Anguishing Psychological Cognitive Dissonance

Man! Dude! #384

(M)an: Dude! There must be Democratic Debates before Wisconsinites and New Yorkers cast their ballots in the Democratic Primaries on Tuesday, April 5, 2016 [date of Wisconsin Primary] and Tuesday, April 19, 2016 [date of the New York Primary].

(D)ude: Man! I’m surprised no one seems to care to notice the Wyoming Caucus on Saturday, April 9, 2016! There ought to be two debates this week and one next week, otherwise this presidential election cycle will go down in history as the most suffocating and unrepresentative of the American people ever.

M: Dude! MSNBC is totally invested in the Clinton Campaign facing Donald Trump’s fascist circus waltz with the heavily-financed corps of cretins that are the Republican National Committee and Ted Cruz and John Kasich. On the March 31, 2016 episode of Meet the Press Daily, MSNBC creatively insisted on showing Hillary Clinton address issues in the news at a scheduled event in Madison, Wisconsin. Does the Press Corps really think they can fool American voters into not demanding debates between the presidential candidates?

D: Man! Hillary Clinton looks and sounds foolish, as if she’s already secured the Democratic nomination and is the President of the United States! Doesn’t Hillary Clinton know how much of a pseudointellectual braggart absolutist she comes across when she insists on addressing the issues all by herself instead of inviting her competitor Bernie Sanders into debate?

M: Dude! Joel Benenson is Hillary Clinton’s chief campaign strategist and on the March 31, 2016 edition of The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, he comfortably smiled at the footage of Hillary Rodham Clinton countering hecklers in Madison, Wisconsin, with her quipping, “Oh, I know the Bernie people came to say that. We’re very sorry you’re leaving…” The hecklers were clearly placed by Hillary’s camp for the purposes of allowing Hillary Clinton the opportunity to lull some valuable time on the campaign trail by addressing them cutting into her mundane monologue and placing the blame on Bernie Sanders directly. If the hecklers had not been preplaced, then Joel Benenson would have lost his cool much the same way Hillary Clinton does whenever she is confronted by genuine protest.  

D: Man! Hillary Clinton is stuck in the 1990s! This is the new millennium and the tactics that worked for Bill Clinton cannot be applied any longer. As for the email scandal unfolding with Hillary Clinton, she is her husband’s wife after all and probably shared confidential information with her spouse. She really needs to disconnect from that man! Together, they are a deplorable political pair being overwhelmingly favored by the American Press Corps right now. Hillary Clinton exploits abusively. Her husband came on television with his saxophone and then paraded about with African-American community leaders, only to pass welfare reform and a crime bill that couldn’t even facilitate after-hours sports for high-risk teenagers as pledged.

M: Dude! Hillary Clinton does exploit abusively, as she did grieving mothers at the community forum addressing gun violence prevention on March 29, 2016 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There was an element of grotesque sarcasm emanating from Hillary Rodham Clinton when she kept a smile and even allowed some laughter into her affect when Annette Nance-Holt criticized the Sanders Campaign for not reaching out to parents like herself, hence her conclusion that Bernie Sanders wasn’t working for her vote. However, Jane Sanders was asked for a reply by Kate Snow later that day on MSNBC and her response was one of love and reaching out to the aggrieved mother by restating that her husband Bernie Sanders did not wish to engage such raw emotional turmoil into a campaign event. The pain in Jane’s eyes for Annette Nance-Holt’s tremendous loss was so palpable and severe that I couldn’t help but cry for Annette Nance-Holt’s murdered son. There were many parents in Hillary Clinton’s audience that day when Nance-Holt spoke, mothers like Geneva Reed-Veal, mother of the late Sandra Bland, who insisted, “When you get backlash from people who are saying that you are going around and parading, you’re being pimped by the secretary. Ain’t nobody pimping me! None of us are being exploited.” That statement of anguishing psychological cognitive dissonance by Reed-Veal made me weep too, as well as Freda Bogan’s expressed turmoil about losing her son and then being told that his murderer would not serve the fifteen-year sentence because of prison overcrowding.     

D: Man! Thursday, March 31, 2016 was a historic milestone in presidential campaigning, with over 18,500 Bernie Sanders supporters showing up for a rally by their candidate in South Bronx’s St. Mary’s Park. However, MSNBC chose not to broadcast it live on the air as it does Hillary Clinton’s campaign forums. It is such a Shakespearean tragedy, very King Lear-like, how the American Press Corps is shutting out the Sanders campaign events, choosing not to televise the diversity and the range in support that Bernie Sanders has attracted thus far across the United States of America.  

M: Dude! King Lear? How so?

D: Man! Yeah! The American Electorate is King Lear and Bill and Hillary Clinton are King Lear’s deceptive daughters Goneril and Regan. As in the play by William Shakespeare, King Lear’s third and youngest daughter Cordelia chooses not to speak up in embroidered declarations about her love for her father and this irritates King Lear so much that he disowns Cordelia and splits his Kingdom between Goneril and Regan. This would have made marriage difficult for Cordelia, but the King of France responds positively to her honesty and marries her despite the absence of dowry.

M: Dude! The American Electorate is King Lear and, let me guess, Cordelia is Bernie Sanders?

D: Man! Yeah! King Lear is left ridiculed and banished out of his home by his selfish and shallow daughters Goneril and Regan. Likewise, the American Electorate better open its eyes to the deceptive campaign tricks of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s and actually respond with demands that Hillary Clinton actually carry out her proposals and pledges if elected. However, there remains a route to hope for the American Electorate to not perish under the steadfast grip of the haranguing hypocrite couple. That route is Bernie Sanders! Feel the Bern, America!

M: Dude! The Earl of Kent is banished from the Kingdom when he comes to the defense of Cordelia after King Lear disowns her. The American Press Corps is celebrated as the Earl of Kent in media matters in the new millennium, but it is too going to have to disguise itself as a Caius as the Earl of Kent does in order to continue communicating with King Lear.

D: Man! The American Press Corps is already preparing for the worst by parading around with lamentations about what happened to the United States for us to reach the point we’re at right now with Hillary Clinton not debating Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump insisting on nuclear holocaust in the Middle East while isolating the United States by closing borders.

M: Dude! Doesn’t Cordelia leave the kingdom with her husband, the King of France, and a statement about how she knows the premeditated mischievous of Goneril and Regan? “I know what you are”? Is it?

D: Man! “I know you what you are”! I’ve got the script right here!

KING OF FRANCE

Bid farewell to your sisters.

CORDELIA

The jewels of our father, with wash'd eyes

Cordelia leaves you: I know you what you are;

And like a sister am most loath to call

Your faults as they are named. Use well our father:

To your professed bosoms I commit him

But yet, alas, stood I within his grace,

I would prefer him to a better place.

So, farewell to you both.

REGAN

Prescribe not us our duties.

GONERIL

Let your study

Be to content your lord, who hath received you

At fortune's alms. You have obedience scanted,

And well are worth the want that you have wanted.

CORDELIA

Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides:

Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.

Well may you prosper!

KING OF FRANCE

Come, my fair Cordelia.

Exeunt KING OF FRANCE and CORDELIA

M: Dude! “Prescribe not us our duties”! Sounds like the rebukes that Hillary and Bill Clinton give their protestors!

D: Man! If the Clintons cannot handle protests at home, what will they have in store for US and the world abroad? The “no fly zone” policy Hillary Rodham Clinton has in mind over Syria is just another way of disengaging with our allies there and the coalitions being built. Who cares if Assad lives or dies in Russia? George Walker Bush lives and was the first American autocrat of the new millennium! Waterboarding, anyone? George Walker is that despot!