Cognitive dissonance at it's finest!

So yesterday I posted some additional information regarding the recent decision to remove our troops from Syria. This post "triggered" an irrational response that could the poster child of Trump induced cognitive dissonance. Several comments of insults, exasperation, conspiracy theories, and of course some more insults.

All because I posted some additional information.

Heck, I didn't even necessarily suggest that this additional information actually provided any evidence as to whether or not the decision to leave was correct or not. I just offered that it was information, and that anyone who relies on the MSM for their information would not have heard about it. 

But the existence of this additional information, along with the obvious notion that it was being ignored by CNN, NYT, and WaPo was still enough to trigger an irrational reaction.

You see the Trump-haters were being sold a simple bill of goods. The bad orange man, prompted by conservative talk show radio hosts, Jared Kushner, and voices in his head made an impromptu decision without any thought, and obviously without any input from anyone he should be listening to.

More to the point, the entire Syria issue had been dumbed down for the Trump-haters into the idea that our American troops are there for the noble cause of aiding the helpless kurds from being otherwise annihilated and wiped out by ISIS. 

This doesn't even begin to qualify as an oversimplification. 

The reality is that we have been providing aid to Syrian rebels taking part in a civil war to overthrow the Government of Assad. That was the major mission here. It's not (as we are being told today) about fighting ISIS. To whatever degree that has become the case, that was never our original intent. 

To make that argument today, is simply dishonest. 

But it is simple. 

Orange man bad. Fighting ISIS good. 

Moreover, we have for all practical purposes given up on the idea of overthrowing that government. We are there without a declaration of war, without an congressional authorization for military action, certainly not with the blessing of the Syrian government, and it would now appear that we are without any real long term goal. 

Now, is there disagreement as to whether or not these troops should leave Syria?  Certainly. But it's obviously not a simple issue of orange man bad, fighting ISIS good.

The main issue here is that there seems to be an unwillingness by many to concede anything to the Russians at this point, and that would include conceding Syria to Assad (who is backed by Russia). In fact, we had been very close to getting out prior to the Russians becoming "more" openly  involved.  But at this point we need to acknowledge that there really isn't any realistic avenue for the US backed troops to bring down Assad anymore. We also need to ask whether there is a true military solution to whatever problems exist in that area? Would would Colin Powell do?

It seems like there is an obvious incentive and obvious argument to be made that it's time to get out. The fact that this is the stance of the bad orange man seems to have driven everyone to change the aspects of the situation into something that would make the decision about our Syrian involvement "obvious" - when it is anything but.

The reality here is that this is a complicated situation. According to "all" sources, the negotiations for all of this have been ongoing for quite some time. One of the articles I linked from November, and was already recapping things that had been discussed and proposed. But the fact of the matter is that our own MSM is so focussed on things like the Russian investigation, and the Russian investigation, and the Russian investigation... that when something like this comes up, they are woefully unprepared to report on it.

So what we get is the same thing we always get. Orange man bad. Orange man did bad thing. Orange man dumb. We should remove orange man from office.  

Anything (even if it is just the introduction of left out facts) that does anything to undercut the bad orange man theories is taken as an emotional and intellectual threat to those suffering from TDS. This threat causes the sort of irrational reaction you saw here. 

I suspect we may see more of the same here.