Cognitive dimwits

It isn’t just the Republicans who are lost in the fog, so are the Democrats

by Jennifer Matsui <jmatsui@republic-news.org>

“Cognitive Dissonance” was first investigated by Leon Festinger and associates, arising out of a participant-observation study of a cult which believed that the Earth was going to be destroyed by a flood, and what happened to its members—particularly the really committed ones who had given up their homes and jobs to work for the cult—when the flood did not happen. While fringe members were more inclined to recognise that they had made fools of themselves and to "put it down to experience," committed members were more likely to re-interpret the evidence to show that they were right all along (the Earth was not destroyed because of the faithfulness of the cult members).

What could be a better example of cognitive dissonance than the insistence of Bush apologists that Saddam Hussein really did have a stockpile of weapons, which he planned to use against the US, or that the Iraqi leader was behind the attacks of the WTC and the Pentagon? Despite a mountain of evidence contradicting such claims, these people still cling to the original falsehood rather than admit that they've been had.

Sufferers of this disorder will sometimes go to ridiculous extremes to rearrange reality so it doesn't contradict their original belief, often justifying their reasons for believing it in the first place with outrageously exaggerated claims. Having to face the reality of an unarmed Saddam Hussein tens of thousands of deaths later, a firm and stubborn believer has no other choice than to embellish their discredited notions to make them appear more believable. "Saddam Hussein may not have acquired WMD because he was too busy raping and torturing every man, woman and child in Iraq and digging mass graves." Truth is anathema to them. They react to it like a peanut allergy sufferer being force-fed the contents of a freshly opened jar of Skippy.

Another way these individuals seek to reconcile cold, hard fact with warm, fuzzy fiction is to downplay the significance of the falsehood. Thus the Valerie Plame affair is dismissed as “Nadagate” and the Downing Street Memo is “much ado about a little piece of paper.” They frantically hold on to a discredited belief or notion like rats scrambling for a foothold on a sinking ship, dimly aware that their squealing resistance is futile, but hoping against reason for a favorable outcome, nonetheless.

When such an outcome fails to materialize, these doomed individuals tend to lash out at those whom they believe are responsible for their confused mental state. Therefore, Democrats, Leftists and “the terrorists” are blamed for every one of Bush's failures: Democrats because they deliberate too long before taking an identical stance as their Republican brethren; leftists because "they hate America," and “the terrorists" because "they hate our freedoms."

In other words, trying to make a fruit fly appreciate the finer points of quantum mechanics is a less futile effort than arguing about politics with someone who suffers from this disorder.

Nowhere is this un-evolved reasoning process more apparent than in the belief that Democrats represent an oppositional counterpoint to the Republican leadership. Those who suffer Cognitive Dissonance tend to overlook inconvenient facts when they don't fall into easy categories of polar opposites. Take for example the willingness of House Democrats to go along with the lies of “Dear Leader” and his minions, even voting to extend the Patriotic Act among other quisling acts of cowardice and hypocrisy. By any definition, the Democratic Party is not an opposition party, yet the standard bearers of cognitive dissonance, lacking the cognitive skills to process that particular irony, still label Democrats as “leftists” because they belong to the party that is not Republican.

Republicans, however, are not the only ones who suffer from this psychological disorder. Mainstream liberals similarly lash out when faced with the predictable outcome of their own delusional thinking. To this day, they blame John Kerry's defeat in the last presidential elections entirely on rigged Diebold machines, conveniently forgetting that their pro-war candidate was an incredibly dumb choice from the get-go. Dirty tricks and voting machine malfeasance aside, Democrats only have themselves to blame for Bush's second term victory. Still, they continue to cry into their unfairly traded coffee and plaster their SUVs with Hillary '08 bumper-stickers. By repeating history, they are hoping their proven failures will yield a more favorable outcome the next time around.

This illness is also characterized by the tendency of its sufferers to boil reality down to simple dichotomies of black and white, or of “liberals” and “conservatives.” ("It's not my job to nuance", said Bush, unintentionally admitting that his throwback brain was stuck somewhere between the dinosaurs and his club-carrying, knuckle dragging ancestors who roamed Eden's lushly tended golf courses six thousand years ago.)

In a world where every facet of life is narrowed down to a choice between Coke and Pepsi, it's hardly surprising that our cognitive functions are adapting to accommodate the dwindling demands for their services. America's mass outbreak of Cognitive Dissonance Disorder could very well mark the first step towards mankind's slippery slope return to the sixty-dollar-a-barrel primordial swamp.

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