Incarnation Pianity

When in college (the first in my family to attend) I became fascinated with the term “cognitive dissonance” first coined by a psychologist in the 1950s. 

It is defined by my American Heritage Dictionary as “a condition resulting from inconsistency between one’s beliefs and one’s actions, such as opposing the slaughter of animals and eating meat.”

            Another definition found on line told me that cognitive dissonance “causes feelings of unease and tension” which people try to avoid by “’explaining things away’ or rejecting new information that conflicts with their existing beliefs.”

            We all experience this condition.  We cheat on our diets and rationalize it; for years I smoked cigarettes while believing that smoking could kill me.  We tell lies but consider ourselves honest. I believe carbon emissions are dangerously warming the planet but drove a gas-guzzling motorhome for seven years.

            Certainly we see cognitive dissonance in both our religion and our politics, the two subjects that polite people in my parents and grandparents days were told to avoid. Many people today say they avoid churches because of the “hypocrites” who say they believe in loving their neighbor but hate  people they dislike—immigrants, gays, foreigners, or members of other religious or political groups.

            We have just lived through the presidency of Donald Trump, who was seen by many conservative Christians as a savior of family and religious values despite his verified sexual exploits, his habitual lying, cheating his workers, and his illegal and unconstitutional behavior.  Many members of the Trump base were comfortable with this inconsistency and convinced themselves that anything bad said about Trump was a lie.

            As humans, we are adept at converting our uncomfortable feelings into certainty.  Those who disagree with us, we say, are completely mistaken.

            This helps explain both the belief in the lie that Trump won the 2020 election and the commonly heard statement last year that COVID-19 was a “hoax.”

            It might not be so bad if we didn’t replace our discomfort with strong anger and violence directed at those with whom we disagree, but the events of January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol show how difficut this is to do.  

            Cognitive dissonance will always exist, in both our personal and our political lives. It is an unfortunate part of our human nature.

            What does not have to continue is American acceptance of those who are proud of this inconsistent morality.  We do not have to act as if those who lie have as much right to publicly do so as those who speak the truth. To be blunt, our TV reporters do not have to humor those who speak nonsense before the camera, using foolish statements about the existence of conspiracies to justify their own discomfort with the truth.

            We should laugh them off the stage, challenge their right to be taken seriously when they clearly are speaking nonsense, and then, if they persist, ignore them and deny them a public platform.

            Stop people talking about Ivermectin on television unless they are talking about a horse or a treatment for river blindness; don’t seek out people to interview who want to proclaim that they have “the freedom of choice” or the “constitutional freedom” to endanger the lives of others by not being vaccinated or wearing a mask during a COVID-19 pandemic.

            And we should do all this politely but firmly!

            To help better understand this problem, I recommend a book by social psychologists Elliot Aronson (who worked with the man who invented the term “cognitive dissonance”) and Carol Tavris: Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions and Hurtful Acts (2007; updated in 2020).

            A shorter look at their argument is found in Atlantic (July, 2020) titled “The Role of Cognitive Dissonance in the Pandemic.”

            And when talking to a family member who has refused COVID vaccination, it is best not to start the conversation with “How could you be so stupid?” 

 Instead, ask your relative to find someone who shares their political views but has been vaccinated; ask that person to explain why he or she did that.

            If that doesn’t work, just tell your relative to just stop watching television.

             I recall a cartoon from my early years that showed a picture of a slightly disheveled man wearing a poster board that had printed in bold letters: “Repent. The End is Near.”  

            We used to laugh at that because it seemed silly to think anyone could be so sure of the end. 

            Now I am no longer so sure that is the case.

            In the final two weeks of September, I saw the following new items. NPR had a story, repeated in other media outlets, about a meeting of representatives of three Christian denominations, Catholic Pope Francis, the Episcopal Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Patriarch Bartholomew, together urging us to pray for the planet and its peoples.

            “Widespread fires and droughts threaten entire continents,” the clergy leaders said, “sea levels rise, forcing whole communities to evacuate; cyclones devastate entire regions, ruining lives and livelihoods. Water has become scarce and food supplies insecure, causing conflict and displacement for millions of people.”

            The Christian leaders then called upon “everyone, whatever their belief or world view. . .to listen to the cry of the earth and its people who are poor, examining their behavior and pledging meaningful sacrifice for the sake of the earth which God has given us.”

            In a more secular or non-religious setting, I also heard António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, proclaiming on a network news show that it was almost too late to stop a disaster from fast-increasing climate change.  We need to curb carbon emissions—and every country was well behind on their promises to do so.

            So what are we Americans doing about this patently bipartisan threat? 

Congress seems to find too expensive a bill that would, according to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, put the United States in a position to reach only 50% emission reductions by 2030. 

            That goal does not come close to meeting satisfying the urgency underlying the plea of the UN General Secretary and the Christian leaders. And the bill to do this will be reduced in both money and intent before it is approved.

            And Senator Joe Manchin says he doesn’t think that eliminating fossil fuels will “clean up the global climate” anyway.  Of course, what else should we expect of the Senator from a state that produces 91% of its energy needs from coal?

            Are we doomed?  Well, that depends on whether we have the political courage to actually tax in some form or fashion the continuing use of fossil fuels and to do so quickly.

            President Biden’s climate proposals would have us introduce tax incentives for clean energy and electric vehicles.  It would also establish a standard for what constitutes clean energy, and would create a “civilian climate corps” modeled on the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps.  It would hire 20,000 people annually, similar to Americorp, at $15.00 an hour, to do such things as restore wetlands, fight wildfires, and improve our environment by removing invasive species.

            Of course, the key to any attempt to save our world and the human species requires a change in attitude. Do we value human and other life more than money? Democrats seem more willing than Republicans to put the survival of humanity ahead of immediate financial gain for wealthy executives and stockholders in the fossil fuel industry. 

            But the “proof is in the pudding,” as we like to say, even though the original expression was that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating or tasting.”   This helps to clarify the meaning.

            Another way to say this is to say that the proof is in the walking, not in the talking, or in the “lawing” instead of the jawing.  

            So maybe we should all write or call our Congress people. Or call our state representative and senator, Ms. Imes and Mr. Howell at the Legislative Message Line (800 372-7181), and ask them to set a bi-partisan example on the state level by supporting legislation to promote clean energy in Kentucky. 

            Then we could all be pro-life, in the deepest and most important way possible!

Recently a conservative friend encouraged me to broaden my liberal horizon by reading an article on “The Real Structural Racism” in the Wall Street Journal (9-6-21)

            Written by William McGurn in the Opinion section, the article criticized progressives such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for not doing more to promote black achievement, saying that “if ever there were a structure systemically keeping African-Americans from getting ahead, it would surely be America big city public school systems.”

            McGurn cites low reading and math proficiency rates for black eight graders in Detroit (4% for math and reading) and Milwaukee (5% for math and 7% for reading).  He reported that this is also common in other large cities, despite much money spent per pupil in many of them.  

            The author goes also attacks progressives (meaning big-city Democrats) for ignoring the black achievement gap “by not making it easier for these kids to get into schools where black children are achieving, whether this be charter or parochial schools.”  He notes that some of them even want to eliminate achievement tests themselves to cover their failure.

            Yes, McGurn is describing a real problem.  Black students are not doing well in many big city schools, and I have no doubt that systemic racism does exist in many school systems.  His response to the problem is to privatize education. Send blacks to religious schools or charter schools and all will be well.   

Well, maybe.

            An article in McGurn’s own paper two years ago, “Charter Schools Success Is an Illusion,” by Glenn Sacks (8-26-19) pointed out that Charter schools, like magnet schools, are often successful because their enrollment is very selective.  Take only the best students, screen out any weak ones, and your test scores will improve. 

“There is a level of institutional hypocrisy here,” said the American Enterprise Institute in 2013.

 As a teacher, I have never been fond of measuring educational success by test scores, even though politicians love to reduce “success” to a number suitable for media sound bites.

The many ways of learning, as well as many factors outside schools, make education complex but also an easy mark for those who seek simple solutions.  Because of that, I see the value on McGurn’s final loaded question: “Is the answer to a black achievement gap to paper it over by eliminating any objective measures of achievement?”

Well, of course not.  This question falls in the “Have you stopped kicking your dog” category.

            Here is a more complex answer to the problem of institutional racism McGurn identifies in our educational system.  The first step, of course, would be to screen out racist individuals in the hiring and promotion process for teachers and administrators, as difficult as that might be.

            Second, and even more difficult, we could close the achievement gap between successful middle-class students and blacks and other minorities stunted by poverty by systemically promoting greater equity in our society. 

            Attack overt and subtle institutional practices outside the school that place poorer and minority students at risk from Kindergarten onward.  Make it easier for their families to get home loans and salaries commensurate with their white, middle-class counterparts. I wonder if Mr. McGurn supports a $15 an hour minimum wage?

            Then we might address those practices that make black students feel devalued before and after they enter school.  Fear of the police, of walking, driving, or even jogging in white neighborhoods (in Brunswick, Georgia, for example).  

            The simple truth is that black Americans, like many indigenous Americans, are not treated well by many of the rest of us. This can be due to prejudice by individuals but it is also due to the cultural assumptions and attitudes built into the practices of many institutions, including our schools.

            Many of us have heard of research showing that some white teacher’s lower expectations of black students can have consequences. A study in Education Week several years ago reported that “Teachers lower expectations for students can become a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy.’” [10-24-17]

            I appreciate Mr. McGurn’s awareness of the systemic racism built into our educational system, and I even wish that his simple solution would work.            Alas, it will not.  But, hey, thanks for pointing out the problem. It is a start.

            Since I have been asked by the executive committee of the Calloway County Democratic Committee to represent the Democratic Party as a columnist, it is fitting that I offer explain why I have been a registered member of this political party for over fifty years.

            I begin by thanking my friend and Democratic colleague Marshall Ward, who ably, factually, and faithfully represented Democratic party positions for the past three years.

            Although Marshall has left his post as a columnist to become a non-partisan lobbyist for the Kentucky Retired Teachers Association, I appreciate the research and knowledge of American history found in his columns.  As a European historian by training, I envy his mastery of such things as the Federalist Papers and the legacy of post-Civil War racism and segregation. 

            I also want to thank the Ledger and Times for presenting diverse opinions in columns and letters in recent years.  As a Ledger subscriber since 1969 and a person involved in various public issues since then, I can assure readers this has not always been the case.

            Now to today’s topic: Why am I a Democrat?

            First, the Democratic Party is more inclusive in its membership and policy positions.  While Democrats during the Clinton years did succumb to the lure of a neo-conservative centrism that lost them the support of many working-class Americans, especially union members, Democrats still offer a broader tent than Republicans, one which welcomes people of all classes and colors.  

            Second, Democrats see rational disagreements among party members as a virtue rather than as a sign of political disloyalty, as is the case with today’s Trumpist Republicans.  This can be a political weakness. Early 20^th century humorist Will Rogers once said: “I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat!”  

            Third, today’s Trump Republicans are so different from Republicans I grew up with—men like Everett Dirksen, Dwight Eisenhower, or the moderate Kentuckian John Sherman Cooper.  In those days, Republicans promoted different policies than Democrats but were open to debate and compromise and did not call their opponents enemies.  

Today, the Trumpists leaders of the Republican Party prefer power over policies, even when that preference requires them to lie about election results and pass state laws restricting the voting opportunities of lower class and minority voters. To some governors in this Trumpist party, promoting public health with vaccinations and facemasks is far less important than their political future.

Fourth, Democrats are less willing than Trumpist Republicans to distort the truth for political gain. A current example of this is the recent attacks on Critical Race Theory by Republicans. By focusing, in almost hysterical terms at times, on this academic theory, they distract their supporters from the very real issue of systemic racism in our social, political, and financial institutions.

Fifth, Democrats speak up louder for human survival during climate changes than do Republicans, who seem happy to continue polluting the planet with carbon emissions until it brings the death of all or most human and other life on earth.

Finally, I am a Democrat because American democracy is at stake, and the elections in 2022 and 2024 could be the most crucial since the election of 1860.  I know that us older folks are often humored for saying that things are worse than “when we were young,” but this time it actually seems to be true, as we see voting rights and Congress itself under attack.

And since Murray is a largely conservative, evangelical religious community, I will say that it is time for Democrats to repent of the grievous sin they committed during the past generation by ignoring the importance of local politics in favor of just trying to elect a Democratic president of the United States. Republicans now control the grass roots, filling school boards, local magistrate positions as well as many state legislatures. This doesn’t have to continue.

It is time for Democrats in Calloway County to stand up publicly for democracy, fairness, truth, public health, and the earth itself.  We need to work together to end systemic racism and reduce poverty in our community. 

I hope to play a small part in helping this happen.

            I know that this sounds like a nasty, sarcastic question.  Yet it is being be asked by some serious people in the American political community.

            One of them is New York Times columnist David Brooks, my favorite Republican opinion writer.  I admire him, of course, because he is convinced, with only a few reservations, that President Biden’s legislative agenda—including the infrastructure bill, the reconciliation package, and the measure designed to prevent voter suppression—are all necessary to end polarization in our politics and slow down the GOP move towards authoritarianism. Unlike the Trumpist Republicans, Brooks cares about people.

            In a recent column, Brooks expressed dismay that in traveling through five states, he found widespread indifference to the current battle in Congress over Biden’s legislative package.

            “Have we given up on the idea,” Brooks wrote, “that policy can change history? Have we lost faith in our ability to reverse, or even be alarmed by, national decline?”   Have we lost respect for “the common man,” so admired by our ancestors, he asked? Are we now so caught up in a “culture of individualism” and “vicious populism” that we no longer care for others? 

            If we did care for each other, would we let friends and family members die of COVID by not getting vaccinated?

Brooks noted that “the Democratic spending bills . . . serve moral and cultural purposes” and should not be viewed as only important politically and economically. Yes, “they would support hundreds of thousands of new jobs for home health care workers, childcare workers, metal and supply chain workers” but they would also “redistribute dignity downward” and “ease the indignity millions of parents face having to raise their children in poverty.”

While Brooks’ concern about American indifference to the importance of this current legislation is on target, behind his concern lies the greater danger facing us because of our present situation.  This is the threat to each other (neighbors all) and to democracy itself.

An underlying reason for the current deadlock threatening people and planet, aside from what Donald Trump did and said, is that many Americans felt ignored by their government for an entire generation. Both parties, especially Republicans, have fought expensive and fruitless wars against “terrorism” and catered to the rich with tax breaks. 

            Many of those who voted for Trump and Biden were angry at being ignored.

            Biden’s proposals would address the loss of faith in government that has been worsening since at least the Nixon presidency. They would increase jobs for infrastructure, cleaner energy, and expanded internet connections. They would provide tax credits and child care for parents, and protect our right to vote freely.  The largest per capita share of most money in the infrastructure bill would go to the very states where “Trumpian resentment is burning hot,” according to Brooks: Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota. 

President Biden is trying to support and dignify those very Americans who voted for Trump. He is trying to show them that their government cares. Of course, this will be just another empty promise if this legislation fails to pass or if the money Congress approves is reduced to a mere token of what is needed.

And yet most of us, writes Brooks, seem “indifferent.”  There are no protest marches, no massive letter or email writing campaigns urging Congress to do what is necessary to break the deadlock and pass these measures.  This is true in Kentucky where the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy estimates that 1.9 million Kentuckians would have guaranteed paid family leave and sick leave under the Build Back Better bill. Why does Mitch McConnell think that is unimportant?  Why do Kentuckians continue to let him think that??

Have we lost energy? Democracy requires more energy than does dictatorship.  It also works best in a community where all have minimal economic security.

Dictatorship, whether in a capitalist or socialist state, or in a mixed system like that of China, values obedience over energy. Is that what we want?

And let’s not pretend that “it couldn’t happen here.”  It can and it will, if we do not act now to move our legislatures off of their “if, ands, and buts.” 

This is what a political analysist wrote recently when a speaker at a recent meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) claimed that Trump had won the 2020 election.

The words in this title were used by a political analyst to describe a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAP) stating that Trump won the 2020 election.

What does it mean to say that someone is “untethered from reality?”  Psychologists call such people delusional, especially if they really think that what they are saying is true. The rest of us just say they that they are confused, mistaken, or just lying to protect themselves or to convince others of something that is not supported with evidence.  

Of course, children often engage in such defensive behavior. I knew a child once who, when unable to find his belt, claimed that someone had broken into the house during the night and stolen it (later found “hidden” under his bed).

We expect more of educated adults. Perhaps we should not.

What we should understand is that being “untethered from reality” is nothing new in human history, especially political history. It occurred when leaders in ancient Athens overestimated their power in 431 BCE and went to war with Sparta, leaving all of Greece open to conquest by Alexander the Great in the following century.  

It happened again when leaders in Europe in 1914 expected a short war and ended up permanently weakening Europe’s power in the world by the end of World War I in 1918.  And when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and declared war on the United States that same year, he was “untethered” from the reality of what these two “flanking powers” would do to his “thousand-year Reich” by 1945.

Even in our daily lives, we often cling to delusions we deem necessary to our emotional survival. Especially in difficult times, we are programed, it seems, to divide into camps, with ourselves among the good people and the “others” responsible for all the real or imagined evils that beset us.

Then there is also our ego-driven desire for power, governed far more by our emotions far than by our ability to reason.  It is just the way we are as humans, like it or not.

Do we think that saying that someone is “untethered from reality” will shock that person or his or her followers into repentance and a return to reason?   Do we think it will matter to those we see as delusional?  Naw, not really!  

Usually, I dare say, we are just trying to rally our base, those already persuaded, as well as to convince the imaginary “undecideds,” and get out the vote. What we often accomplish is just a continuation of the current political polarization.  

We face a dilemma?  Those of us who prefer legislation to help our fellow citizens over the current demoralizing “tug of war” in Congress now realize that belief in bi-partisanship is becoming an idea almost as untethered from reality as the belief that Trump won the 2020 election.  

Are we Democrats caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, to use another cliché?   The lack of ability to pass significant legislation itself weakens our faith in democracy at the very time the Republican Party is working to suppress voting at the state level.  

Are we approaching another civil war, this one over whether or not to remain a democratic republic or to move to minority rule by a dictator subservient to the rich (what Greeks called oligarchy, government by the few)?

The only way out, it seems, is to use the courts to preserve our right to vote while trying to convince voters that democracy is worth saving—and that can be done only if we clearly see the alternative. Twentieth-century authoritarian leaders were responsible for many millions of deaths.

Unfortunately, dictatorship is again part of our world’s political reality.  After all, dictators get things done quickly and do not tolerate political divisions.  They cut down rainforests in Brazil, fight Covid with soldiers in China, financially enrich those who support them in Russia, and ignore the poor everywhere.

Surely that will never happen here?  We are “proud to be Americans, because at least we know we’re free,” Lee Greenwood told us many years ago.

Let us hope and act as if that is still true. The clock is ticking.