Cognitive Dissonance

Los Angeles, California

I'm frightened and amused. I'm framused. Have you, by any chance, read the manifesto named Project 2025? I kinda want to call it Project 225, because it harkens back to that year, AD. It's not a new concept and it dovetails well with MAGA. Or at least with the founders' ability to harness MAGA's moronic base. I'm just a little surprised that they have the balls to actually publish it after, I suppose, two decades or more (when was Obama elected?) of whispering about it in men's clubs and corporate retreats.

I should preface my comments on this by writing that I think the fringes on both sides of the political spectrum are pretty crazy. The woke stuff is from another planet. A lot of the progressive ideas seem unsound. While Trump was promising to build the wall and to make Mexico pay for it, Bernie was promising free college education for all. I pondered aloud, How would we pay for that? Joel's reply was Make Mexico pay for it. Joel, having been raised in Mexico, knew Trump was pissing in the wind about Mexico paying for the wall. But they, in their red caps, all seemed to buy it.

Meanwhile, women were going after men with a vengeance and a lot of men unfairly took the fall for it. Risqué jokes could be a reason for canceling men as well as their careers. And all the while, necklines kept getting lower and skirts kept getting higher. We can broadcast whatever we like, was the message. But you better not look at it, or we will lower the boom. Women had a lot of justified anger. We had been objectified for eons. But now with the power endowed they were, by God, going to use it, rightly or not. It was retribution time.

In addition, progressives were busy attempting to put the dairy industry out of business, wanting to outlaw everything they deemed unhealthy, and letting five-year olds or their parents, decide what, if any, gender would be applied to these little people. What kind of insanity is that? Down the rabbit hole we had gone.

But shifting a wee bit to the right, there goes our civil rights. Let's make everyone practice one or one and-a-half (we're thinking Judaism might pass, or maybe we'll pick them up later) faiths. And, for the love of heaven, let's keep women at home and not allow them to terminate unwanted pregnancies because in our new/old world, all pregnancies are wanted. And sex should solely within the confines of traditional, heterosexual marriage and initiated by the husbands in that union. Women have children because without it, they will become "crazy cat ladies" according to the MAGA VP candidate. But that's just the tip of the iceberg that is getting some press. How about we change the government so that all civil servants report under the president, and let's give him wider-reaching authority. Enough of this balance of power bullshit. What's good enough for Hungary should work pretty well here. Libertarianism was an experiment which failed in the everybody-do-your-own-thing '60s. Americans are stupid. They shouldn't be left to their own devices. They need to be made to understand that this country will be better if the government is left to white men who will eject Muslims and Hindus and the rest of those people outta here. And, by the way, the democrats have been inattentive to the tech industry needs and that's why some of these tech execs have come up with this cool plan.

Frightening. But still just a teensy bit amusing, as archaic ideas brought up in modern times can be. J.D. Vance is the poster child. Forget about Trump. He's old. He's only useful to them at this time in order to get this ball rolling. But what is not in any way amusing is that while this is going on, a generation of younger men are reacting to the world as a place they would like to get out of, and take a bunch of people with them while they are at it. It used to be that the cultists who wanted to drink Kool-Aid or jump on the Hale-Bopp Comet were rare. Now they're mainstream. And you don't even need to drink the Kool-Aid, just wear the red cap and Project 225 will gather you up.

I stopped attending Mass when I became increasingly aware of an American Apostolic Movement which professes a desire to make the United States into a Christian nation, despite it being founded on religious freedom for all. The more I read about this, the more I felt that I couldn't be a part of any Christian community. I experienced a personal shake-up in my faith in Christianity. Recently I attended Mass for the first time this year. It was a funeral Mass, but the ritual of Mass which I have now loved for decades was before me. I uttered the responses and repeated the Lord's Prayer. In my silent prayer, I felt my connection to God. But that occurred in spite of my knowledge of what is happening in the hearts and minds of many "Christians" who want to take their belief and dogmatism, politicize it and make it law. That is wrong.

I think those of us who are centrists with origins in either party have been asleep at the wheel. There are some really peculiar and dangerous movements brewing in this country and the manifesto of Project 2025 is a pinnacle of these. We live in a land of diverse cultures and faiths. We are a melting pot of these. And the concept of Making America Male, of Making America White, or Making America Christian is abhorrent. We all came from somewhere. My man is a Latino; my closest friend is Asian. I have friends in all colors, some whom are LGBQ and many who are Jewish. And that is, in my world, in my country, in my state, city, home, and heart, the way things should be. And I will do everything in my power to keep it that way.