A state of Cognitive Dissonance

We are in the fourth month of the Trump presidency, but it feels like it’s been a year. This administration’s plans appear to be: throw so much crap at one time that we either grow weary or we miss some of the egregious policy changes that are being made.

I have attempted to stay engaged, to be an active participant in the “Resist Movement.”  I’m showing up for rallies, calling our elected officials, submitting witness slips, signing hundreds of petitions and was active in our local election.

It seems the more we do, the more things stay the same. We are still being bombarded by “45’s” tweets that are at best inaccurate and often just outright lies. His press secretary holds daily briefings full of deception and insults. Hundreds of critical positions in the government are still unfilled.

We have a secretary of state who does not hold press conference, often traveling without the press corp. An attorney general who lied under oath to Congress and a health secretary who has used his former position in Congress to make a lot of money with insider trading.

This president has broken every tradition and norm which all the presidents before him honored. The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a lawsuit against “45” alleging he’d violated the “Emoluments Clause.” The group believes that the clause prohibits Trump-owned businesses from accepting payments from foreign governments.

The president continues to treat the presidency as a 9-5 gig; continuing to travel to his resort in Florida every weekend at a cost of $3.4 million to the tax payers for each trip.

The first lady continues to live in New York, not to disrupt a 10-year old child’s routine at a cost of $146,000 per day to tax payers. We are paying for secret service for his adult children. Recently, 100 secret service personnel accompanied them on to a family ski vacation in Aspen, Colo.

Daily I search the news for an inkling of pushback to this reckless and heartless behavior by the leaders of the Republican Congress. But they continue to codify and normalize every outlandish tweet “45” posts and unsubstantiated comment he makes.

In trying to understand how they can put their personal careers at risk and not challenge the assault by this administration, I have concluded that those who follow “45” with blind loyalty are suffering from a condition called Cognitive Dissonance.

The definition for cognitive is the process of thought and the definition for dissonance is lack of agreement between the truth and what people want to believe.

Cognitive Dissonance is an internal contradiction or multiple contradictions that create a pattern of well-researched and predictable behaviors in an individual or group under a strange influence.

I am not a psychologist, but I know there is something very wrong when a group of people can continue to support someone who demonstrates daily a lack of humility, compassion or curiosity. This president has offered a budget that will remove any safety net for the most vulnerable among us.

Those of us who have any sense of humanity cannot stand on the sidelines and allow this madness to go unchecked. It is our duty to “Resist” and speak the truth!