Cognitive Dissonance – RAnt(hony)-ings

The Grand Delusion

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance occurs when a person holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values; or participates in an action that goes against one of these three, and experiences psychological stress because of that. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent.^[1] The discomfort is triggered by the person’s belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein they try to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Imagine a circus – the spotlight is on the entertainment while all the real issues take place behind the scenes. The convention takeaways are never the back-room deals and the negotiations that take place off of the convention floor. The show never includes those details anymore than it includes beating the elephants and the other entertainers into submission. Cleaning up the trash that the audience leaves behind.

Third parties being entered into the mix allows for a full three-ring circus, but again, the things that are of important are those subjects that are in the ring farthest from the one that the barker tells you to pay attention to, and probably not even taking place in the ring at all.

The bigger problems remain unaddressed as the media continues to prattle on about issues that are not really issues. Brown suits and laziness. Age and sickness. Individual enforcement transgressions instead of the central codifying theme of policing (which is racist and racism to the core) I’m still boycotting the news, myself. Let me know when Trump implodes, please? Wouldn’t want to miss that, and the political discussions will only be relevant after that point.

America spells competition
Join us in our blind ambition
Get yourself a brand new motor car
Someday soon we’ll stop to ponder
What on Earth’s this spell we’re under
We made the grade and still we wonder
Who the hell we are
STYX

Postscript

I wrote this on October 30th, 2016, with the exception of what is in italics in the text. It’s funny. I quit paying attention to the news in 2016 because it ceased to be news in 2016. Every now and then I come up to sample the air, but it still isn’t worth spending my time paying attention to closely. We still have a reality TV president with delusions of grandeur, and the media is catering to his Stormtrumping supporters who are equally deluded.

The media does this because they are deluded into thinking that Stormtrumpers represent a legitimate majority of the population. They know, intellectually, that only a third (at most) of the voting population supports Trump. But their experience tells them that the status quo has a tendency to be maintained. Ergo they weight the political field (erroneously) in favor of what they see as the status quo.

It isn’t. Joe Biden represents the status quo, and the majority of Americans know this. Trumpists will never be the status quo because they and their god-king simply don’t have the depth of knowledge to be able to heft a telling argument in support of their ill-defined movement.

There is a reason that Trump’s hardest core of support comes from Evangelicals and White Supremacists (but then I repeat myself) They are the ones with the highest levels of cognitive dissonance. They are the ones that see the most disruption between what they believe and what they see in the world around them. If whites are superior then cops killing the darkest skinned people more often is the way the world is supposed to work. If the Bible (and what the average Evangelical believes about the Bible that they haven’t read) is true, then anyone who makes you feel wrong inside is an insult to god and should be driven out.

They are trying to make their wrong-headed beliefs real. It is our job to stop them. This is the one instance where not bargaining with my opponents is the only way to victory, because bargaining with my opponents means they have the right to hurt people that never hurt them. This circus has to end.

Featured image from Flickr – H. Michael Karshis – Welcome To The Grand Delusion

The ACA vs. Delusion

VOX – Republican senator criticizes Obamacare

I stumbled across this in my news feed this morning. My fellow liberals were attacking this Senator for the stupidest tweet ever. Hyperbole aside, this isn’t even a remarkable example of the kind of thinking that goes on in libertarian and conservative circles in their attempts to justify their beliefs concerning small government, the evils of government. Far from being the stupidest tweet ever this is much more like standard operating procedure in any subset of humanity that is trying to justify their unjustifiable beliefs.

I can’t count the dozens of times I’ve gotten in an argument with a small-government type who insisted that laws create crime, ergo fewer laws means less crime. Less government equates to more freedom. Less regulation yields a fairer, free-er marketplace. It makes sense, if you stand back and squint at the concept for awhile. The mind is amazingly agile at creating justifications for things that you believe, whether or not those beliefs are justified.

If you were to approach one of these small government types and suggest that the behavior in question, let’s say murder for example, remains egregious or unacceptable even if the laws don’t exist, they would probably brush the argument off as reductio ad absurdum, without realizing that the argument is legitimate in any case. The thought never crosses their minds, or is easily diffused with some other simple heuristics. People are peaceful and don’t murder. It is government that murders, not individuals defending their rights.

What happens when individuals without government have competing claims, though? What if neither of the parties involved actually knows who has prior claim to property, as another example. Who is defending their rights and who is the transgressor? What authority will they empower to potentially strip their claim from them? The thought that government might have been created specifically to address these kinds of conflicts doesn’t even occur to the anarchically minded, small government types. Can’t occur to them, in a general sense. To contemplate how laws and government serve a legitimate purpose brings on cognitive dissonance, which the believer will avoid at almost any cost.

Apply double-think (thank you George Orwell) like that illustrated above, and you can reverse cause and effect and suffer no cognitive dissonance.

The ACA isn’t good in the estimation of the libertarian and conservative mindset. It can’t provide a benefit, because it is a bad program. The people who benefit from the program can’t actually be benefiting; that would be an admission that the program isn’t bad, that it served some larger purpose. The blind assertion that healthcare is a personal choice rules out any possibility that healthcare might be a public good. That the group as a whole benefits when the health of individuals in the group is improved. That poor people will economize with healthcare to the detriment of their health if they are allowed to include those costs in their calculations of how much money they have to spend on other necessities. Things like food, shelter, etc.

No, the ACA is bad in their estimation, so ending it is good. How then to justify denying care to millions of poor people who will not get care without the ACA? It extended false hope of being seen as valuable while remaining poor. The poor cannot be of value because they are poor and beneath notice. Insurance is for those who can afford it. Everyone else should get to the business of getting wealthy or dying, makes no difference to those who have the benefit and don’t want to share access to it.

As the date shows, Robert Reich posted that status quite some time ago. I saved it for this article I’m writing now. I knew I would get around to writing it at some point in the future, because I knew I’d stumble across some idiot who hadn’t bothered to check his beliefs before posting something stupid on the internet.

The ACA is unpopular precisely because it shares the benefits of living in the US with the poor people who cannot afford those benefits without help. There is no other reason for opposing it, because it has been demonstrated to be a benefit to those who did not have access to healthcare before it was instated. There is no cost-based reason for opposing it, because the US government already subsidizes everyone else’s healthcare in the US, with tax dollars taken from the pockets of the poor as much as from anyone else in the nation.

The poor are a hated group in the US. The hatred of the poor for being poor (generally by poor people who can’t admit that they themselves are poor) is so pervasive that it is masked by quite a few other prejudices which are really just a shorthand for saying poor people. The sooner we Americans realize this, the sooner we can escape some of the delusions which entrap us. Delusions which shackle us to concepts which no longer serve a useful purpose.

The SCOTUS did as I expected and interpreted the phrase “the state” to mean the US government (which is also a state; i.e. government) the fact that anarchists and small government types would willfully spend millions of dollars to contest the meaning of one word in one phrase in a several thousand page set of laws simply speaks to the desperation motivating the people who brought the suit.

The case was, in other words, a sophisticated game of gotcha, based on what was, again, essentially a typographical error. The case was only about trying to destroy the law by denying insurance to millions and setting in motion a death spiral of raised premiums, cancelled policies, and more rate hikes until the system collapsed.
The New Yorker

So that is that. The ACA will stay in force for the foreseeable future. If the Republicans want to overturn it or modify it they are going to have to come up with a better plan than just throwing the poor back out in the cold (as the lawyers in the case alluded to with their response “deal with it”) but I doubt that the Republican party leadership really wants the law repealed. There is little doubt the base of the party does, which is why you get the kind of hypocritical pandering from their representatives that I started this post with.

In the end, the poor will exact the cost of their existence from the system, whether the government factors that cost into the calculations it makes or not. Personally, I’d rather they had access to the cheaper preventative care rather than have them clog the expensive and already overburdened emergency care system. That will mean building out the system more than it is now. Recruiting healthcare professionals to fulfill the needs of the poor. Making it easier to become a doctor or a nurse. You know, economic investment.

An Individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms

I’ve been waiting for this decision ever since I heard about the case in a CATO Daily Podcast. From the CATO site:

On June 26, 2008, the Court rediscovered the Second Amendment. More than five years after six Washington, D.C. residents challenged the city’s 32-year-old ban on all functional firearms in the home, the Court held in District of Columbia v. Heller that the law is unconstitutional.
CATO

Here’s the pdf for the District of Columbia v. Heller decision.

I’d like to offer a thanks to Rob Balen (who was subbing for Jeff today) for alerting me to the fact that the Supreme Court finally got a decision right. Having said that, I must observe that Rob Balen the food critic is a gun-phobe. I never heard so much whining over someone being allowed to have guns since the last time I heard someone begging not to be shot in a movie.

Someone should explain the danger to this Yankee carpet-bagger, when he goes South and tries to tell Southerners that they can’t be trusted with weapons. It’s going to rile some people up.

Where is Suzanna Hupp when you need a voice?

Suzanna Hupp interview from Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!, Season 3, Gun Control

I was living in Austin when this tragedy occurred. I remember at the time wishing that a customer had taken the guy out. No one could wish harder than Suzanna Hupp.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Militias are the people. Each individual person is a member of the militia. Guns equip the militia. Should we amend the constitution? Remove the second amendment and task government with our protection, empower the military as the only form of defense for the country?

If not, then each of us is responsible for our own defense, and the defense of our neighborhood/city/state. That is the way the founders intended for this to work. It’s about time the courts have acknowledged these facts.

Postscript

Heller itself may have been the correct decision as relates to gun ownership, but there is so much else that is being left unsaid in this post that I can’t imagine where to begin, even if I wanted to fix all the misconceptions apparent in this piece. Since I made a deal with myself ages ago not to erase old posts and simply make corrections through editor’s note, postscript or afterword, I’m left scratching my head just how to exactly paint the picture of my cognitive dissonance on this subject. I think I’ll start with a link to my 2013 article:

The Gun Argument

…in which I reverse pretty much everything I say above aside from appreciating that the Heller decision changes everything.

The tragically escalating numbers of mass shootings in the US over the last decade has left us all pretty much scratching our heads. A good number of what I considered allies as of the writing of this 2008 piece have become conspiracy fantasists in the true meaning of the phrase and have decided that any mass shooting that can’t be explained with the label terrorism is automatically a false-flag event. They are essentially turning themselves into the kinds of nut jobs that really shouldn’t be trusted with high-powered weaponry in the first place.

This development has left me without a place to call home on this subject. I do find some comfort in the writings of Jim Wright over at Stonekettle Station. Sadly he doesn’t see any end to this craziness either. For myself, I think I have written my last article on the subject of guns:

The Key to Ending Mass Shootings?

I don’t have anything left to say on the subject. I just want the senseless killing to stop. When the US itself gets tired of the bloodshed and settles in for a good old-fashioned discussion of what an American fix for this problem might look like, then we will see an end to it. Here’s hoping that self-reflection occurs sooner rather than later.

Righteous Indignation

I’ve been meaning to write this one for awhile. I dragged myself out to vote November Eighth. I do this every time an election rolls around, not because I think my vote will be counted properly (another rant in the making) and not because I think it will change anything (most of the issues go the other direction by hefty majorities. I blame it on education) I do it because it gives me a license to bitch when the will of the majority goes awry. As it has in the past. As it will this time around too.

With the passage of Prop. 2 here in Texas, the majority has officially endorsed the end of “equality before the law”. What do I mean by that? Quite simply, they have stated that certain individuals have more rights than others, according to law. That if you cohabitate with A member of the opposite sex, you can declare what you have a marriage, and claim the privilege that come along with it. Things like tax exemptions, health insurance coverage for family members, etc. Things not available to people who happen to cohabitate with any number of other people (no matter what sex they are) for whatever reason. Prop. 2 writes into the Texas Constitution that a household formed of one man and one woman has rights that others in the state don’t have, setting up preferential treatment for a specific portion of the population. Some of us (and since I’m one of the special people who happens to cohabitate with a woman, I’m one of us. Go figure) have more rights than others, and it’s written right into the ‘law of the land’. Equal before the law? Not any more.

How dare they put their faith above everything else? “Marriage is Sacred” they say. Then why can it be performed by a judge? It’s just another contractual arrangement now, no matter what it was in ancient times. If they wanted to retain the sacred rites of marriage, then they should never have allowed the government to take part in the rites at all. It should only be performed in a church.

Back at the dawn of the internet, I used to spend time arguing on various forums on CompuServe (back when I was simply known as 71613,115@compuserve.com, before AOL bought the company and gutted it of its hardware) on the Gay and Lesbian forum I had several arguments with well intentioned people who were convinced that they needed special laws to protect them. I only ceased arguing with them when they provided proof that they were still persecuted in modern day America. I ceased to argue with them, but my views have not changed. There should not be special laws for any group in America. Not for Gays, not for Women, not for Minorities; and most definitely not for ‘Marriage’.

I was and still am outraged at this, especially in light of the straight majority in Texas having now added one more misbegotten and meaningless amendment to the Texas constitution (a document that with each passing election shouts its need for complete replacement. Just try reading it sometime) that will most likely backfire as have most of the ones before it. And I really hope it does. Just waiting for that case that opens the can of worms. “What do you mean, no marriages are legal in the state of Texas? How could that be?”

Postscript

My first written article that caused me cognitive dissonance. I was so afraid of being gay myself, for so many years, that I had a really hard time even admitting that I had changed my position on the subject of homosexuality. I knew, intellectually, that there was nothing wrong with being gay. Accepting homosexuality doesn’t mean you are a homosexual yourself. It took writing this article to make me realize that I hadn’t killed that zombie belief. That I still felt I was protecting some hidden part of myself by not speaking out on the subject of the poor treatment of the LBGT community, the disenfranchisement of my brothers and sisters in the false belief that they were less than I was.

This article was my first foray out into a subject that I knew would get me push-back from good friends, and it did:

I believe legal marriage should be between a man and a woman. Apparently, so did more than 70% of Texas voters.

What you believe is irrelevant; nor is there really an animal called legal marriage. What has occurred in Texas (and in several other states) is a complete misuse of state power, and a further dilution of the effectiveness of a state constitution that is already on the ropes.

But it really makes no difference. The only reason that same sex marriages are being sought is so that the financial benefits (some might even suggest they are illegal or unconstitutional) of marriage (tax, insurance, etcetera) would be available to couples that do not fit the traditional definition of marriage. As if marriage by a judge was traditional. It’s just another form of legal contract, no matter how much the religious types out there kick and scream about it being some sort of ‘sanctified union’. Tell that to the children of divorced parents (yeah, let’s go after those divorce’s next. Why not?) I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop now. Not quite sure what form it will take but I can predict the offended outrage of the good christian folk who should have seen it coming.

The amendment is just proof positive how backwards most of Texas (and the US) really is. It also proved to be a complete waste of time because the SCOTUS declared all such attempts to restrict marriage contracts to heterosexual couples to be unconstitutional. It was about time, too.