I have long held that there is a "shoot the messenger" effect for Dean.
In addition, the media spin against Dean also springs from this. Remember - none of them criticized Bush's reasons for attacking Iraq. There was no dissent. There should have been as it was there, waiting to be voiced, but everyone ignored it (for fear of being called "unamerican?".) So, part of discrediting Dean was to paint him as the kook carrying "the end is near" sign when, for once, it really was.
Cognitive dissonance provides us with choices - the first is to recognize the problem and then to honestly assess the problem and then to choose the do what will best right problem. The second is to ignore it and do what we want to anyway even though we KNOW it's wrong. The majority of us choose the latter. Why? Because after 9/11 we were A) Scared and B)Angry. We were willing to buy anything Bush sold us because of these two feelngs that we so desperately wanted to get rid of. If we couldn't find the real culprit we'd manufacture one and that resulted in attacking Iraq which was completely unconnected to 9/11 but very beneficial to Bush's administration for many reasons and on many levels and also gave us a target for our unmanaged emotions.
What is often left out of this discussion is what these choices result in. Choosing to act on our fear and anger instead of tolerating it long enough to come up with a truly effective plan allows us to relieve these very uncomfortable feelings in a very expedient way but has led to the disaster which is Iraq. Choosing to tolerate our emotional response might have led to a well thought out plan for capturing Osama bin Laden. Tolerating emotions long enough is what adults do. Acting out is adolescent. We got behind Bush who stands for the latter.
Lastly, what is always the result of the choices we make when we feel cognitive dissonance is whether we have integrity or not. Integrity is the key to handling cognitive dissonance. If we have it, we tolerate the emotions and ultimately make things right as well as we can. Only then, does the relief come. If we don't have it, we act out in the way that will most expediently relieve our pain rather than solving the problem. We've done the latter.
Dean reminds us that we were irresponsible in our choices. If we had integrity, we would have to admit he's right. Instead, our defenses come into play (denial, blame, side-tracking issues, substituting a more tolerable emotion for the real one, it: anger instead of fear, sorrow, vulnerability, and projection - alot of projection) and have chosen to shut him up, and therefore relieve the discomfort he has awoken - our guilt and shame over allowing ourselves to be snow-balled by Bush into an unjust, illegal and immoral war against fellow human beings.
So far, this race has only proven one thing. That we, as a nation, continue to be hypocritical. We have temporarily disengaged ourselves from our integrity.
And...it shows in the following way. We have elected two presidents who are outright liars. Clinton, when caught with Monica attempted to lie his way out of it and it blew up in his face and he took the entire party down with him.
So, in reaction to this and in order to rid ourselves our guilt and shame, we swung the other way and we allowed Bush to steal the election, disregarding what honesty would insist we see. If we hadn't been in such a hurry to forget the problems of Clinton, we would have focused on the real deficits of George Bush. These deficits were obvious way before 9/11. We elected a man with very little experience and what experience he had behind him was frought with loss after loss, inept management, favors from friends and failure.
This leads us to the phenomenom we currently witnessed in Iowa and New Hampshire's choice of Kerry. Why Kerry? Because he manages to allow us to maneuver around our mistakes. Unfortunately this also leaves them unexamined and therefore, doomed to be repeated again another day.
In the month leading up to Iowa. Howard Dean saw less and less favorable or neutral reporting and and increase in negative. In fact, 78% of the reporting of Howard Dean in the last month was calculated as negative. It climaxed in the media's erroneous (and I believe purposively) interpretation of Dean's behavior during his concession speech. His cheer was distorted into being called "anger" (a projection on the part of those who, in his shoes would have felt that way and that had absolutely nothing to do with what Dean was actually feeling). For days, the cheer was replayed as being proof that Dean had finally "lost" it and was "out of control". This message was conveyed over and over again on all the networks. I know many viewers watched in horror as they believed Dean was "imploding" right before their very eyes. In their panic (once again - unable to tolerate their emotions) they switched to the lowest affect candidate - John Kerry. At least with him, no one could discredit democrats by calling him crazy. This flies in the face of the fact that very low affect people are often depressed or less feeling or less invested or simply have lower affect than others. If one is truly observant what does seem evident is that Kerry is lackluster unless the spotlight is on him. Even then, he's still lackluster but at least he smiles more. There is no inspiration there, even in his two victory speeches in Iowa and New Hampshire. However, after 35 years in public service, his actual record is about as lackluster as his affect and stump. But, I digress.
Which brings us back to why Kerry? Because we have fooled ourselves into believing that this will please Republicans who are essentially conformist. Integrity dictates that we don't always conform. Our fear of rejection makes us vulnerable to the misconception that "main stream" always wins and all the rest is to only lose.
So, thus far, the populace that call themselves democrats are doing what our democrats in Congress have been doing, trying to fit in, trying to please the Republicans, even if it's wrong.
Change only occurs when people are in enough pain to act. We are almost there but not quite. Like a bad marriage, we can hobble along for a few more years, hiding our heads in our pillows and hoping that, when we take a peek, the problems have magically disappeared. Perhaps four more years of Bush will hurt enough to finally perform the surgery needed as the Kerry band-aid just wasn't enough.
The ultimate way to quell cognitive dissonance is to shoot the poor guy who speaks out due to his inability to deny the truth and who has the audacity to ask us to question our motives and behavior. Even more aggregious to us is the fact that he did use integrity in dissenting due to his inability to deny his own cognitive dissonance and to substitute the guy who allows us to remain in our comfort zone.
Poor, poor, pitiful and powerful u.s., once again we have been presented with a marvelous opportunity that, once again, we have refused to take.
If I was truly a spiteful person, which I'm thankful to say, I'm not, I vote for Bush. Why go through all that change-over stuff just to return to the same old, same old.