In her Aug. 29 letter, Deb McGee laments that Peter DeFazio isn’t more environmentally progressive in opposing the Jordan Cove pipeline. We might further ask why after DeFazio’s 32 years in office, it took freshman representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez to make the Green New Deal a visionary new initiative.

Psychologists might attribute this to “neuroplasticity,” the ability of the brain to change continuously throughout an individual’s life. In the case of DeFazio, 32 years in office have groomed and conditioned him to dramatically compromise the idealism of his youth in order to make his job easier and assure his reelection.

We see this throughout politics and corporate culture, where those who rise to the top do so by talking themselves into believing whatever lies are necessary for their profit margins and career goals — often values and world views diametrically opposed to environmental and social justice issues.

In the case of Mitch McConnell, this process has made him deeply delusional, sociopathic or both.

It is a celebrated truism of the “New Age Spirituality Movement” that human consciousness must change for the world’s problems to be resolved. But those words are rather vague and abstract.

It would be more to the point to say that humans need to cultivate greater love and compassion, but perhaps most importantly, an enhanced faculty of discernment whereby we will believe what is true as distinct from believing whatever the fuck happens to be convenient.

Robert Bolman

Eugene

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