Stop Calling it "Cognitive Dissonance" (!!)
It's Moral Dissonance
There’s an unspoken conclusion to any argument that has ever included as one of its premises “…but TRUMP!!1!!” that we need to talk about because it’s the most important part of what’s happening in the communication.
For example: Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton are horrific criminals who have enriched themselves at the hands of US taxpayers and US national security. Hillary sold US foreign policy and laundered it right out in the open through the Clinton Foundation. Bill has the charm - and morals - of a serial date rapist (ahem.) and Hillary all the charm - and morals - of the Wicked Witch of the West. Neither should be within a million miles of levers of power over any other human being. So THAT’s why I’m not voting for Her.
Let’s suppose that I had uttered that phrase (I may have.) in a discussion with someone about politics not long before the 2016 election.
Blah blah blah BUT TRUMP!!1!1!! they’ve been unanimously screaming since roughly 2015.
Which is weird for me because I’m a New England kid and have hated NY Sports Teams as part of the regional proxy War for cultural importance between Boston and New York since… well, the Founding of the American Republic. I lived in the Enemy Camp - Queens - for one (crappy) year of high school… and of all years, it had to be 1986.1 Worst of all, I went to school in Flushing, not far from what was then Shea Stadium, and on the same street (Francis Lewis Boulevard) as St. John’s University - then a basketball powerhouse with Chris Mullins and Walter Berry.2 I’m a Providence (RI) kid stuck in New York and I hated it.
But Trump was The Guy in New York. They gave him all kinds of awards for his charitable work with black causes while I was there. You’ve seen the pictures they’ve tried to erase - Trump alongside Ali, Rosa Parks, Jesse, Al. They loved him - he was a Clinton democrat in the 80’s, for cripes sake. That’s why there are pictures of them together: Trump gave them money, and he was important enough that Bill actually called to encourage Trump’s run, ‘member? Pepperidge Farms Remembers.
So to take Bush down, Clinton’s team drew up a plan to pump Trump up. Shortly after her kickoff, top aides organized a strategy call, whose agenda included a memo to the Democratic National Committee: “This memo is intended to outline the strategy and goals a potential Hillary Clinton presidential campaign would have regarding the 2016 Republican presidential field,” it read.
“The variety of candidates is a positive here, and many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right. In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more ‘Pied Piper’ candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party,” read the memo.
“Pied Piper candidates include, but aren’t limited to:
• Ted Cruz
• Donald Trump
• Ben Carson
We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to [take] them seriously."
Amazing that the Clintons had no problem taking Trump’s money and Trump’s claimed “white supremacy” was never an issue back then, n’est-ce pas? Of course, the Clinton Foundation will take anyone’s money, including some of the worst autocrats and tyrants the world has seen - and happy to have Bill or Hillsy come chat about “leadership” for a few cool millions, amirite?
But for my purposes, the substance isn’t what’s essential to the point I want to make: what’s critical is that all of this - and more - was widely known about the Clintons before Hillary ran in 2016. To be clear, none of this was news to anyone who followed politics.
Camelot!
The American political junkie, americanus politicus, is a peculiar species. I previously analogized the Biden Presidency’s collapse and what went on behind the scenes as more akin to Game of Thrones. I wasn’t being facetious. Americans pretend at cynicism while being impossibly naive about how vicious politics really is - and then calling any information that pops the quasi-puritanical bubble we have around the lizard denizens of the White House, Capitol Hill, and its environs - “conspiracy theories”. Part of what we’re witnessing in the United States is another peasant revolt, a popular uprising in which the American public is becoming politically mature, shedding its youthful naivete as a country about what its political leadership is really like. It turns out that everyone’s becoming aware, and speaking out loud like the one peasant among the knights in the Python classic, that even with all the singing and dancing, Kamelot is not only a silly place - “it’s just a model.”
Cognitive, It Ain’t
…Or is that really what’s going on?
Festinger’s (1957) cognitive dissonance theory suggests that we have an inner drive to hold all our attitudes and behavior in harmony and avoid disharmony (or dissonance). This is known as the principle of cognitive consistency.
Simply Psychology, Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Festinger’s entire model is built upon foundational liberal, scientistic myths that drive the model to its conclusion. What if, for example, people simply do not care if they have “inconsistent” views? More importantly, how does one know one’s views are “inconsistent”? With what would the views need to be “consistent” or “inconsistent” and just how much so in order to qualify? Don’t the words “consistent” or “inconsistent” necessarily depend upon some other thing not being measured? And what role does “uncertainty” play in all of this? What if I’m not certain that “smoking” is “unhealthy” in my overall lifestyle - compared to eating a shit diet or sitting on the couch and all of the other aspects of “healthy” and “not healthy” that obtain? To be clear - the entirety of cognitive dissonance theory looks like a self-licking ice cream cone arriving at a predetermined conclusion without much regard for what’s really going on inside the minds of the average person.
The Yankees and Red Sox Rivalry as Political Culture
Trump had been a very public figure in the 1980s - hell, how many times did Oprah have that white supremacist on her show to promote his white supremacy?!?
Trump has expressed public admiration for Winfrey on other talk shows. In 1999, when he first explored a run for president, Trump was asked by CNN’s Larry King who he might choose as a running mate.
“Oprah,” Trump replied. “Oprah would always be my first choice.”
God damn that bigoted, right-wing, fascist sonofabitch!
So when you hear people foaming at the mouth about Donald Trump as Racist, this is not “cognitive dissonance.” It is also not “Gell-Mann Amnesia” or any bullshit psychobabble phrases and excuse-making that have come to predominate in our current culture, either. I’m 54 and I lived all of this and what we’re witnessing is not a problem of cognitive function. We need to stop treating it like it’s an “information processing” problem because that’s what the tabula rasa lunatics believe. It’s what they want you to believe, too, and it’s why the malinformation/misinformation/disinformation talk by government is simultaneously so idiotic and so dangerous: because it proceeds from an (insane and) incorrect assumption about how and why people make decisions and leads directly to re-education camps. That is where the train logically ends.
What’s really going on in politics is not a case of cognitive dissonance at all. It should be properly called moral dissonance and I will henceforth refer to it by that term. The person yelling “BUT Trump” doesn’t even try to deny (in most cases) that Hillary is a criminal, their point is that according to their values, Trump is simply a BIGGER criminal - and also not their criminal.
The height of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry also coincided (not coincidentally) with the Juicing Era and big names on both teams were implicated. The arguments lobbed back and forth between the two camps at the time perfectly illustrates the morality of our current political system.
YANKEES (TEAM BLUE): DAVID ORTIZ IS A COMPLETE CHEAT! HE USED PEDs AND THE RED SOX SHOULD HAVE THEIR TITLE TAKEN AWAY!!
RED SOX FANS: ANDY PETTITE GOT CAUGHT USING PEDs! HE’S A COMPLETE CHEAT - YOU SHOULD HAVE ALL HIS WINS AND ANY TITLES TAKEN AWAY!!
BOTH AT EACH OTHER: HE WAS JUST USING IT FOR RECOVERY!!
After you get past all of the evidence-parsing and non-denial denials, the factual (fake) disagreements, and get it down to its essence, the argument is simply our guy good, your guy bad. There is no argument about principle happening and thus, there is no cognitive problem that some “factual fixing” is going to somehow bring enlightenment to one side or the other.
The fans - that’s short for fanatic, you know - of both teams know that cheating is morally wrong. The fanatics of both teams know that it goes on by both of their teams. Neither side will agree to stop cheating and will justify any said cheating by their players because WINNING is all that matters. And they will never admit that their guy is “wrong” to have done it. This is not a problem of cognitive function; this is an intentional abandonment of moral principle because WINNING. It’s called “IDGAF about Right or Wrong” and I can make up excuses all day long.
“Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.”
- Robert Heinlein, Assignment to Eternity
Political junkies are a big part of the problem in politics in the exact same way that sports fans are a big part of the problem in sports. The difference with sports is that you can ignore it if you don’t like it, while politics is ultimately fought for power and control over your money and your freedom. But please, let’s stop calling people holding these “opposing beliefs” in their heads cognitive dissonance. It is a complete whiff and moral pass to people least deserving of it and reinforces our own chains by propping up this entire fake edifice of excuse-making that is so much at the heart of the post-modern construction of the World.
The fucking Mets - of all years they decide not to suck.
Best guy I ever saw not make in the NBA; Amazingly because of laziness.
Lot's of Democrats loved Trump back in the 80s and 90s. My liberal Democrat father had pictures of his second family posing with Trump hanging on the wall. In part this was because the Democrats were still a blue collar party to a significant degree, and Trump was a populist making presidential noises going way back.
Trump has a long history of being anti racist towards Blacks (in the original sense of the phrase). Against Native Americans, his record is more spotty.
However, the base that Trump is catering to does have a lot of racists within. 20 years ago I dreamed of creating a populist quadrant party: a party that was both in favor of narrowing the wealth gap and reducing the size of government. I had test marketed the ideas to normies and found that they were appealing. However, the main politically active populists were conspiracy theorists of the John Birch variety, Southern partisans, and a smattering of Georgists and true Classical liberals. Ron Paul funded his Congressional campaigns and recruited much of his staff from this base, and at times this causes scandals. Those Ron Paul newsletter ads that came out in the late 1980s were pretty over the top.
So I attempted to sway open minded libertarians and progressives to go populist, and when that got limited traction, took a break from politics. Now that every White man with a functioning endocrine system is an a priori racist, and Team D is carrying out the agenda described in "None Dare Call it Conspiracy", only gayer, I'm back in the game. Sunk cost, baby!
The truth, that both Team Red and Team Blue are comprised by scumbag grifters of equal greed came upon me about the same time I realized the "war on terrorism" was being fueled by AIPAC money.
Money that came from our national treasury (my pocket and yours), was being filtered through the Israeli government as foreign aid and finding it's way right back into the pockets of Democrat and Republican congressman in roughly equal amounts.
It's as if the Black Sox were never identified, the fix just kept getting bigger and more obvious, and nobody gave a shit because, hey, baseball!
The only answer that makes sense to any sane person is to tear down the stadiums, disband the teams and create a new game from scratch. This one is FUBAR