Cognitive dissonance is reinvented anew each day. For me, it is one of the pervasive human features that allow me not only to analyze “what is behind” but also provide me with the necessary intellectual joy.

This post was originally written on September 17th, 2020. After almost 5 years of distance, we are facing the Second Trump term in the Oval Office. 

I intentionally did not change the original post, because I want you (and me) to see the exact text in a different (same?) global environment. 

…..

The Donald Trump phenomenon provides us with exquisite pleasure as we observe various types of intellectuals searching for explanations. What amuses me is not so much whether their statements make sense or not, but how they mask or unmask them. In general, one can find two types of reactions to a disaster of biblical proportions:

Anti-Nazis as Nazis

Type 1: Overt statement that Donald Trump is such a pathetic figure that a decent person cannot and should not only vote against but also any serious analysis of his words and actions belongs to a “no-go zone”. This type asserts that, by merely analysing Donald Trump, one commits a crime against reason and humanity. Type 1 analysts see Donald Trump as a mistake of apparently disoriented voters. This mistake comes from their irrationality and is, as such, something that a decent person cannot take seriously. Such a position is not only noticeable among many intellectuals, Hollywood actors, and even some business leaders, but extends further.

There is one restaurant in Hawaii that banned Trump voters from entering. Trump voters are seen as infected by “trump disease,” which is so contagious that it should be kept somewhere distant from the rest of the world. While it should be easy to fight against this type of analyst intellectually, history with Nacizm that performed the same ban on Jews and some other stakeholder groups shows that if such mentalities prevail, individual freedoms perish considerably. The irony is that those banning Trumpers (Trump followers) as Nazis, in fact, behave like Nazis.

Rationalists being irrational

Type 2: This type is far more interesting. It can be observed in articles like this one in The New Yorker. The position of such authors is objective-like. They would sincerely like to understand “what happened”. It seems like they would like to explain something to us, readers. But are they really? What if they use the press space to heal their cognitive dissonance? Unconsciously, of course.

The mentioned article proves to be an excellent example of Type 2. Why?

The first reason 

is that it rests on a couple of studies that are utterly biased for they attribute “confirmation bias” to those that “are strong partisans” only. All mentioned studies attempt to understand reality as if there were two distinct groups of people. The first one consists of individuals who are strong partisans and behave like savages or even tribalists due to confirmation bias. Then there is another group of individuals who are rational, civilized, and do not suffer from confirmation bias. Such studies thus prove that we (rational beings) understand why they (irrational tribalists) are underdeveloped in comparison to us. Type 2 position, therefore, takes Type 1 as granted (Trump is an idiot not worth uttering a word about) and at the same time, explains why his voters support him. Since they have a confirmation bias disease, their irrational selection is explicable, but of course, not tolerated.

According to the Western doctrine of medicine, after we understand the origins and mechanisms of a particular disease, we can start to eradicate it. This article does not come to such an obvious solution, but I would not be surprised if Universities that form a large part of Type 1 would not open studies and propose treatments for those who are so seriously ill. Such treatment could be named: “Let us kick out confirmation bias out of poor tribal retards like we kick out cancer cells.”

The second reason 

Does this post avoid discussing long-known and confirmed facts about cognitive dissonance? We know that cognitive dissonance is a constituent element of all humans, but perhaps especially of autists. We all have this “disease” regardless of gender, race, age, political belief, or even education level. Scientists who explore yet undiscovered domains are perhaps the best examples. If they had not had an a-priori vision that contradicted the well-known reality, they would not have considered challenging the prevailing theories. Scientific exploration is a perfect example of the positive effects of cognitive dissonance, but one can also find it in every human action, including those governed by memes. That is why I say that the author of the mentioned article in New Yorker has cognitive dissonance. (Though her dissonance is no lower after she wrote it.) She will suffer for sure. She will never understand herself as being in cognitive dissonance while supporting Hillary Clinton and now probably Joe Biden.

The third reason 

is very personal. I was appalled by finding Steven Pinker as one of the main protagonists of this article. He allegedly wrote:

Trump, Pinker said, won over pretty much the entire Republican Party, and all those who felt alienated from the left, by declaring himself to be opposed to the “establishment” and political correctness. And this all happened, Pinker wrote to me, “despite his obvious temperamental unsuitability for the responsibilities of the Presidency, his opposition to free trade and open borders (which should have, but did not, poison him with the libertarian right), his libertine and irreligious lifestyle (which should have, but did not, poison him with evangelicals), his sympathies with Putin’s Russia (which should have, but did not, poison him with patriots), and his hostility to American military and political alliances with democracies (which should have, but did not, poison him with neoconservatives).”

As all philosophers know, one should be extremely careful in using the word “obvious”. Obvious for whom? Then, taking free trade and open borders as an inseparable entity is also questionable, as I explained in this post already. One could, namely, easily imagine liberal free trade among different cultures separated by borders that keep those cultures distinct. And then the argument that he should not be the right person because of his sympathies with Putin is at the possible bottom level of argumentation. Ad hominem argumentation. Pinker at his worst.

I was appalled, for Steven Pinker is one of the few contemporary scientists who has something to say these days. His books belong to those few that not only reshuffle last year’s snow as if it were fresh powder. However, this paragraph, which exposes his undigested cognitive dissonance to the full extent, is not interesting for this reason only, but also because it gives a clue as to where Steven Pinker falls short in all of his books. 

No memes – no reason

For reasons unknown to me, he strictly avoids using memes as second replicators to explain neuroscientific phenomena, neural diseases, and language issues. He should have utilized meme concepts, given that he is a top expert in neuroscience. He is an evolutionary linguist. If he grasped the power of memes as replicators, he would likely understand the alleged dissonance between Trump’s words and actions. By applying evolutionary memology, he could easily understand the connection between hardwired, genetically encoded human cognition and self-replicating memes, which serve as short-term vehicles for individual adaptations and survival.

Donald Trump has no education about evolution and no clue about memes. However, his actions demonstrate that he embodies lessons of evolution much better than Pinker understands them, and that he feels at home with memes, while Pinker and the New Yorker have no clue.

Donald Trump is no saint and no hero. He is certainly making mistakes like any other human being. But by blaming him for something he has not committed, those who want to destroy him prevent others from seeing what he really does wrong.