Cognitive Dissonance, the Bush Administration, Cindy Sheehan, and the War in Iraq
Posted in: Politics, Best Posts, Cindy Sheehan, George W. Bush, Plame Investigation, War
I’ve continued to think about Suzy Shedd’s comments about Cindy Sheehan, and wanted to explain a little more fully why I think she hit the nail on the head, and why her comments resonated so strongly with me.
I’ve long thought that cognitive dissonance was a major reason why the American public was so slow to turn against the War in Iraq (and I’m using the past tense there, since an overwhelming majority of Americans have finally come to their senses). While it’s true that suppression and distortion of information slowed the long march towards truth, it’s also clear that the American people continued to support the war in the face of increasing evidence that the Bush Administration lied the country into war.
The psychological concept of cognitive dissonance helps reveal why it took so long for so many Americans to realize that President Bush has been leading the country in the wrong direction. Here is one explanation of the term:
Beyond this benign if uncomfortable aspect, however, dissonance can go “over the top”, leading to two interesting side-effects for learning:
* if someone is called upon to learn something which contradicts what they already think they know — particularly if they are committed to that prior knowledge — they are likely to resist the new learning. Even Carl Rogers recognised this. Accommodation is more difficult than Assimilation, in Piaget’s terms.
* and — counter-intuitively, perhaps — if learning something has been difficult, uncomfortable, or even humiliating enough, people are less likely to concede that the content of what has been learned is useless, pointless or valueless. To do so would be to admit that one has been “had”, or “conned”.
The parallels, I hope, are clear: many Americans voted for George Bush in good faith; they believed that he would take his office seriously, that he would not lie to the American people, or be so callous as to send America’s sons and daughters into harm’s way without good cause.
As the evidence has mounted that Bush lied to the American people during the build-up to war, Americans who were duped tended to ignore or explain away that evidence. Cognitive dissonance helps reveal why the right wing noise machine has had so much success over the past few years — it tells the American people what they want to hear: that everything is on track, that the war is going well, that democracy in Iraq is just around the corner, that the Administration is doing everything it can to protect our soldiers, that President Bush knows what he is doing.
American supporters of the President, in other words, wanted to be duped. The alternative would have resulted in a painful shattering of illusions. Any glimpse of the plain truth staring them in the face would have led to cognitive dissonance, to the jarring recognition that not only were they lied to, but that they themselves bore responsibility for allowing themselves to be conned.
And so, like pottery in a kiln, their belief in the President set and hardened. They looked to right-wing commentators for comfort, and found it. All of the damaging news could be discounted, if only it was viewed from the proper angle. Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, and others provided the glaze that would keep America’s citizens in a daze.
The lack of planning for post-war Iraq? Just inter-departmental bickering. Abu Ghraib? Just a few out-of-control grunts. The Downing Street Memo? Just old news, promoted by those with a grudge against the president. Valerie Plame? She had it coming. The scarcity of proper humvee armor? Not the administration’s fault. Richard Clark, Paul O’Neill, and Larry Johnson? All disgruntled employees badmouthing the old boss.
When those American citizens are the mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters of soldiers who have died in the war, cognitive dissonance multiplies exponentially. It’s one thing to try to accept that a President lied the country into war. It’s something else entirely to try to accept that one’s child died not for a noble cause, but for a lie.
This, then, is Cindy Sheehan’s bravery: she has had the courage to look the facts in the face, and to understand that though her son died honorably, fighting in a war for which he volunteered, he was betrayed by the commander-in-chief who sent him into battle.
Or, as Suzy put it:
President Bush finds it hard to meet with Cindy Sheehan because he knows that the eyes that will meet his gaze have been emptied of sympathy, emptied of friendship, emptied of lies. In the face of her painful truth, Bush withers and runs like a creature whose ugliness is revealed in the bright light of day.
Cindy Sheehan stands bereft of the child she birthed so long ago, filled with sorrow, but lit with the hard wisdom that comes from sacrifice.
Bush cowers in the shadows of his Crawford manse, surrounded by the fears he has stoked, knowing that a step into the light would expose what the shadows have hidden from view for far too long .
And the American people, watching this epic encounter, are slowly waking from slumber, slowly realizing that those sharp tinglings on their skin, while painful, remind them that they are alive, and that they can still make a choice between darkness and light.
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