefultransferofpower. It was that peaceful transfer we could hold up to the world’s dictators and oligarchs and say, “See? Democracy works!”
And then? It didn’t, all because the time was ripe for the unwashed herd to latch onto a bloated, vulgar, small-handed rapist/failed businessman who cheats at golf, who told them a lie, and beat the drums over and over with that lie.
He had help, from unethical journalists to fellow haters, sycophants, and sad nobodies with slick resumes.
My cognitive dissonance came because I thought we were smarter than this. I thought we loved our country more than we loved responding in a faux John Wayne (whose politics and attitudes are not mine) to the lies of a demagogue. So for the last few years, I’ve been walking around with a raging case of cognitive dissonance, because while the insurrectionists (not all of them bearded) cling to a country on the brink of collapse because of librul rule, I still cling to this one.
I suppose those of us of a certain political bent can keep licking our wounds and nursing our sorrows over the dissonance, but for a cure to this unsettled feeling, I’m with this guy (I’m linking the video here, and apologies if you aren’t able to call it up) who said:
“If I am one grain of sand on the beach of resistance, I’m proud.”
As Mary Ann said, we stopped thinking of ourselves as citizens and started thinking of ourselves as consumers. Maybe Reagan had something to do with that that or maybe it was when news divisions merged with entertainment divisions at the big 3 networks. Certainly FoxNoise cemented it. Let's hope there are enough people like this man and his late father who see through the illusions. Can we reach 100 million votes for democracy? I think we can.
Okay, that man made me cry Susan. "One grain." Before I sat to read this I was making coffee and feeding my dog and wondering when we would "get our lives back again." It has been close to a decade since "The Gombeen" (as a lovely Irish grandmother called him on a Dingle beach one fine day early in his disassembly of democracy) slithered from his tower. I keep thinking people will wake from their fever-dream and realize what and who he is. I need to make peace that they will not, and this IS our lives now. I used to shore up democracy by voting and writing letters and protesting. It used to be mostly enough. I will keep doing those things of course, but you and the gentle man in the video, have made me wonder how else I can help "hold the beach." Thank you.