Ya know, some of these right wing complainers really have a point about the instant resort to name calling thing on the left. I wish I were as good a whisperer to the superiority complexations that have resulted from drinking this polemical brew, but, evidently, no such luck. And I'd so hoped that quoting Ḥaḍrat 'Alī might spark open the synapse, the passageway to clarity.... Silly, silly me.

Truly, though, it isn't the name-calling that upsets me. It's the stupidity, the dangerous stupidity of self-congratulation sucking all the air out of our ability to make manifest progress. Laughing and pointing at dumbasses while the house is burning down around you isn't putting out the fire... or even saving yourself from it, let alone others.

All this gleeful, or irascible, or gleefully irascible, them-bashing only makes an us of them-bashers. That's all. It's not the least bit progressive. It's actually regressive as hell. A lot of people are very, very pissed off about those of us choosing this ceaseless self-congratulation at everyone's expense, and are just as exasperated by relentless resort to cleverisms—by people who should otherwise be relied upon to stop doing this crap and perform—as you are by all the circus acts on the right.

And, again, for maybe the millionth time, or it sure feels like it, the real villains are laughing all the way to their rooms full of gold while you continue to go for this brand of "activism".

Man, I wish this shit were not so fucking deadly.

I think the very first metaphor my teacher used to express this basic form of cognitive dissonance was to state that it's like the not wealthy housewife wanting the perfect dress for the New Year's Eve party. She goes to her closet and there are two cocktail dresses in there. A green one and a blue one. She puts one on and then the other. She tries them with different shoes and different purses. She frets and she fusses until she comes up with the blue one with such-and-such shoes and such-and-such purse, deciding that this is the perfect dress. When all the time a little black dress was the perfect dress for this party. But it wasn't in her closet! She didn't own it and couldn't buy it, so the blue get-up had to become perfect instead. All that fussing after the perfect dress and she still feels like a schlub at the party.

It doesn't do any good to rummage around in your closet when what's in there doesn't cut it. It's just cognitive dissonance. Just cognitive dissonance you did to yourself, your conditioning let you end up doing to yourself. It doesn't work. It doesn't fix things. Actuality is not fazed by it. It barely even works in your own head. It simply perpetuates itself. It simply makes you feel need to think-something-into-perfection harder, or try even more shoes, or add bangles, or get your husband to lie to you that you were the most impeccably-dressed woman at the party, anything you can possibly think up to keep that dread feeling of schlub-at-the-New-Year's-Eve-party at bay.

This is actually identical to continually finding your progressive candidates letting you down once in office... continually finding your progressiveness has not produced progress.

You could have gone and traded the blue dress for a little black one with that uppity bitch down the street, except then you might have to be civil to her, or gone to the consignment store to do a trade, except someone might think you're poor if you're seen, or borrowed one from someone, even at the risk of owing a favor... all kinds of things... but, no—that's putting yourself out there, risking discomfort—far less dangerous to just make the blue dress the dress... right up to the moment you feel the schlubbiness....

Then, of course, you end up resolving to go with the green dress next year, whereupon the same process will start over again, and you will be badgering your husband yet again until he succeeds in convincing you that you look totally beautiful and picked the perfect dress for the party.

Every year you will experience the schlubbitude anew—that manifest lack of progress—but you won't get out of that damn closet, won't ever let yourself see that you can't fix it while locked in there... even when people's lives are at stake. The best it gets from you is a more energetic afternoon before the party of throwing new combinations together in front of the mirror, steaming about the lives depending on it.

You might well go your entire life without ever doing what it took to get that little black cocktail dress, feeling like a goddam schlub every goddam year—and who knows how many dying of it?—until, on your death bed, you realize how futile it was to be so prideful and self-limiting and other-annoying for all those years. That's usually the time when people finally let down their head trips to get a peep at the waste of all this closet rummaging, all this self-imposed cognitive dissonance, that prevented them ever manifesting their positive intent, ever making progress....

OR

One night, Nazrudin was on his hands and knees searching for his key in a well lit area. Some of his neighbors came to see why Nazrudin was on his hands and knees.

“What are you looking for, Nazrudin?" enquired one of the neighbors. “My door key.” Came the reply.

The helpful neighbors dropped to their hands and knees and joined Nasrudin in his search for the lost key.

After a long unsuccessful search, one of the neighbors asked: “We’ve looked everywhere. Are you sure you dropped it here?”
Nazrudin answered: “Of course I didn’t drop it here, I dropped it outside my door.”

“Then, why are you looking for it here!”

“Because there’s more light here," responded Nazrudin.

I'm just sick of everybody looking for the lost key only where the light is.