As a former member of the Democratic Party, I still stay in touch with many of its members who are my close friends. However, one thing that strikes me is that my friends are almost universally in denial of what the current Administration has brought upon this once great nation in just two years of being in office.
The reality of a soaring crime rate in our nation’s cities, runaway inflation that was once termed “transitory,” and our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan which served as the catalyst for Putin to invade Ukraine all seem to elude them as if it never happened. When presented with any hard evidence or facts they are not only in denial but put a typical push with emotion vs facts as if they live in an alternate universe where they can pick and choose the “facts” that fit their own Parties’ narrative.
Just today in an exchange with a noted Democratic syndicated columnist I was instructed that the “The FBI in recent years identified not Antifa, or anything on the left, as the major domestic threat to the United States. Rather, the FBI has now repeatedly identified right-wing extremists (militias, etc.) as the biggest threat. Indeed, a bigger terrorist threat than anything from outside our borders.”
I responded with a factual “How many deaths in the US are a result of right-wing extremists versus how many deaths in the U.S. have occurred in the U.S. due to fentanyl poisoning (~ 100,000) which can be attributed to our current open borders policy which has only emboldened the Mexican Cartels through profits gained from human trafficking and the flood of illegal drugs across the border.” The silence was deafening, evidently, he could not deal with the hard facts documented by our own Center for Disease Control data.
As I recall from my college psychology classes the condition termed Cognitive Dissonance is defined as “The distressing mental state caused by inconsistency between a person’s beliefs and an action.” An example of cognitive dissonance would be a health-conscious smoker, this person knows that smoking is bad for them, but they still smoke because they enjoy it. Likewise, I suspect many of my friends from the other side of the aisle are in fact good people, but they are unable to deal with the reality of what the Biden Administration has done to our nation in just two years and as a defense mechanism pretend all is well.
I truly wish my friends well, but they appear unable to cope with the reality of what is taking place in America no matter how harsh the reality is. Let’s hope we can change Administrations in 2024 so they will not have to deal with the cognitive dissonance that now burdens them pretending all is well in spite of the mess that surrounds them.
