Cognitive Dissonance and the loss of objective reasoning

Mueller report findings upend partisan views of probe, poll finds

Among Democrats, who long expressed faith in Mueller during the inquiry, 53 percent now say they are disappointed with its conclusions. And while most still approve of Mueller’s efforts, more than 6 in 10 Democrats do not accept his finding on whether Trump conspired with Russia.

Herein lies the main fact here. The partisanship at this point is divided among accepting reality and rejecting reality. This tells us exactly how married Democrats have been to the concept that Trump "colluded" with Russia and how they will continue to believe (with or without any factual evidence to back it up). Make no mistake, this is still entirely a lack of acceptance of the 2016 election.

But it exposes the deeper issue with our media, bias, and an increasingly strange viewpoint that facts are no longer objective. In what seems to be a very strange set of circumstances (which I can only hope is temporary) - our society is moving into the concept that all things factual being viewed subjectively (and allowing personal feelings to count) is something that is "normal" and "accepted" and somehow actually "relevant".

There is a fine line between allowing someone who is biologically one sex to "identify" as the opposite sex, and allowing someone to not accept other types of facts, based on the idea that those facts make them uncomfortable. We now find certain statistical information to be "hateful" or worse,  because it points out something that people don't want to accept.

It's as if we now have a dual means of verifying whether something is factual or true. It seems as if it not only has to be proven factually, but it also has to to pass a political correctness test before it can be seen as a fact. A certain subset of Americans might (for example) commit more capital crimes than other subsets. But that will not be accepted by many as a fact, as long as they deem that statistic to be somehow unfair or demeaning for that subset.

It's not even whether or not we allow that statistic to be reported. We (as a society) are quite literally at a place where people will simply not believe something to be true, if they don't want it to be true. So in essence, what this poll is saying isn't that 6 in 10 Democrats don't believe the report, it's that they don't "want" to believe it, and feel it is their right to believe what they want. Taking it one step further, these same people are upset that such a thing was even "allowed" to be reported, because of the information in the statement actually upset them.

To be clear, there is quite literally zero evidence that what they heard from the report is untrue (zero evidence), but they didn't want to hear it anyways. Their need to reject it is so blatant that not only will they "not" believe it, but they will do everything in their power to undermine the factual statements being made.

Now this is both a millennial thing and a liberal thing. More and more we see the liberal millennials such as Ocasio-Cortez purposely clouding up the differences between something that is desired and something that is possible. We cannot (for example) find nearly 100 trillion dollars to pay for the "Green New Deal".  But somehow the fact that it cannot be paid for, is simply lost on those who support it.  Paying for it, is quite literally not something they worry about. What they worry about is finding something rhetorical that sounds good, like "we cannot afford not to do it" as an argument.

Obviously rhetoric that plays to emotions is not an argument that will garner us 100 trillion dollars or change the fact that Trump did not collude with Putin in 2016.

We, as a country, are heading down a strange and dangerous path of cognitive dissonance, bias confirmation, and a wishful reality. Reality and facts cannot be not subjected to "polling". They are rooted in the basic concept of our existence. The further and further we, as a society, move away from objective facts and accepting the truth, the more dangerous things become.