Fear And Loathing Of Logic And Facts

You of the enlightenment, you who practice the empirical method, you who observe that something cannot be true and not true at the same time cannot blindly adhere to any religious or political faith without suffering cognitive dissonance. This is the lesson learned when our ancestors finally sought to discover facts and determine what is real through observation and the use of reason rather than trying to control our environment by making pleas and sacrifices to some deity!

“Cognitive dissonance is a term for the state of discomfort felt when two or more modes of thought contradict each other.”

 An example of such an uncomfortable conflict is when one learns new information that challenges a deeply held belief. The response of the right wing to cognitive dissonance is to try to ignore not merely the source of the conflict but also the fact that there is a conflict, and any attempt to point out the contradictions or address the denial of such contradictions is seen by the right wing as a personal attack. That is, in large measure, why the right wing always sees itself as a victim!

One way to ignore contradictory modes of thought is to go primitive, to simply say that it is God's will, and that no one can understand God's mind or purpose. In one fell swoop, this deity explanation dispenses with the need to be consistent or logical. And in the case of the extreme right wing it fully justifies the poisoning of any and all wells outside of the retrograde universe of the primitive mind. In a very real sense the right wing is a victim of intrusive logic and facts that threaten to encroach on a belief system that is not flexible enough to adjust to reality. This constant attack from the real (read evil) world fosters a feeling of victim-hood that makes right wingers so susceptible to the most irrational conspiracy theories spun by fear mongering demagogues! How dare we accuse those demagogues of hypocrisy for claiming that Donald Trump has every right to take even the most sensitive government documents to Mar a lago when just a few short years ago they were chanting “lock her (Hillary Clinton) up” for the way she handled government records! How dare we point out the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the MAGA Republicans for saying that the FBI's search of Mar a lago was a political act and a witch hunt when those same MAGA R's said nothing or even encouraged the Justice department when it opened investigations of Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton and just about every other government employee who displeased Donald, dumb ass, Trump.

The reason why fascist leaders and other autocrats always claim to be victims is because fear and loathing is their stock in trade, and feelings of aggrievement and victim-hood are the accelerants kindling the fear, the loathing, and the anger that justifies the unjustifiable in the minds of the right wing. The fact that there are so many hateful, irrational right wing activists controlling a major party makes this a very dangerous time. We must kill the damn fascist elephant before it kills us! The threat of violence posed by the R-fascists threatening civil war is not a reason to back down; instead that threat of violence is the reason we must oppose the fascists now with great resolve and using every legal means needed to defeat them!