*** Cognitive Dissonance and the Mideast Roadmap to Peace
We're close to a very important ten-year anniversary that nobody is
going to remember but me: On May 1, it's the tenth anniversary of
President George Bush's "Mideast Roadmap to Peace." I remember it
because I wrote my first major Generational Dynamics prediction at
that time, explaining why the Roadmap could not succeed.
** Mideast Roadmap - Will it bring peace?
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 10.i.may01
Listening to President Obama in Jerusalem yesterday and in
Ramallah today, it might as well have been George W. Bush.
I don't believe that there was a single thing that I heard that
was substantively different from anything that I would have heard
if Bush were still President.
In particular, Obama had a major reversal in rhetoric regarding
settlements. In the past, he's called for an end to West
Bank settlements. Today, he said only that settlements were an
area of disagreement that would be solved only when the core
issues were resolved -- and the core issues were creating a
contiguous state of Palestine, and security for Israel.
In fact, I heard a couple of Palestinian commentators say that
President Obama was worse than President Bush because Obama
had raised everyone's hopes with the Cairo speech in 2009, but
done nothing since then.
Obama made numerous absurd promises when he was running in 2008. He
said, "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow
and our planet began to heal." He would be guided by facts, not like
President Bush, who was guided by ideology and ignored facts. He
would cure global warming, close Guantanamo, become friendly with Iran
and North Korea, bring a two-state solution to Palestinians and
Israelis, beat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, end the financial crisis,
reflate the real estate and stock market bubbles and provide universal
health care. He has not yet achieved a single one of these
objectives, and many of them are total failures.
I was not critical of Obama during the 2008 campaign, because I
assumed that his promises were the usual fatuous political nonsense,
and I expected him to become more sensible once the election ended,
assuming he won. But I was shocked when he doubled down on his
predictions after he won. What this showed was that he actually
believed the absurd promises he was making.
This would be an example of cognitive dissonance. Obama committed
himself to all of these objectives, and he's succeeded with none of
them. His current visit to the Mideast represents a total collapse of
any semblance of his Mideast promises, and a complete return to
President Bush's position and rhetoric.
There is one major example left: Obamacare. I condemned this proposal
when it was first made because it was a repeat of President Nixon's
wage-price controls, which were an economic disaster. Nixon's
wage-price controls were supposed to reduce inflation, but instead
inflation surged to historically high levels under the controls.
Obamacare was supposed to reduce health care costs, but instead health
care costs are already surging to historically high levels. Obamacare
is shaping up to be as much of an economic disaster as Nixon's
wage-price controls. Obama is thoroughly committed to seeing
Obamacare implemented. The cognitive dissonance pattern indicates
that he will do anything that he has the power to do to force
Obamacare to be implemented.
I've said hundreds of times that it's a basic principle of
Generational Dynamics that great events of history are not determined
by politicians or political policy or ideology. They're determined
by generational trends that are completely out of control of
politicians. The generational trends that I've been writing about
for years are all coming to pass, and there's nothing that Barack
Obama or any other politician can do to stop them.