Cognitive Dissonance

This is NOT a pro-Trump MAGA diatribe. Far from it. Trump and most Republicans, with their fascist politics and shameful grandstanding, aren't even an option for sane voters in the USA Presidential Elections in November 2024. We won't discuss them here because they're beyond the pale, beyond the realm of possibility for functional governance. Trouble is, Democrats aren't too far behind. They'll tell you something but you'll be seeing something else. Is the Democratic Party trying to gaslight you for your vote? You know that things aren't as great as Biden claims when large corporations are doing massive layoffs. And nobody, least of all the corporate Democrats who are now running things, objects to this. After all, that's the way of capitalism: a downsized corporation becomes more profitable, the stock price goes up, stockholders get happier, richer, fatter. But Wall Street and Main Street are not the same thing, stockholders are a comparatively small elite. What about the many wretches who lost their jobs in the downsize? Where do they go? Where's the wide open labor market Democrats keep extolling? Where are the many jobs that the economy has supposedly added? Whatever jobs ARE available--do they offer decent pay and benefits? Nope. But nobody will tell you that, nobody will admit that steady employment is fast being replaced by minimum wage gigs or three-month contracts with temp agencies. And that even

those minimum wage gigs are hard to come by; I invite you to apply for a job online. If you seek a position walking dogs, you'll have to compete with 150 other applicants for the privilege of scraping dog shit off the sidewalk. You'll soon discover that major employers want college degrees from schleps who will be required to stack shelves or bag groceries. Worse, you'll need two of these lousy jobs because the pay won't go very far, now that prices are soaring. That's another example of cognitive dissonance: if as Democrats claim, inflation is abating, why are we always broke? There's evidence of this kind of doubletalk and deception everywhere. If the US is the "good guy" in foreign policy issues, why are we contributing to the genocide of millions of Palestinians? Or why has Biden been ignoring the mess at our Southern border? Or the disruptions provoked by masses of immigrants streaming into our cities unsupervised, unfunded, unvetted? These people are draining our resources and making our streets more dangerous, while Biden just lets the problem build up and Progressive Democrats advocate for leniency at the border. None of this represents our opinions or serves our needs as USA Latino voters: We don't want our lives overrun by these strangers, we need border control and financial aid to our cities, but nobody is listening to us. Because Biden wants to ignore the true nature of his base: it is largely composed of brown people-- Latinos, Arabs-- and educated white kids. And let's not forget the black voters who revived his anemic bid for the Democratic primary in 2020. Unfortunately, Biden craves voters who are white old men like him, but those are already taken. Trump has got them, and they ain't going nowhere, as far as anyone can tell, though this doesn't seem to discourage Biden. It will take more than that bit of reality to dent his determination to remain on the throne. Biden, you see, is a guy who feels outdone by the young black upstart who managed to get to the presidency before he did, a geezer who just wants to be President once more before he drops dead, and fuck everything else. Despite his folksy charm, his famous gift for compassion born from personal suffering, he strikes me as an arrogant old coot. Efforts to make him look warm and cuddly fall flat, licking ice cream during photo ops won't make him a nicer person; his nasty nature slips out when he interacts with rank-and-file journalists. Biden has managed to squelch all divergence of opinion within his party to make himself the only choice for the presidency in 2024. Additionally, it's not customary or easy to primary an incumbent, and a progressive third party candidate might split the vote in favor of the GOP. What to do? Biden is IT and he plays on this, because he knows that Trump shouldn't even be an option with non-crazy voters. So I guess we will have to vote in Uncle Joe, the lesser evil, while refusing to believe his bullshit and working to force a more righteous conscience onto his second term.