Cognitive dissonance and the political Left

30 years ago I used to be a liberal Democrat until I used critical thinking techniques to convert to conservatism during my senior year in college. When I think back why I ever voted Democrat my only logical answer is tradition. My parents always voted for the Democrat Socialist Party (although my maternal grandfather and uncle was named after Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican). I grew up believing without question the racialist propaganda from the NAALCP (National Association for the Advancement of Liberal Colored People), Jesse Jackson, the Congressional Caucasian Caucus (aka Congressional Black Caucus). I even remember watching Walter Cronkite, the quintessential leftist company man, on CBS whom America believed in his evening “news” broadcast with such unwavering faith it was like Marx (I mean Moses) coming down from Mt. Sinai with the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments.

Eventually I got tired of listening to the Marxist propaganda from my college professors and parroted by my fellow college students and began reading and researching on my own. Thus critical thinking was birthed in my soul and using these techniques I soon deduced that the political Left has a serious case of cognitive dissonance which is the discomfort experienced when simultaneously holding two or more conflicting cognitions: ideas, beliefs, values or emotional reactions.

Professor Eric Baime, my colleague at the National Paralegal College where I’ve taught at for the past several years, in my opinion is the quintessential Leftist academic. I like Eric. He’s a true believer in liberalism, progressivism, and socialism presenting Leviathan government remedies for every societal problem. I wouldn’t go as far as to call him a Marxist, but the doctrinaire leftist ideas he frequently expresses on our NPC Facebook page has him right at the door. Furthermore, he seems incapable of resolving the obvious paradox that increasing numbers of Americans are discovering about Barack Obama—that the majority of American people voted twice for a president that is a pathological liar.

Here is how the cognitive dissonance of the Left is manifested regarding Obama messiah:

Barack Obama is a historical, transformative and revolutionary political figure therefore to speak against him or his policies means I’m a racist or a right-wing fanatic; and Barack Obama is a bad or deceitful person who is spying on me and those I care about while stealing my doctor and healthcare plan through Obamacare.

Below are a couple of recent Facebook postings of Professor Baime and the dialogue it initiated demonstrating cognitive dissonance on the Left:

Professor Eric Baime: Do you think our Tea Party Congress will pass ENDA, ending discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation, like the Senate did?

Professor Ellis Washington: Eric, sometimes I don’t know if you are a true believer of everything Leftist, or you just love making outrageous comments to foster passionate responses? I’m prone to think it’s both, but more of the former rather than the latter. The premise of your question (as with virtually all Leftists’ questions) is spurious, sophistic and often anti-intellectual (anti-logical). Same-sex marriage has no constitutional legitimacy whatsoever. If it did, why didn’t the Framers make it plain? And please don’t insult the historical struggle of Black Americans for equal rights by conflating Black civil rights with the radical LGBT agenda… just don’t do it!

Professor Eric Baime: Why can’t I do that, Ellis, and what about the struggles of women for equality and other minority groups, or are they “off limits” as well? Likewise, explain to me what there is inherently about LGBTs that prevent them from enjoying the same rights against discrimination as the rest of us.

Renée Hendrix (NPC student): Ellis, I notice a marked tendency in your posts to make assumptions and ascribe names or agendas to those who post. It appears to me that Eric has applied critical analysis to a relevant issue. His proposal is based on reason. I also challenge you, Ellis, to answer this question: why do you believe that, unlike blacks, gay people are not entitled to civil rights?

Professor Ellis Washington: Renee: First, if I have made “assumptions and ascribe names or agendas to those who post,” I ask, is this unlawful or cruel in this public forum? If so, name my improprieties or untruths written against Prof. Baime or anyone else in this forum. Secondly, I cautioned Renee to not use innuendo, state your arguments to me clearly using quotes of my own words. (Here, Renee couldn’t defend her initial attacks against me: that I make baseless assumptions about others).

Now to your question, Ms. Hendrix: “Why do I believe that, unlike blacks, gay people are not entitled to civil rights?” First, I do not believe that gay people are entitled to civil rights to the same degree of Blacks. Their historical struggle in America is totally different than the slavery and inhumane racial discrimination suffered by Black people in America to this day. Gays should not be entitled to special rights above those of other American citizens under the rule of law and under a reasonable interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, unless you first separate law from morality and separate church from state.

Historically, Black people in America were subjected to hundreds of years of forced slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow segregation after that. Our second class citizenship in America did not end with a perfunctory handshake and smile by LBJ and MLK at the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Was all of the marching, the vicious dogs, the lynchings, the water hoses, tear gas, the separate and inferior housing, restaurants, hotels and schools, the economic discrimination and racial hatred, the daily tortures perpetrated against Blacks by White people and fought against by MLK and the civil rights movement done so that so called “gays” can have the freedom to practice their unorthodox sexual behavior?

Did MLK march and give his life for gay rights? Absolutely Not! If you think that MLK did Renee you are in great need of relearning America’s real history, not the revisionist propaganda you’ve apparently been taught in the public schools. To equate Black civil rights to gay rights or the LGBT agenda is to belittle the struggles, the life, the deaths and the moral sanctity of all of those Blacks who sacrificed their lives over hundreds of years for us to one day be included in the “We” of We the People of the U.S Constitution based on God, Natural Law, liberty and truth.

Professor Eric Martinez: Performance is what employers should focus on. What people do on their own time should generally be their own business. As for those who oppose for religious reasons, is it not possible to believe that homosexual acts are immoral, but also believe that LGBTs are entitled to fair treatment in the workplace?

Professor Ellis Washington: In a state of cognitive dissonance, people may sometimes feel “disequilibrium”: frustration, hunger, dread, guilt, anger, embarrassment, anxiety, etc. which seemed to be absent here since Professor Baime answered Professor Martinez’s remark with “good point, Eric.” Therefore, I will hope against Hope that perhaps Professor Baime for the briefest moment was able to suspend his cognitive dissonance to allow a measure of intellectual clarity and critical thinking (which is the antithesis of cognitive dissonance) to just consider the reasoned views of others outside his existential progressive penitentiary.

America, please join me in trying to cure the cognitive dissonance of the Democrat Socialist Party and their tens of millions of voters that has given us such popular cognitive dissonant policies like FDR’s New Deal, LBJ’s Great Society, Obama’s ENDA and Obamacare—anti-American, anti-constitutional policies that have done so much to pervert, deconstruct and destroy the original intent of the constitutional Framers, Natural Law, liberty, truth and our Judeo-Christian traditions of this once great country.

Liberals have not individuated. Their bodies have grown, their brains have filled with information, but psychically and emotionally, they are still the child who lives in a collective world of child-parent.

Individuation naturally occurs in the period we call adolescence. Note that liberals do not act adolescent - they act pre-adolescent. All of the aspects of adolescence, the awkwardness, the insecurity, etc., are what liberals fear most of all. They are the barrier the liberals have refused to cross. SO they remain pre-adolescent, which is a period of arrogance that is supposed to provide the fuel necessary to take on the individuation process of adolescence. The arrogance of pre-adolescence comes from knowing one is not a child anymore, but not having had to take on adulhood challenges yet.

That’s where liberals camp out for their whole lives. And that’s why Leftist politics can be entirely reduced to offering support and satisfaction for people who choose to stay in that arrogant childhood state of mind, which is actually an intense dependency crossed with cowardice, because adolescence and individuation has been rejected out of fear.

That’s also why liberals don’t mind contradicting themselves - they live the lives of children, where information is fragmented and only the parents or adults know how it all goes together, and all that is required to them is obedience. But with liberals, the obedience goes to the dominant group.

Offering freedom to a liberal, therefore, is to offer the most feared, most hated thing in their lives. From their point of view it is like trying to kill them, and thats why they respond with rage and hatred when conservatives bring up principles and arguments based on freedom. “Freedom” to a liberal means only one thing - the loss of mommy and daddy to a child. How would a child react to that? How do liberals act regarding conservative arguments?

Do all Democrats vote for Obama for the same reason(s)? Does a highly paid college Professor with lots of free time decide to vote for Obama using the same reasons that an inner-city welfare mother of six uses? We are foolish if we think that Democrat voters use no reason when choosing to vote Democrat. Ask an inner-city Democrat mother of six if she thinks she’s stupid. She may not have a PhD, but she thinks she has “street smarts” and that she’s clever. We insult that inner-city Democrat voter when we intimate that she’s too stupid to think for herself. She thinks her voting for Democrats is a wise choice for her and her children. We claim the moral high ground when we say that the inner-city Democrat voters aren’t very bright, but we lose the election. We have to compete for the inner-city and college Professor votes. We have to understand them and their reasons for voting Democrat. We have to speak to them, in a manner they will listen to, about how voting Republican is actually in their best interest. The first step is understanding.
“Understand yourself and your opponents and in one hundred battles you will not be defeated.”

With respect to Professor Washington, but what exactly am I suppose to do to cure cognitive dissonance? This is like chasing unicorns. You will have to find a unicorn first before you can chase it.

No, the practical solution is to overrun the government with conservatives and pare down the federal governments (and states) to constitutional size. And let the cognitive dissonant flutter in the wind or irrelevance.

My parents always voted for the Democrat Socialist Party (although my maternal grandfather and uncle was named after Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican).

Theodore Roosevelt was the first RINO, a radical progressive and not anyone to be admired. His "Bull Moose" Party third-party run in 2012 split the Republican vote, causing the defeat of the incumbent William Howard Taft and delivering the election to the first avowedly progressive president, Woodrow Wilson.

Roosevelt deserves America's undying contempt.

The writer proceeds from a false assumption, to wit:

America, please join me in trying to cure the cognitive dissonance of the Democrat Socialist Party and their tens of millions of voters

There is no cure. The cancer has metastasized, and the patient is Stage 4 Terminal.

The conflict in America can only be resolved by other means.

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