Cognitive dissonance in Psychology
The psychological tension that occurs when one holds mutually exclusive beliefs or attitudes and that often motivates people to modify their thoughts or behaviors in order to reduce the tension.
Anxiety that results from simultaneously holding contradictory or incompatible attitudes, beliefs, or the like, as when one likes a person but disapproves of one of his or her habits.
Motivated Ignorance in Politics
Motivated ignorance can be simply defined as when people don’t want to know the facts. While ignorance is defined as a lack of knowledge, education or understanding; motivated ignorance is when others choose not to educate themselves out of fear.
Example of Motivated Ignorance with Trump’s Base
If you’re looking for an explanation for why Trump’s support is so solid among his base — and why it will remain so stubbornly high — read this piece by the Associated Press, where the reporters asked Trump supporters how they’re handling the wave of scandal.
“I tuned it out,” Michele Velardi, a 44-year-old in Staten Island, told the AP of the recent news. “I didn’t want to be depressed. I don’t want to feel that he’s not doing what he said, so I just choose to not listen.”
This line is extremely revealing. It shows a psychological tendency we’re all susceptible to. That tendency is called “motivated ignorance,” and it’s an extremely powerful force in American politics.
It’s also one of the keys to understanding why political discourse can be so irrational.
The reality of this motivated ignorance in this country is it is deep running, the very foundation of how American “democracy” runs — how we as a collective have allowed for the casino, predatory, shock doctrine capitalism to pervade every waking second and sleeping nanosecond. It’s the cognitive dissonance at looking at the old apple pie, in this case, where our collective taxes (those of the 85 percent, not those from the One Percent and their Little Eichmann hit men and hit women 14 percent who steal, hide, launder, offshore, dodge and deny their fair share of the bill to keep America running) go to support the Oligarchs, the Kochs-Bloombergs-BlackRock Capitals-Zuckerbergs- et al.
Seriously, look at the simplistic things listed above – 59 percent of the budget is for military, which in my mind is just a tip of the iceberg when it comes to the actual toll we pay for militarism and Empire. Put in International Affairs at 2 percent, Transportation at 3 percent, Energy/Environment at 2 percent, hell, Science at 3, Education at 5 percent, and Health at 5, and then Veterans’ Benefits — 7%. Truly, how many of those sectors support adventurism, playing the world’s cop, or our thuggery and invasive rogue statesmanship (sic)? How much of the budget is in line for supporting the grifters that are American corporations, profiteers preened by lobbyists, what Matt Taibbi calls – Griftopia and Vampire Squids from his 2010 book, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America?
How much of what we do-think-consume-buy-sell-hope for-believe in-educate-govern is tied to this rancid desire to control markets, control destinies, control geo-political zones, control futures? Can we divorce anything in this society – Hollywood, food, medicine, urban planning, banking, science, technology, etc. – from the very foundation of uber alles zieg heil capitalism, above anything else?
Never.
Ironies and contradictions and counter-intuitive thinking abound in this wasteland of capital and profits and vast piles of wealth controlled by a smaller and smaller slice of the population. Daily, now that I am back off the dole and working as a social worker for homeless veterans, the Make America Great aging and down and out veterans are floundering minute by minute to find stability. That’s health, housing, any safety net or blanket.
Veterans and the VA and the pressures of a tri-county arena in the Portland, OR, market, where apartments of any affordable nature are few and far in between. Disgusting rents, disgusting digs. I work at a temporary shelter for vets, of all ages, all genders, families, and their companion dogs. Housed temporarily, and my job is connecting them to services, scrounging for resources, helping them navigate towers of bureaucratic paperwork.
Here’s what one fellow I met at the VA hospital told me:
Yeah, they never prepare you for coming back into civilian life. Truth be told, brother, the entire experience being in the Army, or military, is trauma inducting. Shit, doesn’t matter if you end up in one of the war zones. Think, man, I am a black man, and you think the military is one cakewalk? It’s white supremacist, no two ways about it. They don’t prepare you for the shock, first, of the shit they put you through in the Army. Daily, it’s hazing, humiliation. Daily, it’s one ordeal, man, after another. I don’t think someone who hasn’t been in understands that. We come out traumatized. We all come out with service connected trauma. Hands down, that’s one hundred percent disability. Forget about the hearing loss, the smashed discs in the back, the exposure to chemicals, the constant stress they put you through. I wasn’t prepared for this life, man, coming out of Iraq. I am hands down messed up, not prepared for anything, and dealing with what I went through in the Army, come on, it’s one hundred percent disabled. Hobbled by the mind games, the razing, the constant bullshit of the systems. You think as a black man, really, that it wasn’t like at times being in the Klan, or around these racists? You either hate brown people in the Middle East, or you are one of them. ISIS, Taliban, Al Qaeda. Every day it was a constant racist shit-show with Obama in as their and my commander in chief. Imagine that shit. Now, these young guys and gals have that freak show of a Trump and his Aryan Brotherhood , and how’s that transformation going to look like for brothers and sisters leaving after three, five, seven years? What shit have they prepared us for coming back into civilian life with all those emotional and psychological batterings?
This is one fellow I ran into a VA clinic, not even one of my clients. He somehow pegged me as Marxist, anti-authority, and he let go the floodgates. You can’t make these things up anymore as a traveler, as a writer who is incognito as a social worker.
Look at the pie above for aid to the Veterans, and see what the shit show pays out for the walking wounded, the chronically ill, the near insane, and the mentally deranged. Think about how much communities spend on housing, safety nets for the poor – the working poor, the children of this warped nation? Nothing, little, but the toll, and intended consequences, oh, what a toll.
Daily reminders of the stench of the racism of this country come to me as I navigate systems of penury, systems of poverty, the entire mess of the indebtedness, years of back child support, unimaginable fees to be paid to University of Phoenix, the Trump Universities of the system of deceit and destruction.
These conversations are pretty deep daily, as the men and women of the military are housed in temporary quarters, looking for ways to find housing. These are people with three or four or a few more years in the military, and they have no pensions, and in reality, after the service, many of them have kicked about, aimless, broken, working class hard, somehow broken from the line of logic that “serving your country means your country will serve you.”
Homeless, people, and that’s rotten teeth, rotten criminal records, rotten credit, rotten evictions, rotten bills, and a system that barely puts a few dollars worth of food stamps a month in their hands. The walking wounded, and the wandering poor. Each day another one hits the road, finds abandonment his or her only option, and it’s another day they have without social safety nets.
There are dozens of cases each day, how these young and not-so-young end up in an emergency shelter for veterans. Many are hammered by huge changes in their relationships; i.e., divorce. That SEE — significant emotional event — spirals mostly men, but many women, into hitting the road and losing a home. As if the entire ranch is predicated on that 2000 or 3000 square foot home. Garage full of stuff. Children, pets, and, well, one thing leads to another, and, bam, the person — veteran — is couch surfing, living in their cars, and, bam, something gets them into a criminal justice situation or medical intervention.
For years, the spiraling, homeless, but with a job, and, then, another SEE — death of a buddy, war buddy, or, their PTSD and other ailments start shivering the soul. Booze and drugs, pain pills and meth. Whatever it is, these former soldiers — many of whom went into the military with baggage — come out with some mean and deep scars.
One fellow was working security at a fancy hotel. Had a dog as a service animal. Kicked out of apartment that did not recognize the doctor’s orders for a dog. Then, this former Marine is living in the hotel, and his dog is in a shelter. He rents a car, gets the dog, and sleeps in the vehicle and ends up working, still, with the dog in the car and people walking her for a few bucks.
Cold snap, snow in downtown Portland, and the fellow is at the wheel, with the engine on, parked, so the heater will work. He had a few drinks, a few bottles empty in the car, but he never drove the vehicle plastered.
Now, he faces $5000 or more in court costs, rehab costs, license suspensions, towing bill, rent-a-car clean up of $500 since the soldier never had a chance to clean it up.
He ends up in the shelter where I work. Bam, I find him a free dog crate, and the dog is freed from the pound, and the soldier is in a shared room with a dog companion and another homeless roommate who actually loves the dog.
Story after story, scenario after scenario. Veterans who served five years, or Vietnam Vets who had two tours in Vietnam, saw killing, and sucked in the beast of Agent Orange, Phosphorus and all the diseases and molds of Indochina.
One fellow spent three stints in prison. What, 28 years total. Veteran who ended up in his native Portland during the days of the West Coast CIA Cocaine Infusion Gary Webb and others wrote about. The crack cocaine was rampant in Portland, LA, San Diego, other locales. Coke and PTSD from military and war, and the combination turns into crime for money to support a dime a day or eight-ball.
Aged 62, and 16 years in prison for the last crime and here he is my client, working to find something, housing, a job, and he wants to keep pursuing some music career — electronic stuff, with all the software, licks, keyboards. Hell, he knew the drummer from the Yellow Jackets who did work for lots of people, including Michael Jackson.
Now how easy is that for a veteran, now in a shelter, sharing a room with another fellow, to get out of the institutionalized way of thinking? Prison mind. Hell, this African-American is the exact person the Yellow Bellied Trump and dictator of Philippines and Singapore Sadists and Chinese think drug users are good for — the firing squad.
Really, make no bones about it, Vietnam Navy veteran, using the cocaine of the Contras and Reagan Years, Colonel Ollie North and Colonel McFarland, all those blasted neocons and Israel-firsters essentially pushing drugs into Compton and Portland, and he is now the perfect model for electrocution. Because a drug user is always a drug money holder who is always a drug dealer willing to move more stuff than personal use can suffice in order to pay for rent and buy food.
Imagine the stories about Trump in New York City? Imagine how much white powder was stuffed up noses in his hotels, hell, maybe in his own suites and bathrooms, golden toilet lids for lines of coke to be inhaled with crystal pipettes. Studio 51, Trump’s parties at the Playboy Mansion, Trump the Playboy with Jeffrey Epstein, with known drug users, dealers, all those boozers, and, well, anyone owning a casino is in the business of dealing the most lethal drugs of them all — booze and smokes. Pall Malls and Jack Daniels.
Story after story I absorb. Wounded warrior after traumatized veteran. An army of none, an air force for bombing, a navy for nihilism, a marine corps for murder. So, Trump-Clinton-Obama-Bush-Reagan-Every-Member of Congress and the Senate voting for more war, more murder, well, who are the dealers really, dealers of death to not only the enemy in name (people of color) but dealers of death to their own people? Politicians, Economic Hitmen, Bankers, and Judges? Hmm.
And my work at this shelter is so-so under the radar of those Trump-Clinton-Obama-Bush-Reagan-Every-Member of Congress and the Senate-and-Corporate Leaders who vote-vote for more prisons, missile launchers, satellites of death, drones of destruction, mountain heaps of bullets and rifles, stealth bombers and endless logistical crap that feeds, clothes, houses, warms, cools, placates the soldiers.
Not a tear dropped for homeless veterans, because under the calculus of Trump and Accompanying Neoliberals, these “scum-bags” as they call them are in their own self-imposed dire straights one hundred percent because of all THEIR wrong choices.
Some choice:
A thousand a month in benefits from social security with a few service connected claims, and a 185 square foot room with two burner stove-top. Smaller than a prison cell, and these old men and old women end up living their last few years cramped in, single occupancy rooms, and somehow, we call that a success story.
If only the masters of the world, the Fortune 1000, and the Cadet Bone Spurs Trump, and his entourage of freaks and freakish family and extended clan could really get something under their manicured nails. Imagine, this draft dodger, Trump, who vilified John McCain, joking at his POW status. Imagine, this president (sic) forgetting the name of the soldier recently killed as he attempted to talk to the widow. Imagine, this unreality TV show blob, planning 50 million dollar arms parade. Imagine, all his cabinet, spending $19,000 here for a new office table, $50 thousand there for first-class flights, trips to Europe, with family in tow. Imagine, this fellow, Teflon, imagine, weak knees and golfer’s belly, commanding the men and women in uniform, pushing more war toys onto the commanders, all the graft of the multiple military lords of war, in the civilian world.
To the editor:
Cadet Bone Spurs claims he would have run into Stoneman Douglas High School unarmed if he had been on the scene of the recent shooting there. Apparently, he is braver now than he was during the Vietnam era when he secured five deferments. I would like to call on him to immediately fly to the scene of the next school shooting and put his new-found bravery into action. Come on, Bone Spurs, show us what you’re made of!
Mark Ward
Then imagine the 40,000 veterans who are deemed homeless by some measures (I believe more than that number are without housing). Imagine the broken VA system, all the vets that don’t get mental health support, all the callous and corrupt officials and medical experts who just push patient after patient back into the cold of night, the drizzle of Portland in the dead of winter.
Oh, there are homeless social workers, man, living in Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, and You Name It Rah-Rah America. Working daily to help homeless veterans in some non-profit (poverty-wage poverty pimping entity) in Seattle, and the fellows have to kip inside their cars, or find shelters to wash up for a new day’s work.
And we are now in March Madness, post-Oscars, ready for the new 2018 Line Up of Trucks and Cars, and we give a shit about some black actors in the wrinkle of time or black panther, when the entire mess of America is a hall of mirrors, broken, shards, reflections of the horror show that is capital – money hoarders, the launderers, the developers, that Chamber of Death called the Chamber of Commerce.
The reverberating stupidity of anyone supporting anything that resembles a politician is a daily reminder of how many millions upon millions of Americans who are my enemy, the grease (suet) that oils the death trains of capitalism.
Daily, the discussions I have are telling, sometimes revealing. More and more people are broken children, and their hard ways, after hitting 70 or 75, are softened by their very own time in a shelter, and on the streets. Listening to the stories of pain, of all those broken people, the families that are the enemy, and the pounding chronic physical and psychological illnesses that now define America, the underclass, or even the 80 Percenters, those of us precarious, struggling to make ends meet.
Grown men who saw and breathed the Agent Orange fogs, who still call people Gooks, who ended up broken and flailed by war, and then facing the truth, the inability to make it in the American Fun House of Nightmares, which were not the Dreams of Children growing up playing baseball and running track.
I had one fellow recently who said he had grown hardened, calloused, after decades driving trucks, hard labor. He said that life breeds entire armies of hardened and severe thinkers. But my guy has seen the light, heard the stories of people in this shelter with lives unimaginable, as youth, pounded by parents, the rapes, the drugs, the abject poverty, and then signing up for the military, that economic draft we call it.
Living in the thrushes or old warehouses. Some after awarded purple hearts and bronze stars for valor, living in old container boxes, in tents near highway ramps.
Who would have thought that 9th grade baseball game, seventh inning, hot dogs, popcorn, the Dr. Pepper and cheerleaders and verdant fields and all those supports with advertising logos in left field, who would have thought that was miasma, a dream, some lost memory?
Then they genuflect to the antithesis of duty to country (Trump), the exact opposite of sacrificing for country, the entire Trump regime. America, the façade, the revolving paper poster and tinsel all glued on, all bullshit, memories falsified by Hollywood and Madison Avenue.
Who would have thought a Marxist atheist like myself would be salving the mental and spiritual wounds of the walking wounded, the warriors, some, and the others who just did their time in the grinder called US military?
The trauma is inflicted and is infectious, and we go home, social workers, never satisfied with the work we did, and our phones are turned on 24-7, and we want the ones that can survive to do that and more, and some vets, yeah, they have some money coming in, but they are broken, ending up in a shelter, and we hold their hearts, solve their issues, and we go home, poor, not wanting anything in return, but for another veteran to be housed.
Six years after the Great Recession began, the number of homeless families with children remains stubbornly high. And the number of low-income households with unmet needs for housing assistance—especially families with children—has soared. Funding cuts under sequestration threaten to halt progress against homelessness and worsen the shortage of affordable housing.
This unprecedented reduction in federal rental assistance primarily affects low-income seniors, people with disabilities, and working families with children who are currently on waiting lists for assistance. The voucher cuts also mean that many fewer families that are homeless or at imminent risk of homelessness will have access to vouchers.
On top of this are the reductions in federal food aid to the poor, once called food stamps and now the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Four out of five of these recipients have gross incomes below the poverty line, about $23,500 for a family of four. As many as 4 million more would be dropped from the program under cuts proposed by House Republicans.
Homeless children, or those threatened with homelessness, are among the most heart rending victims of this assault by Republicans on housing and nutrition for the poor. They go hand in hand. Homeless children suffer much more from obesity and other diet-related ailments than other children.
— Barbara Sard, the vice president for housing policy at Center on Budget and Policy Priorities