Re: [IRAQ]: cognitive dissonance

From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Wed Jun 18 2003 - 00:06:47 MDT

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    jonkc@att.net writes:

    > "Michael Wiik" <mwiik@messagenet.com>
    >
    >> <<A third of the American public believes U.S. forces found weapons of
    >> mass destruction in Iraq, according to a recent poll, and 22 percent
    >> said Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons.
    >
    > Not surprising, according to a recent Gallup Poll 33% think space aliens are
    > visiting Earth in UFO's and 71% think the government knows more about it
    > that it says; and 45% think "God created human beings pretty much in their
    > present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" There's almost
    > nothing so stupid you can't get at least 20% of the people to believe it.

    Which of course, doesn't prevent such folks from being cited in opinion
    polls. I wonder if this is where the 'majority' pro-war opinion arrives
    from. They support bombing and killing of thousands but don't care
    enough to pay attention to the news after the bombing is over.

    For more on cognitive dissonance, there's a recent Counterpunch article:

    << I spent, I confess, several weeks waiting for the thunderous uproar
    that would inevitably follow the equally inevitable discovery that Iraq
    had no biological agents, no foul chemicals, no missiles capable of
    circling the papier-mache globe and blowing up Daytona Beach, Florida
    (or similar). The discovery has been made. You want mustard gas in Iraq,
    you'd better start eating pastrami. Yet the American public doesn't
    care. There will be no consequences to the Bush Administration for the
    naked, baseless savagery it perpetrated upon Iraq's people. Why not? The
    answer hit me like a full-scale papier-mache model of the Earth:
    Americans aren't upset about the Big Lie because they never believed it
    in the first place. They just didn't want to know.

    Wow, that's such a cynical idea it makes your skin all crinkly. Can it
    be that the average American so very much doesn't give a shit what its
    government does? Can it possibly have gotten this bad? We were until
    recently known as a generous and friendly people, if loud. Are we in
    fact the heartless maggots that such a concept would require? It boggles
    the mind. Where is the public outcry? Why isn't everybody in America
    going apeshit as the Bush Administration slips into the same "what, me
    worry?" mode they employed after the failure to snare Osama bin Laden?

    [...]

    The beauty part of cognitive dissonance is the worse it gets, the more
    people throw up [their hands] and say "who cares?" In this way such
    public works projects as genocide and empire- building can be
    accomplished, because people refuse to care. It's too damn demanding,
    too scary, and too damaging to that ever-threatened bird called Self
    Esteem. But this is the time to take a good long look at your mindset,
    before things get so awful you find yourself goose- stepping down the
    Reichsparteitag rather than face the facts. Are you in a state of
    cognitive dissonance? Does the evidence of your senses not jibe with
    what you've been told is The Way Things Are? Do you find yourself
    redefining what is important to exclude what you don't want to believe?
    Are you angry at people who demand you think about issues you consider
    closed? Do you often find yourself wondering why everybody but real
    Americans are wrong? Do you believe there is one set of rules for
    America and a different set of rules for the rest of the world, and that
    America should enforce both of them? Are you a red-faced witless baboon?>>

    http://www.counterpunch.org/tripp06142003.html

    Enjoy,
            -Mike

    -- 
    


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