Extreme Dissonance

Hello darlings! Pretty Lady has been Nesting all week. She is now sitting in her beautiful new office, with a garden theme, overlooking Manhattan--and what is wonderful is that she didn't even have to find a new apartment! The Fabulous Office was here all along. It just needed a little tweaking.

Now, from this situation of power, she overlooks the national psychological landscape, and casually notes that a good percentage of us are in a state of Total Panic:

Thomas Sowell’s got a book I’m told is quite worth reading called Knowledge and Decisions. I’m afraid his latest remarks on Obama threaten to make both impossible — scrambling the first so badly that the second are twisted into crippling knots. Unless, of course, what we know is that the sky is falling and what we decide to do is freak out.

"There is such a thing as a point of no return," Sowell says. If Obama wins the White House and Democrats expand their majorities in the House and Senate, they will intervene in the economy and redistribute wealth. Yet their economic policies "will pale by comparison to what they will do in permitting countries to acquire nuclear weapons and turn them over to terrorists. Once that happens, we’re at the point of no return. The next generation will live under that threat as far out as the eye can see."

"The…vision [of Barack Obama] is really an elitist vision," Sowell explains. "This man [Obama] really does believe that he can change the world. And people like that are infinitely more dangerous than mere crooked politicians."

Please, folks, can we exercise the discipline necessary to criticize Barack Obama coherently?

Yes, please, can we? All over everywhere--at The Corner, in the comments sections of the New York Times, in allegedly 'conservative, right-wing' blogs, Pretty Lady is finding no coherent criticism whatsoever, simply an enraged, paranoid sputtering. She could bother to go through these sputterings at excrutiating length, addressing whatever minimal content she can discover within them, but she suspects that this process would only increase the panic.

Because what she suspects is that we are now witnessing an epidemic of cognitive dissonance on a national scale.

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. Ideas may include attitudes and beliefs, and also the awareness of one's behavior. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors...

Dissonance can be experienced as anxiety, guilt, shame, anger, embarrassment, stress, and other negative emotional states. When people's ideas are consistent with each other, they are in a state of consonance. Under these circumstances, people are content and relaxed, and less likely to experience aversive emotions. When dissonance is present, one of the conflicting ideas may be a fundamental element of the self-concept, such as "I am a good person" or "I made the right decision." This can result in rationalization when a person is presented with evidence of a bad choice. It can also lead to confirmation bias, the denial of discomfirming evidence, and other ego defense mechanisms.

It seems to Pretty Lady that 'anxiety, guilt, shame, anger, embarrassment, stress' have all been bypassed, and that what she is witnessing can be more properly termed as 'sheer existential terror.' Persons in this state of terror are not amenable to reason; they need, primarily, a bucket of cold water in the face.

So Pretty Lady has something to say to you, and that is: STOP IT THIS INSTANT. CALM THE F*CK DOWN. EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALL RIGHT.

The reasons things are going to be all right:

1) We are still living in a democracy. We ALL get to vote. We ALL get to write our Congressmen, publish our blogs, and criticize our government. The worldwide network of communication is so decentralized, at this point, that it is virtually impossible for any centralized, malignant entity (that is, a government run by Barack the Elitist, Terrorist Socialist) to shut it down completely. Thus, even if your worst fears are confirmed, it is Not The End Of The World.

2) Mistakes aren't the end of the world, whether they're yours or not. Pretty Lady didn't vote for Bush in 2000 or 2004, but she had to live with the consequences; SHE'S STILL HERE. No doubt you will still be here as well, four years from now.

3) You won't die if you try to consider things from another perspective. I.e., you could consider the perspective that Obama is not, in fact, either a terrorist, Stalin, or the Antichrist. This perspective could even prove to be a comfort to you; it could, moreover, prove to be true.

4) If we are in God's hands, we're in God's hands. Duh. So the only reason you could possibly be so terrified is if God is a malicious, vindictive force, bent upon destruction. Perhaps this is also a perspective you might want to reconsider.

5) If you voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, you are still a perfectly decent person, even though the Bush presidency brought us to a state of bankruptcy, panic, depression, and international disgrace. Please consider that persons voting for Obama are as decent as you are, and amenable to rational discussion.

Now, proceed, if you can, rationally.