Great pain and suffering on the right, and what to do about it
Wed Oct 10, 2007 at 09:57:44 AM PDT
My Friends,
We are causing our neighbors on the right much psychological pain. Almost unbearable pain. The emails Brandon of VoteVets.org and BrokenSkull have received and shared with us are dramatic evidence of the severe Cognitive Dissonance the truth about the war is causing them.
We who are not so emotionally or psychologically afflicted must find a way to neutralize this dissonance, to take away the pain, so that these suffering souls can more easily accept the truth, mend their ways, apologize for being horrible pigs, and get on with their lives. And maybe some of them will even vote for a Democrat next year.
Please come with me for more
For those of you who aren't familiar with the term "Cognitive Dissonance", in 1957, Leon Festinger, a social psychologist, introduced the theory in his book "When Prophecy Fails". He and his grad students had been studying a UFO doomsday cult. When the aliens failed to appear, what the reserachers observed was completely counterintuitive. The members of the cult became even more firm in their commitment to their beliefs and dramatically increased their proselytization. It was only later that they began to modify their beliefs to something more in line with reality, i.e the aliens had decided to spare the earth because of the commitment of their followers. Okay so it's still out there, but at least they weren't all standing around in someone's yard, half naked in the middle of December waiting for space ships to take them away.
I highly recommend the book if you can find it. I read it as an undergrad. That was a fun class.
A short article on Wikipedia explains
...
...This leads some people who feel dissonance to seek information that will reduce dissonance and avoid information that will increase dissonance. People who are involuntarily exposed to information that increases dissonance are likely to discount that information, either by ignoring it, misinterpreting it, or denying it
....
Indeed, several scientists in the literature have shown how individuals who are provided with performance feedback that is discrepant from original beliefs about the self will tend to strengthen their original beliefs and attitudes further through other behaviors when given the opportunity to do so
The emails that VoteVets.org has received are so textbook of this phenomenon, they should be forwarded to a univeristy psychology department somewhere so students can see how it works.
These people believe the war is good, Rush told them so. They vote to reelect Bush because the war is good. Then the brave troops whom they support with yellow stickers on their pickups return from the war. The troops say the war is bad. Bad. BAD. Based on lies and run by incompetents. That has got to create serious mental conflict, both in Rush and in his listeners. Maybe not Rush. He's just doing what he does. But clearly the diitoheads are hurting, BAD. It's not enough just to listen to Rush insult the brave troops who are saying the war is BAD. NO, they must sit down and write NASTY letters telling the troops that they are lying, stupid, corrupt idiots. Oh boy, now they feel much better. Classic.
Look at it another way. Everything has gone wrong for these folks. They think they are good, caring, intelligent people. I know quite a number of them. They work hard at crappy jobs. They have a lot of uncertainty in their lives. But they try hard to take care of their neighbors. They say the most horrible things about immigrants and minorities and gays and even Jews, but they will also give more money than they can afford to help out a neighbor in trouble.
What certainty they do have comes from people like Rush, BillO, and the Faux news team. But the war has turned out to be a complete disaster, in spite of the all those yellow "Support the Troops" car stickies made in China. It's like dying. What are the satges? Well, clearly these folks are no where near acceptance. They are stuck between Denial and Anger. However, I think Cognitve Dissonance Theory explains better what is going on.
Everytime VoteVets.org runs one their brilliant ads, these people hurt. Instead of convincing them, this information only makes them hold on to their beliefs that much more desparately, lashing out in crude hateful words at the bearers of the bad news. I think the same thing is going on with the attacks on the Frost family.
What can we do to help them, short of enabling the liars?
I don't know the answer. But I think acknowledging that they are good people would help. I think that thanking them for their moral support (such as it is) would help. I think that acknowledging that some of these things are hard to hear would help. I even think that saying nice things about their heroes would help. But in this case their heroes (the fatuous lying hypocritcal media whores) have been misled by lying greedy incompetent politicians. That might work. They are already suspicious of politicians. I think it is a matter of getting the right frame and presenting in a way that helps minimize rather than exaserbates the cognitive dissonance. Ordinarily, I'd say let em suffer. But we can do more good if we try to help. I fear that one of these nut jobs might try to hurt someone.
Any other ideas would be most appreciated. I'm not a psychologist. I took some classes as an undergrad, but my degree is in anthropology.
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