People Do the Darndest Things: Trying to Understand the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

Kamala Harris’s supporters make a good subject when trying to understand the theory of cognitive dissonance.

American psychologist, Leon Festinger, developed the theory of cognitive dissonance in 1957.  He said, “The existence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, will motivate the person to try to reduce the dissonance and achieve consonance. When dissonance is present, in addition to trying to reduce it, the person will actively avoid situations and information which would likely increase the dissonance.”

Joel Cooper summed up the theory of cognitive dissonance succinctly. He said, “Cognitive dissonance has been one of the most enduring and successful theories in the history of social psychology…More than 60 years ago, Leon Festinger made a modest proposal by suggesting that people who hold two or more cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent experience a state of psychological discomfort called cognitive dissonance. Moreover, the state of dissonance has drivelike properties, motivating people to seek its reduction. That relatively straightforward description of the relationship among cognitions led to decades of research that supported, contradicted and modified the theory. It led to innovations in understanding people’s motivations for the attitudes they hold, the behaviors they engage in and the preferences they express.”

Eddie Harmon-Jones and Judson Mill said, “As presented by Festinger in 1957, dissonance theory began by postulating that pairs of cognitions (elements of knowledge) can be relevant or irrelevant to one another. If two cognitions are relevant to one another, they are either consonant or dissonant. Two cognitions are consonant if one follows from the other, and they are dissonant if the obverse (opposite) of one cognition follows from the other. The existence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, motivates the person to reduce the dissonance and leads to avoidance of information likely to increase the dissonance. The greater the magnitude of the dissonance, the greater is the pressure to reduce dissonance.”

Essentially, the theory helps us understand why people make rationalizations with an uncomfortable thought that does not match up with what they believe is true and how it plays a role in keeping our heads stuck in the proverbial sand. And, how problems can grow from bad to worse when we stubbornly refuse to examine our own thoughts and actions and change course on a destructive path that will never get better until we at least acknowledge the problem and find a solution to resolve the problem.

Fact Check[1] admits Kamala Harris’s "short-lived" affair with [Montel]Williams but said that the photo circulating around the internet was altered to look like Kamala done did the Diddy when in fact she done did the Montel.

Ok, so who cares about so and so’s affair? People who schmooze in the super-elastic, bubble-plastic pretend planet called Hollywood are actors. They are not real. They are illusions created by their maker(s).

Yes, Kamala Harris had an extramarital affair when she was 29 with Willie Brown, 60, who gave her two political appointments that launched her political career.  

Harris’s supporters will counter that Donald Trump had affairs too. Yes, he did, but his affairs did not get him ahead in the political world like Harris. For all of Trump’s many warts, and he wears them on his face and his sleeve, he officially entered politics in 2015 at age 69, decades after turning a "small loan" from his father into more than 5 billion dollars. [He did not earn his income from being a politician like [fill in the blank].  BBC news writes, “In a 1980 interview, a 34-year-old Trump describes politics as "a very mean life" and says "the most capable people" instead choose the business world.”  Say what you want about the boastful boor and the comedy troop of Trump, but he is authentic.

Harris’s word salads are legendary to some of us as we ROTFL, and maybe she is smart enough to memorize her scripted lines, like she did for the debate, but she clearly is vapid and vacuous when the real Kamala is revealed in an unscripted moment. She is a scripted invention of joy, created by the ABC talents in Hollywood. Don’t believe it?  Here's what happens when the teleprompter goes down.  Yikes! No wonder she does not give [real] live interviews and when she answers off script, it will be edited. So why do her supporters not question that?

Harris supporters must suppose that democrats are nicer people, they are compassionate about others, not like those mean, stingy, rich old GOP people who protect the mega rich business owners who create jobs, and besides, democrats like to give them other’s people’s money…until they  run out of spending other people’s money.  Besides, they are kind and nice to the poor and people suffering around the world.  But democrats support gender affirming “care.” Why don’t they care about the confused minor children who cannot legally provide informed consent to become a patient for life? Harris voters are voting for child abuse! Would a Harris supporter admit that they are voting for child abuse? Who votes for child abuse?

Unfortunately for America, too many of her supporters do not stop to think about whether the ‘unprecedented’ positive media for Harris is truth or not. There are some honest journalists covering the stories that the mainstream press is not covering but it would appear that Harris supporters do not have any knowledge of this fact. She is not Trump, and they hate Trump. That’s it – vote with your feelings and not with any facts. And that’s why any type of democracy is inevitably doomed to fail as predicted by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Tocqueville, Tytler, et. al., who understood history’s repetition of the tragic stories of democratic societies. 

MSNBC Michael Steele – the old black face of the Republican party - says: “Stop Being Stupid People”; “The Country Needs to Wake Up Out of This Stupor”:  “He [Trump] is a fool, an incompetent individual who does not read even the briefings that he still gets as a former president on some of these things. So, he at least have [sic] some workable knowledge of events there.  The country needs to wake itself up out of this stupor, because this does not get better with him there. He will not solve these problems," Steele said. "He is the progenitor of these problems. He will be the focal point of the expansion of these problems, because they're unimportant to him."

According to Britannica.com, Michael Levy says “Although Steele was raised a Democrat, he turned to the Republican Party as an adult, a change he later attributed to his widowed mother’s refusal to apply for welfare and his belief in Republican Pres. Ronald Reagan’s philosophy of self-reliance.”

So, Steele endorses Harris who promotes more dependence on the government? Oh, that’s right. Kamala comes from humble beginnings – she’s middle-class, or so we’ve been told.

Kamala's "new way forward" is to create complete dependency on the government which would be the opposite of the middle-class ideal of self-reliance. “Vice President Harris grew up in a middle-class home as the daughter of a working mom.” Fact Check: Completely and totally false:

“Emma-Jo Morris said she ‘lived up the street from where’ Harris ‘went to school.’ Morris explained that Harris’s childhood and adolescence were ‘spent living in an upper-class enclave in Montreal, Canada.’ The neighborhood in which Harris grew up is ‘the most upscale neighborhood.’  Morris said that ‘at the time’ Harris was living there, the neighborhood ‘was not only the nicest neighborhood in Montreal but was the richest one in all of Canada. Far from the struggle of ‘the streets’ Harris now purports to have been down with.’

On August 29, 2024, the news outlet Washington Free Beacon reported that McDonald’s was not listed on Harris’s resume the year after she graduated from college, and that the job was not mentioned by her biographers.

Harris’s Brentwood home is worth approximately 5 million dollars and that’s just one of her homes. How many middle-class people have homes like this?

Do headlines like 92% Of Kamala Harris’s Staffers Left In Her First Three Years As VP Due To Her Laziness and Anger get unread by Harris supporters? Or is it cognitive dissonance? The thought that democrats fight for the little man, despite current history telling a different story: Exhibit A – Unprecedented funding for Ukraine’s border war and millions in FEMA funds to illegal aliens while Homeland Security secretary, Mayorkas said  FEMA does not enough money to fund the devastation felt by Americans from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and any future storm this year is beyond incompetent indifference.

How many people believe the "liberal" polls from media like the New York Times that continue to push the narrative that Harris is leading in the polls?  

Harris was never been a likable candidate and did not receive enough votes to earn 0 delegates in her own state of California’s 2020 presidential primary.   In  2019, Biden “vowed” that he would pick a woman of color as his vice president. Harris is a DEI candidate and DEI means “did not earn” it.

How many people think that race and gender is a good reason to pick a vice-president? It is common sense that the vice president should be someone who can pick up the reigns, should something happen to an incompetent or treasonous president.  On August 19, 2024, The Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means Committee released its report finding the  Biden Family Investigation lead to the conclusion that Biden indeed did commit impeachable actions.

In March 2021, Biden tasked Harris with "stemming the migration" on the southern border.  Look at uncontrolled illegal immigration on the southern border with headlines like Up to 323,000 Migrant Children Missing in US, DHS Watchdog Finds! Let alone high inflation, Harris’s complete lack of understanding of economics (support for price controls!), energy and the unsettled science of climate change, federalism (advocating to nationalize abortion) and even biology! Gender Affirming “Care” for minors and advocating that a child can choose to become a patient for life without legally being able to provide informed consent is child abuse. Period. That people can believe Harris is competent to be a vice-president, let alone president, is shocking. But, even if the polls are slanted, there are still too many people voting for an incompetent candidate because she will give them more free stuff.

And you get…

But her staff sees this:

Gregory McAteer was an intern in Kamala Harris’s office when she was California’s Attorney General from 2011 until 2017 and said ‘Bully’ Kamala Harris ‘berated staff,’ left them in tears after berating them with ‘F-bombs,’ and told the intern never to make eye contact.”

In a story by Politico, Christopher Cadelago, Daniel Lippman and Eugene Daniels write: ‘Not a healthy environment’: Kamala Harris’s office rife with dissent:

 “There is dysfunction inside the VP’s office, aides and administration officials say. And it’s emanating from the top...In interviews, 22 current and former vice-presidential aides, administration officials and associates of Harris and Biden described a tense and at times dour office atmosphere.  Aides and allies said Flournoy, in an apparent effort to protect Harris, has instead created an insular environment where ideas are ignored or met with harsh dismissals and decisions are dragged out. Often, they said, she refuses to take responsibility for delicate issues and blames staffers for the negative results that ensue. Two administration officials said, ‘People are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it’s an abusive    environment,’ said another person with direct knowledge of how Harris’s office is run. ‘It’s not a healthy environment and people often feel mistreated. It’s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s---.’  ‘The boss’ expectations won’t always be predictable,’ said one former Harris Senate aide.”

So, she is really a rich meanie. What is real are Harris’s horrible policies that will damn America to  “hell in a handbasket.”

So, all that said, Harris fans could claim that cognitive dissonance is happening to the MAGA crowd about that mean-spirited, loudmouth Donald J. Trump. No, it’s not about the personality, it’s about the policies, silly.  He wins on policy. And at least he is real. But he’s a real convicted felon, right? And a jury of his NY City “peers” voted him guilty of those horrible "crimes" – 34 felonies! As Matt Taibbi said, “It’s a sham case and Everyone knows it.” Everyone would include Harris voters, right? Or is it cognitive dissonance that clouds their brains?

MSNBC recently said,  "But the claims of liberal lawfare are mere GOP gaslighting."  Really? I disagree,  but where is that comment button? Oh, that’s right. The comments were disabled on many MSM sites like MSNBC and CNN soon after the Michael Brown riots erupted in 2014. So, we cannot comment! And that was 10 years ago.

So do Harris supporters have cognitive dissonance or is that being kind?

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[1] FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Facebook – a source you can trust!