In the well-known Shakespearean tragedy, Hamlet, the namesake
protagonist tells Ophelia: “That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse
to your beauty." In doing so, Hamlet exposes an underlying philosophical
truth about the contradictory nature of the human condition. This theoretical
stance is deeply rooted in man’s psychological substrate, and is featured in
literary, scientific, and cinematic themes. From the Shakespearean tragedies,
to Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, to
Sigmund Freud’s vision of the ego and the id locked in a constant struggle for
domination of an individual’s mind, to the conflicted nature of the Hulk, we
are, for better or worse, seething with contradictory impulses, beliefs, and
behaviors, resulting in a myriad of irrational decisions and behaviors.
In 1957, The American social psychologist
Leon Festinger shed some light on why we act in ways that contradict logic and
drive us to not only make poor decisions, but also to stand by and justify
these decisions. Festinger’s theory is called cognitive dissonance. Simply put, when people have a contradiction
between their belief systems (and resulting behaviors) and information that
refutes these beliefs, they experience an unpleasant tension. This tension
creates a motivation to reduce the contradictory and unpleasant feelings.
Either the individual must change their behavior, or modify their beliefs to
create harmony between the two conflicting worlds. This theory explains
precisely why Barrack Hussein Obama remains popular and why so many people are
ready to vote him into office again, despite his atrocious record.
No matter how bad the economic crash was in
2007, no one, save Obama, his cronies, and a quasi-sycophantic press, really
believes we are any better off now. Real unemployment is close to 16%.
Foreclosures are still rampant. People are draining their retirement accounts
in desperation to pay their daily bills. The Middle East is on fire, and the
revolutions we supported in Libya and Egypt are bearing dubious fruit. And thanks
to Mr. Obama’s rhetoric, we are more divided as a nation, along social,
economic, political, and gender lines, than we have been since the Vietnam War.
We have lost credibility in the world as we have spent ourselves into oblivion,
laughably tracing the footsteps of our European cousins while expecting
different results. We even have a group of Democratic senators and
representatives willing to plunge our economy and our people into ruin (damn
the poor who would be hurt the most, a few morsels of welfare largesse will
suffice) in order to auger their belief in social justice via a tax hike on the
supposedly heinous and villainous people who dare to make a seemingly arbitrary
figure of $250,000.
And yet, day after day, I meet people who
praise the President, laude his decisions, celebrate his policies, and support
his reelection. In the black community, where unemployment is at a historic
high, support remains steadfast. What is our president’s response? President
Obama takes to the bully pulpit, offering support for a community grieving and
writhing with anger over the death of Travon Martin, bolstered by our attorney
general’s accusations that we lack the courage to engage in honest discussion
about racism. Meanwhile, in Chicago, where Rahm Emanuel presides as equal opportunity destroyer and purveyor of corruption, somewhere between 30-50 young adults, mostly black men, die at the
hands of other young black men every month. The silence from D.C. is deafening.
Amid the increasing poor, Obama is
perceived as the last bastion of empathy, rather than the causative agent of
their woes, further miring them in the welfare state that has so rapaciously,
yet systematically, destroyed and continues to destroy families in our inner
cities. The President chides them to "take of your slippers and put on your marching shoes." But it's difficult to march when you can't pay your rent or feed and clothe your family. Meanwhile Obama has met only tow times with his economic team in the past six months. nothing shows commitment like inaction, at least in the Obama White House.
Then, there's academia. Recent college graduates, their $30,000,
often meaningless diplomas held aloft, are promised a slightly lower loan
repayment and a health care system they will not be able to afford in the
future, a debt that will burden them all of their adult life, and little prospect for attaining a decent job in the near future. Yet they press the flesh and beat the drum for their man, the champion of the
oppressed and underserved, whose disdain for the cupidity inherent the free
market knows no bounds, save for the universities, who gush money for Obama's campaign coffers, and who pilfer these very
students so their elite professors can teach comparative politics six hours a
week whilst they engage in tax-payer funded “research” to unearth new evidence
of the greatness of Che Guevara and other Marxist revolutionaries. It would not
be shocking if Che himself votes for Obama in 2012, especially if he does not
have show a legal form of ID, courtesy of Eric Holder’s Heroes who selectively
enforce the Voters Rights Act as long as it tilts the tables in their
favor.
And among women, Obama is still the hero
who protects reproductive rights while fostering the illusion of a “wage gap.” Ironically,
the only real wage gap is the one that has resulted from women who are involuntarily
unemployed and who now outnumber men in joblessness. And given the lack of career opportunities for women, they will need birth control, because they certainly cannot afford another mouth to feed, much less save for their child's inflated college education.
He is also the guardian of our public
school system, so corrupted
by the apathy propagated by teacher's unions as they shovel unapproved campaign funds fleeced from union members to the Democratic party. The result? Hundreds of
thousands of kids regularly fall through the cracks, cracks wide
enough that our society as a whole will eventually fracture if left unaddressed. By almost every measure, America and her people are
lessened as a result of President Obama’s stewardship; yet polls show almost a
dead heat between President Obama and Mitt Romney.
The only logical explanation, the only
credible reason, is mass cognitive dissonance. The vast majority of those who
installed Obama in 2008 (including the liberal media) cannot come to grips with
the consequences of their collective decisions; rather, they justify and
hyper-rationalize their way out of their dissonant state. Hence, instead of
holding the thin-skinned narcissist-in-chief responsible for his agenda and
decisions, thereby admitting a sense of culpability, they resort to baser
instincts. Opposition to Obama’s feckless and reckless agenda becomes colored
by the emotionally charged language of racism, cloaked in the calculus of
righteous self-indignation over perceived socio-economic justice, or obscured
by empty, hypocritical accusations of capitalistic malfeasance or lack of
transparency over taxes. So the most corrupt administration in the last sixty
years, whose Fast and Furious scandal makes Watergate look like mere child’s
play, whose political appointees and czars are steeped in corruption and ethics
breeches, and whose senior -level security members seem unable to hold national secrets anymore than a
newborn can control their bladder, escapes largely unscathed. Shakespeare once
again portends this universal condition through the role of the Player King in
his tragedy Hamlet:
Our wills
and fates do so contrary run
That our
devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts
are ours, their ends none of our own.
Shakespeare used this contrivance of a play in a play to provide commentary on our moral dilemma. And so now America’s fate is now in the
hands of a populace that must reconcile our present condition and undeniable future
with the ephemeral and duplicitous slogan of Hope and Change. It's time to step out of the play in the play and face the harsh light of truth. It's time for an entirely new script, one in which our ends are our own.
