Posted by
Doctor Bart on Sunday, May 11, 2008 11:27:34 PM
I just read a comment on a post at Politico.com. The article was on the weakness of the Republican brand and how it would be difficult for John McCain to overcome that. The poster's comment- "There are two things that would make be abandon John McCain, pandering to the base and selecting Mitt Romney as his VP choice."
It is fascinating to me that anyone could even make such a statement. How can someone react in such a fashion and claim to have any rational basis for doing so? I am not a big McCain fan, but the alternative in Barack Obama is so far to the left that as someone who leans conservative there is no choice but to support him. "The if I don't get it exactly my way I'm going home" mentality is evidence of a mindset that is more emotional than rational.
A similar analogy would be a vegetarian saying, "If you give me vegetables sautéed in animal shortening I am going to leave and eat a porterhouse steak!" Such a statement would suggest that an individual's anger, his or her emotions, are the driving force rather than his or her values.
I see this everyday. What people feel is becoming more important than what people think. Their beliefs and values are so lacking a rational foundation that they change like the weather. I see this in my practice. People feel badly. They want to get better. They want antibiotics. I give a detailed scientific explanation as to why that would be bad medicine. The response I usually get, "I don't care, I want to get better." To them their feelings are equal to my medical training. My opinion is no better than theirs. They want something, and that is all the justification they need.
Unfortunately, when people want conflicting things, there is no way to get what they desire. You can't eat fatty foods and be thin. You can't have a good marriage and live like a selfish pig. You can't have a stable Iraq and abandon it to Al Qaeda. You can't placate terrorists and be left alone. This is not the reality of the world in which we live.
Rational people understand this. Unfortunately, it seems that rational people are becoming an endangered species.