Hard to reconcile

While on the road to Damascus

Cognitive dissonance: the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.

The other day I was enjoying a midafternoon snack of black bean salsa and taco chips and a crisp Sugar Bee apple when my frontdoor camera chime went off. This was followed by a doorbell and, of course, the chaotic barking of my black Lab Pepper. It seems there some strangers on my front porch.

There were three adults standing there wearing MAGA-style red ball caps. Uh-oh. Looks like I have been invaded by Republicans, I thought. The caps had the name of someone and a suggestion to vote for him on the front. I quickly stepped on the porch while unsuccessfully attempting to thwart Pepper’s rush to leap on these people and lick them to death. She is a very bipartisan licker. After she had greeted all three of them I managed to herd her back into the house and slammed the door in her indignant face. Fortunately they had Labs at home and were very tolerant of Pepper’s aggressive affections.

The younger of the two men introduced himself, his wife, and an older gentleman who turned out to be his campaign manager. After some awkward handshakes he explained that he was running for a county office and wanted to meet some of the voters in our neighborhood. He mentioned the tornado that had wiped out our block of homes in 2014 and gave some examples of how he had helped our neighborhood in the aftermath of that awful event. I suppose he was trying to make a connection with me and perhaps gain my vote.

With a straight face I asked him what party he was representing. He confessed to being a Republican. He then mentioned that he was running against a friend who was a nice man but just happened to be a Democrat. He had nothing against him, of course, but felt that it was his time to step up and address some problems in our county.

It was at that point that I informed him he was soliciting the vote of a Yellowdog Democrat. The three chuckled lightly and avoided looking at me like I was some sort of space alien. I could tell from the way the man was giving me his spiel that he was assuming I was also a Republican, which is the norm for our area. This both amused and annoyed me.

We proceeded to have a very civil discussion without getting too deep in the weeds of policy. I asked him if he had supported Donald Trump. He hesitated slightly and admitted that he had voted for him. Of course, he did not approve of some of his personal lifestyle but (um-hmm) thought his policies had helped our country to move in the right direction.

It was not exactly a ringing endorsement. I wondered how he would have talked about Trump if I was a Republican.

He made a point of stressing that he was very involved with his church. At some point in our conversation, he confessed that his religion would not allow him to marry gay people.

Since civil matrimony is one of the services provided by the office he was seeking, I wondered but did not ask what he would do should such an occasion arise. I then redirected our talk to some neighborhood issues so we could have some relatively nonpartisan things to talk about.

They all seemed like decent folks who cared about their community and genuinely wanted to get involved in public service. I might not like their political party, but I thought they would make good neighbors.

He handed me his card when he left and made a point of telling me it had his personal cellphone number on it should I ever need to reach him. I thought that was a nice gesture. I saved the card because if he is elected, I may very well want to talk to him about the condition of our roads, our poor drainage, the high cost of water, and so on.

About 3 the next morning I woke at my customary time from a deep sleep. I call it the witching hour. After the usual bathroom trip, I lay awake pondering my experience with the candidate and his wife. The term “cognitive dissonance” popped into my head.

I wondered how someone who professed to be devoutly Christian could support a man like Trump. A man who lied with nearly every other breath. A man who cheated on all three wives and bragged about grabbing women by their private parts. A man who bilked hundreds of students out of their tuition to Trump University and used funds from a charity intended to help children with cancer for his own personal expenses. A man who promised us the “best” people in his Cabinet but surrounded himself with cheats, racists and grifters.

A man who used his executive powers to gut the clean air and water acts and then attempted to give away millions of acres of national park land to cronies for commercial development. A man who openly fawned over Vladimir Putin and quite possibly was very loose with national secrets around the Russians. A man who used his office to funnel millions of our tax dollars into his private resorts while taking golf outings nearly every weekend.

And finally, a man who fomented rebellion against our government in an attempt to overturn a lawful election.

I would not be surprised if this man and his wife were horrified when they found out about Bill Clinton’s sexual liaison with an intern back in the ’90s. Probably they could never forgive him for that. But they could support Trump, vote for him, and possibly use his name to get votes while knowing about his many transgressions and complete lack of remorse for any of them. The only explanation for this disconnect that I can come up with is … cognitive dissonance …

This is cognitive dissonance.