Cognitive dissonance is believing one thing but acting as though its contrary is true. Conservatives and no-nothings have scaled new heights in left-brain, right-wing thinking by simultaneously believing in the two following statements:

1. Barack Obama is of the Muslim faith, and therefore is an outsider who cannot be trusted.

2. Barack Obama is of the Christian faith, but attends a church with a minister who sometimes says startling things, so, even more so, Obama cannot be trusted.

The only way to rationalize these two contrary ideas is to pretend (or have the delusion) that Obama is really either a Muslim or a Christian and pretending to be the other, which in itself presents logical inconsistencies. Okay, the muddleheads reason, maybe the two qualities are merely separated by time. Obama (they imagine) was a Muslim, which remains bad, because once a questionable person, always so.

Also, they might reason, he's a turncoat, even though in order to be one in the faulty construct of these conservatives, he would have had to do what good fundamentalist missionaries ask, namely, to convert.

Ah, but Obama's imagined transformation from Muslim to Christian is not causal; one instant he's the former, the next instant the other. Indeed, this quality is atemporal. Obama can at any present moment be one, the other, or both as conservative needs dictate.

It's horribly unfair, but on the other hand it's exactly the way conservatives and the GOP present John McCain. He's a neocon now, a pretender then or later; he's a straight talker; or no he's not. He's a maverick; no, he's the middle-ground salt of the party. He's for sanctions, but he's not for sanctions. He's for the troops, except when he's not. He likes Bush, except when he doesn't.

See, it's easy once you learn to throw out reason and reality. And also see: The conservatives are merely treating Obama as they do their own (well, as needs dictate) kind.