The Cognitive Dissonance is FINALLY Making People's Heads Explode

[Beetwasher]

And it's about damn time.

This ports deal is "it". There's just no way for them to get a handle on this and I really think they were totally caught off guard. I think they expected this secret deal to just fly under the radar and that no one would pay attention to it. But now that it's out there it's taken on a life of it's own.

I think there are a lot of reasons as to why finally this is happening, but ultimately I think it's essentially critical mass. People have been upset and angry for a while, even many of Chimpy's hardcore, bushbot supporters and just needed a reason to throw up their hands and jump ship. These people have probably been getting an earful anyway from lots of people around them about what a fuck up Chimpy is, and it comes right on the heels of the Deadeye Dick incident. This port deal was the trigger because the cognitive dissonance involved is really quite stunning. The Bushbots (and the rest of us) have been programmed for 5 years and fed on a steady diet of terra and xenophobism. And then blammo! At a time when a sizeable majority of people don't trust the admin anyway, he's asking people to just trust him on something that on it's surface is so outrageous it boggles the mind. It's a shock to the system and sometimes that's what's needed. It gives those people who were just stubbornly refusing to let go of their irrational support for Chimpy the excuse they need to do it.

It's the bucket of cold water, the slap in the face that breaks the trance that much of the country was in. Cognitive dissonance is a real bitch.

[Armstead]

1. Pent up and displaced anger by conned conservatives

(I had a similar thought with a slight variation, on this thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2476031&mesg_id=2476031)


I'm wondering if the psychological issue of displacement is what's driving the Republican rebellion over the port issue. And maybe the reason it has also spread to moderates.

Here at DU and elsewhere on the left half of the spectrum, there is a constant refrain. "How do Americans stand for this stuff?" Iraq, Patriot Act, battles against science, corporate rip-offs and blind globalization, deviousness, arrogence, leaking names of CIA agents for revenge, delibrate politcal polarization, etc. etc. etc.....the whole litany.

We express bafflement how anyone could accept all of this, even if they believe in the basic conservative ideology.

Well, maybe the degree of uprorar over last week's relatively minor hunting accident and this week's revelations over the port deal are a relerase value for all of the underlying anger that has been building up in them....Perhaps their anger isn't so much about that one deal or hunting accident.
Maybe they are merely symbolic "Straws that broke the camel's back" among many of those people.

Maybe it also is a vehicle for all of the repressed anger over the Iraq debacle and all of the rest of it. Maybe the rebellion among Congressional Republicans is actually a passive aggressive response to five years of being whipped into line.

Perhaps it's difficult to acknowledge to oneself that they've been conned and used and abused, so they transfer it to something else.

I dunno. Just a theory. But it seems like there is a lot more behind the public reaction to this than just the specific circumstances of a hunting accident and a politically tone deaf deal over the ports.

[Beetwasher]

3. Right

You got it. It's been building and lot's of stubborn people needed something like this. Something that was so outrageous it just couldn't be denied that these guys were fuckups. And lo and behold, the port deal comes down.

[Armstead]

8. It will be interesting to see whether they really let it release

Think of the vehemence that many on the right aimed at the left.

It'll be interesting to see whether they ride this wave of released anger at their own leaders, and go after them with the same vehemence they went after the left.

Or if they will collect their thioughts, take another swallow and fall back into line.

[Beetwasher]

12. Some WILL Fall Back in Line

It's more comfortable in the trance and some will wake up, see the reality and fall right back in because they can't deal with the reality they will face. It will be almost unrecognizeable to them and frightening.

But I think this may have been the fatal error for many.

It's a dangerous time though. People coming out of a trance (and that's essentially what's happening to many right now because of this) are inherently unstable and unpredictable.

[stevietheman]

43. The question... how many will let it release...

even if it's just 1/3 of the Bushbots... that's enough of a number to perhaps bring the house of Bush down. Imagine his approval rating of 39% sinking, to let's say, 29-32%. That's an "impeach and remove" low.

[Cosmocat]

7. NO ...

This Congress was not "whipped" into line by the admin ... This was a horrific incestuous relationship, a complete enablement on BOTH parties in the biggest money grab by a government this country has ever, and will ever see ... We are talking about a president, the first one in over a century, to not use his veto ONCE ... Not once ... Look at the totals for vetos ... Even modern day presidents used at least a dozen or so, some dozens ... In return for him not putting the kibosh on their pork laden bills, they covered his butt and did not provide even the first level of oversight ...

But, the bottom line is that the complete party unity thing has run its course ... Because, despite the MSM's attempt to keep the masses in line, the people have finally started to wake up, and the congress now knows that the "support us cause we support the president" run not only is over, but that even being associated with him can hurt them ... SO, ONLY NOW are they going to start doing their jobs ...

The gravy train is slowing, so they have to think about keeping their jobs ...

[Jacobin]

11. Exactly so.

I still maintain, having lived through it, that Nixon was impeached not because of the Watergate burglaries and coverup, but because he lied about ending the war in Viet Nam.

People were pissed, it was going horribly wrong, he said he had a secret plan to end it and yet he escalated it.

When Watergate came along, that was just the means to hammer him out of office....for Viet Nam.

Funny how masses of people "think"

[glitch]

31. I just hope now that they are noticing this they do some research into

everything else this administration and congress have done.
There could be an epidemic of exploding heads.

[Armstead]

53. An epidemic of exploding heads -- LOL

Great turn of phrase...

[stevietheman]

42. Agreed; I was personally very surprised at the reaction over...

the Cheney hunting "accident", and now the reaction over the port deal.

I am now very convinced that the nation is going through a major catharsis. What was in the national subconscience is now reaching the conscious collective mind.

[glitch]

54. Please please please let this be true!

We have been waiting so long...

[BlacknBlue in Red NC]

2. Let's hope so.

To me, the most ridiculous and revealing "fact" is that the Chimp "didn't know" about the impending sale, and that according to his press secretary, he found out about it via media reports!
Confirms the spelling of the word incompetent: B-U-S-H

[Nickster]

13. It's just amazing that they think him learning about it in the media is

supposed to be some kind of excuse. I saw that this morning on the news and went "huh?". Amazing how low we have lowered the bar.

[ewagner]

4. What I like about the Port deal

is that it is marvelously complicated.

Complicated?

Yes, it is....at least according to Bush. It's so complicated that he can't drop a 5-second sound bite on us. He can't justify his position with some gem of "common wisdom" that common people can readily digest and regurgitate over coffee and donuts.

It's too complicated for Rush Limbaugh to turn into a hate-filled, liberal bashing logo or nickname.

In short, it's.....say it with me now

NUANCED!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Thtwudbeme]

5. Wanna know what I love about it?

The Republican Talking Heads(Coulter, Malkin, that other weird blond woman, Hannity, Limbaugh) have been pushing for people to be terrified....terrified of Middle Easterners. They have been preaching hate, hate, hate since 2001.

Now, Bush can deal with the damned repercussions.

Their "base" isn't smart enough to make any sense of this whatsoever.

[Beetwasher]

6. Which Is Why They Were So Blindsided By This

They thought that this boring port deal would just slip under the radar. They didn't prepare a PR campaign for it, so they're totally caught off guard. It's a gift to US because people against the deal have ALL the soundbites and easily digestible arguments on this. Bushco. DOESN'T. In order to defend it, they HAVE to get into the boring, glaze your eyes over details. All we have to do is say NATIONAL SECURITY AND TERRA!!!!.

It's a beautiful thing. What dumbasses.

[mikeytherat]

10. Not just nuanced, but VERY easy to spin negatively

"We're turning our ports over to The Arabs."

There are a million things wrong with that statement, but it's easy to make and reinforce with selective facts. That BushCo couldn't see this unbelievably easy spin is just that - unbelievable. Either they just don't care anymore, or Uncle Karl is too focused on other things and is no longer watching the baby - he's only keeping an eye on the baby (and, apparently, not much of an eye).

mikey_the_rat

[kster]

39. Just told a Republican

something very similar to this about a hour ago. He brought up the Brits and the ports, but thats just a silly soundbite that I know even he doesn't agree with. HA HA We got them.

[louis c]

9. BINGO

you're right on target.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

14. Kick this up please.

This is a good thread. If the coffee would only start working, I'd add something . . .

:kick:

[Lerkfish]

15. you know what I hate about the port deal outrage?

and don't get me wrong, I am glad it is there, finally.
What really bothers me is that everything up till now was not enough to be the last straw.
Abu Ghraib, nothing. The fact that govt. is spying on us, nothing. The missing billions, the outright in your face corruption, nothing. an illegal war of aggression for no reason, nothing. Deaths of thousands of innocent iraqis, and thousands of american soldiers, nothing. Outing a CIA agent for whistleblowing, nothing. Justice Alito, nothing.

nothing, nothing, nothing.

What I hate is that it took Bushco getting done in by their own rhetoric to be the last straw, THEIR MISCALCULATION on how to catapult the propaganda.

It should have been american people coming to their senses long before this.

what is wrong with this country?

[AspenRose]

16. Katrina wasn't enough, either.

Mindboggling. And that was on everyone's TV, right there in, er, *ahem* black and white, so to speak.

The corporate media tried to put a damper and spin on some of the events you described. But Katrina was in your face.

[stevietheman]

48. But Katrina *was* enough to lose his support amongst independents...

what we needed was yet another event to shake his base.

The failed Supreme Court choice almost did it, before Bush figured out a recovery maneuver.

Now, we have PortGate, and frankly, worming his way out of this does indeed appear to be much more hairy. Poor King George. Bwahahahahahahahaha!

[Beetwasher]

17. Not Entirely True

He's been polling in the 30's for a while now, so people have gotten it for a little while. What this situation does though is really hit his hardcore supporters too AND get the one's who already didn't trust him off their asses and seriously outraged.

Granted, I agree this SHOULD have happened a while ago over many incidents, however, psychology is a funny thing and sometimes a shock is needed to snap people out a trance. This port deal was the shock because, as I stated above, the cognitive dissonance involved was just TOO much AND Bushco. was NOT prepared for the outcry and had no PR plan in place to deal with it.

[Speck Tater]

22. It's not "what is wrong with this country"...

It's what is wrong with the human race. Personal comfort and security is all that really matters in the end to the average human. Abstract issues don't move them. It's takes something that threatens them personally, or that they see as a personal threat before they react. That why the "terra! terra! terra!" line works and why reasoned argument does not.

Just another reason why the human race is doomed to extinction as just another failed experiment in evolution.

[ProfessorGAC]

38. Well How About This For An Explanation?

Those that have supported the silverspoon cretin did so out of fear, at least in large measure. Now, this port issue with Dubai is in direct conflict with the "protect us from evil George" sensibility. That reason has been blown up out of the water, since all they had was the George was protecting us from evil, and now they're buying into a deal with the devil.

It doesn't matter what i think. It doesn't matter what you think. The dissonance is triggered only when two things come into complete conflict. Katrina didn't do that. Hurricane's aren't evil. They're a disaster, but not evil. So, the disconnect doesn't occur. This is different.
The Professor

[Generator]

55. You nailed it

Fear is all they've ever had. Fear is the main reason anyone ever supports a war. (of course the rich cronies support it because it's good-no great business) If the I'm protecting you, vote for me or die is all a sham-well then it's all a sham isn't it. And I think it did connect with Katrina but it wasn't as obvious-it was only utter incompetence and indifference-which for many of us on DU was worse. We know they are lying about keeping us safe-we've know it for years.

So welcome to the nightmare, America, nice to have you with us.

[Raksha]

59. In other words...Dubya swiftboated HIMSELF!!!

Boy, does that EVER take talent! His strong point was allegedly "national security" (although I've never understood why exactly), but even people who had serious doubts about him voted for him out of fear, because after all, he was the "resolute" strong man who was gonna protect us from those evil terraists.

So out of sheer arrogance and ineptitude, he attacked his OWN strong point, instead of the opposition's. It really does take a perverse kind of talent.

[ProfessorGAC]

61. Or, It Takes Enormous Stupidity.

The Professor

[kentuck]

18. Excellent analysis, Beetwasher

That's as close to the truth as anything I have heard up to this point.

[emulatorloo]

19. kicking and sending to the greatest page n/t

[robbedvoter]

20. Uhm, so if UAE is the Gumint, can they "legally" spy on us now?

My head also exploding, no dissonance required.:nuke:

[centristo]

21. i always check out the Right Wing sites to get a feel for the

"other side" of the arguments. Many, many Republicans are pissed, especially over this Dubai issue. All Bush has now is the Religious Right but we can break their spirits too if we stop the anti-abortion movement before 2006. South Dakota just gave us a chance to break this movement once and for all. If they fail to get Roe v Wade overturned now, I don't think it will ever happen. The Bushbots will become disenfranchised and disillusioned. We'll stomp them in '06 and '08 - assuming Alito and Roberts aren't the fanatics we fear they are.

[tom_paine]

58. And assuming the Amerikan "voting" machine will allow it

Of that, I am not so sure anymore.

[Ernesto]

23. "Cognitive Dissonance"

One of my favorite terms when I was A student of psychology.......
Face it repukes, "you don't need a weatherman to tell ya which way the wind is blowing".

[leftofthedial]

24. and it lets the repukes in congress pretend to be anti-bush

right before the "election" of 2006.

[Beetwasher]

25. I'm Not Concerned About That

Too little too late.

[leftofthedial]

28. we'll see how it spins, er, plays out

I do believe this has pushed many repukes off the party bandwagon and exposed much of the cognitive dissonance

but I also believe that post coup of 2000 and with Diebold on their side, all they need is to keep it relatively close and to have a plausible cover story for why voters change their minds at the last minute

[Nederland]

26. If I had a dollar

...for every time someone on DU said "XXX is it. Bush is really toast now!" I'd have like, a thousand dollars.

[Beetwasher]

32. Whatever, Where Did I Say He Was Toast?

:shrug:

This incident is waking a lot of people up. I didn't say he was toast or this would be the end of him. Where did I say that?

[yodermon]

27. Imagine what Fitz GJ indictment(s) would do

right about now. :popcorn:

[seabeyond]

29. that is what i see my very red panhandle of texas

i am going to hit a couple homes and ask why they are back the imcumbent house rep instead of the one running against. the imcumbent married delay repugs. the one challenging opposes. these repugs voting, i am going to ask which side they chose. they are angry at the delay repug. are they going to do something about it, or supoprt the corrupt repug. same with a judge race here in town. one running on principle, constitution. the other married to bush, dobson, perry.

[wiggs]

30. If true, really, then more people should view the last five years

in a different light as well. If shown the way, they may be able to recognize the same patterns (industry influence, corporatism, and corruption) in every policy area: mining, global warming, energy, forest management, medical/pharmacy policy, ports, big farming, social security/wall street, bankruptcy, Iraq, Halliburton, lobbying/Abramoff, Venezuela, Katrina rebuilding, etc.

To help achieve this, it is incumbent on dem leaders and supporters to point out the common thread here....can't let this one issue stand by itself and be framed in GOP favor ultimately. Finally, when (and if) dem leaders choose to talk consistently about five years of failed policy and disaster, there may be a more receptive audience.

This should not be about administration staff making an isolated unwise decision that the GOP-controlled congress will put right...this has to be shown to be part of an overall pattern of incompetence, dysfuntional decision making, and corruption.

The port deal, by itelf, will not be "it". This mistake is correctable and maybe even beneficial to GOP unless dems show how this is typical of the hundreds of bad decisions made over the last five years.

[Marr]

33. They've spent five years demonizing the Arab bogeyman.

Now they want to have their cake and eat it, too. You can't whip your moronic followers up into a hate/fear frenzy, then expect them to ignore it when you hand the ports to your middle eastern business friends.

I agree with everything you said- it's a sort of critical mass.

[Inspector77]

63. Sadly, it is mainly about bigotry and "terror"

[HootieMcBoob]

34. The Port deal and Terri Shiavo

These are the two biggest things that are starting to turn my mostly Republican family against, not just Bush, but against Republicans in general. They are mostly from PA and had already committed to vote against Santorum after the Shiavo incident. They are dead set against this port deal and hopefully it will help to turn them against Bush for good.

[nebula]

35. Extreme cognitive dissonance enough to make a Freeper's head explode.

Bushistas Last Week: "Of course we're using racial profiling against Arabs! It was Arabs who attacked us on 9/11!"


Bushistas this week: "Criticizing this deal with a state-owned Arab corporation is racial profiling! Unacceptable! Unacceptable!"




AAHHHHH!!!!!

[annabanana]

66. ewww... disgusting graphic....n/t

[greenman3610]

36. dead on. They created a Frankenstein

by conditioning the country to think in Black and White.
This is not a black and white issue, but the "Us good, Arabs bad" meme
is now out of their control.
That, plus I think the psychological projection or displacement issue
is a real one.
Awful lot of folks are unwilling to face how bad the Iraq thing
is, and how terribly they were snookered going in to it.

[Ladyhawk]

37. "It" has come so many times in the past, color me skeptical.

The tipping point has been reached so many times, I've done a few 360s. If/when the * cabal is out of power and we start making progress toward erasing the past five years, then I'll know what the tipping point was, in hindsight.

[Beetwasher]

40. I Understand

I'm not saying this is "it" as in the end for Bushco. This is "it" in the sense that it's getting through to even some of the most braindead morons what these guys are about.

[Ladyhawk]

50. True, but for how long?

I guess we'll see. :shrug: It may be the beginning of a great awakening or simply a bump in the highway to hell.

[Harald Ragnarsson]

41. I'm thinking there is an ulterior motive for all this somewhere

They aren't stepping on their hoo-hoo this bad in front of the whole world by accident. Like FDR said, In politics, nothing happens by accident, you can bet it was planned that way.

Edit: I saw on another thread someone thinks it is to help Repukes out in the Congress races this Nov, by showing they stand up to Bush. I think this is probably what's going on. Smells like a pile of Rove to me.

[Beetwasher]

44. Sometimes A Pile Of Shit Is Just A Pile Of Shit

Rove is not the all time master of space, time and dimension. He's not superhuman, he's not invincible.

This helps Dems way more than Repubs. And Remember, Rove works for Bush, not congressional Repubs. Bush is looking like a feeble idiot in this, it's Rove's job to prevent that.

Seriously, people give Rove way too much credit.

[Harald Ragnarsson]

45. Sure, distancing Repuke Congresspeople from BushCo

will only help the Dems and not the Repukes.

Whatever.

And sometimes a big stinking pile of shit is Karl Rove come to call.

I'll make a wager, how much you want to bet George "I'll Veto It!" Bush caves to his strong, independant Congress on this issue before it's all over with?

Edit: Also, Bush is gone in two years, what's to help?

[Beetwasher]

49. Did I Say He Wouldn't?

The reality is however, this incident takes the strong on nat'l security meme away from the Repubs. Bush is THEIR leader. Everyone knows that. Just because they break from him on this one issue doesn't reverse 5 years of rubber stamping.

If this is a Rove gamble, it's a stupid one. He just handed the Dems THE issue that can hand them Congress, regardless of how the Repubs MIGHT use it to distance themselves from Chimpy.

What's more likely? Bush caves or he intimidates, bribes and threatens enough congresspeople from his own party that they do nothing and he gets what he wants? For your answer, see the recent NSA hearings.

[catmandu57]

52. Superrove

you're right everyone fucks up, everyone at some time in their life screws the pooch to one degree or another. We've assigned super human powers to this maggot, he breaks wind just like everyone of us and probably stinks twice as bad.

This in itself probably isn't "it", but, add it onto everything else we've suffered through the past five years and the load gets too heavy.
Hopefully we'll see the collapse this year there is still loads of crap out there to dodge, a few hits and it'll start to stick.

[coalition_unwilling]

46. Not to be persnickety, but actually it's the dissolution

of 'cognitive dissonance' at work. To wit, cognitive dissonance is the attempt to rationalize a bad decision post-hoc with a type of sour grapes response. In this case, American people knew that Bush stole the 2000 election and did little to stop it, but they rationalized that decision after 9/11 by saying "he's great on national security."

There's the cognitive dissonance--holding two contradictory sentiments simultaneously, i.e., Bush is a thief vs. Bush is a protector.

Now the Bush is a protector rationalization is starting to disintegrate, leading to . . .

Here's a brief discussion found on the Internet (from http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/dissonance.htm):

"Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon which refers to the discomfort felt at a discrepancy between what you already know or believe, and new information or interpretation. It therefore occurs when there is a need to accommodate new ideas, and it may be necessary for it to develop so that we become "open" to them. Neighbour (1992) makes the generation of appropriate dissonance into a major feature of tutorial (and other) teaching: he shows how to drive this kind of intellectual wedge between learners' current beliefs and "reality".

Beyond this benign if uncomfortable aspect, however, dissonance can go "over the top", leading to two interesting side-effects for learning:

if someone is called upon to learn something which contradicts what they already think they know — particularly if they are committed to that prior knowledge — they are likely to resist the new learning. Even Carl Rogers recognised this. Accommodation is more difficult than Assimilation, in Piaget's terms.

and—counter-intuitively, perhaps—if learning something has been difficult, uncomfortable, or even humiliating enough, people are less likely to concede that the content of what has been learned is useless, pointless or valueless. To do so would be to admit that one has been 'had', or 'conned'."

I think it's the counter-intuitive suggestion at the bottom that most closely covers what I'm getting at.

[Beetwasher]

51. Nitpicker!

:evilgrin:

Good post.

[gasperc]

47. I think Cheney shot his friend on the wrong weekend

no seriously, remember last week when people opening speculated that the Cheney shooting story was being pumped up to overshadow that navy general's critism of the Iraq war intelligence.

Well wasn't this port deal "approved" by the review committee last week? So maybe they were trying to pump up the shooting story to mask the approval of this port deal??? and it almost worked. The 45 day review process was avoided, other checks have clearly been avoided.

This looks like a sweetheart deal to either pacify the UAE because it's port hosts the largest contigent of US warships in the region or payback for other Bush related financial or other deals.

anyhooo, stinks to high heaven and finally Joe six pack is scratching his balls over this one.

[eppur_se_muova]

56. Maybe he has other friends? Ummmm...Nah. nt

[Infomaniac]

57. The difference between PortGate and Katrina: No Democrat to Blame it on

This port thing was all of the Bushies doing. There's no politico with a D after his or her name connected with this one. Georgie Boy screwed the pooch all on his own.

[Beetwasher]

60. Yup

No scapegoats to be found.

[rucky]

62. Because it's happening HERE.

all of the other shady deals were happening "over there".

[opihimoimoi]

64. More than a few of my GOP friends have seen the Light, found Reason,

and have asked for the Sanity Pill. They are now former GOPers and a few have even become Dems. How Bush can stem the flow? Prolly by resigning so the Pubs can recover in 8 years...if he doesn't, the Pubs could take 50 yrs to get back to the WH.Congress.SC

[leesa]

65. I still see lots of Bush/Cheney stickers in braindead southern california

Apparently VERY stubborn, anti-American folk here