In his most recent Washington Post column George Will predicts the emergence of a new Congressional caucus:
Congress has a caucus for every cause — bicycles, snowboarding, baking, composting, aquaculture, soccer, rock-and-roll, and on and on. There are more caucuses, formal and informal, than members of Congress. Come January, many Democrats will compose what should be called the Cognitive Dissonance Caucus.
concluding:
Climate change as a menace has been exaggerated, and as a political issue has never been salient. Fifty years of Supreme Court rulings have insulated political campaigns from speech-restricting regulations. The popularity of Medicare-for-all varies inversely with the understanding of it. Racial considerations in voting are rapidly receding.
Progressives should acknowledge all this. That will not happen.
What is fascinating about the column is not the truth value of those assertions but the ensuing comments. The commenters proceed to instantiate his point. It is said that each era has its own characteristic mental disorder. Cognitive dissonance, holding contradicting beliefs, must surely be ours. The cognitive dissonance lies less in what people want than in what they are unwilling to sacrifice to obtain it.
The point here is not whether you belief climate change is a risk, whether there should be less money in politics, or whether we need healthcare reform. It is how you accomplish any of those without violating other closely held beliefs.
Take climate change, for example. I happen to believe that climate change is a risk. I think there is literally nothing we in the United States can do about it as long as China continues to emit more greenhouse gasses and the independent atmospheric data over China contradicts China’s official statistics. China is, indeed, emitting more each year. My interpretation of that is that they have other priorities.
Also, consider that after decades of subsidies for electric vehicles (EVs) less than 3% of the vehicles on the road are EVs.
If the recent elections were about any single issue, clearly the most prominent was the high cost of living. Whatever their priority, addressing climate change, reducing money in politics, or “Medicare for All” will not of themselves reduce the high cost of living. That’s the cognitive dissonance.
I always strive to be intellectually honest and philosophically consistent. It may seem to be harder today, but it has never been easy. It takes a lot of work, and you may need to toss some of your most cherished beliefs onto the trash heap.
Humans are social beings, and social acceptance is more important than most anything else. So, being intellectually honest and philosophically consistent is not important to them. Most humans are not “wired” for it.
Social media is pervasive and amplifies it. Fifty years ago, George Will did not notice because he could insulate himself amongst like minded people. Today, it is almost impossible.