Liberals and mental disorder

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2019/02/18/when-white-liberal-prophecy-fails-cognitive-dissonance-and-the-liberal-mind/

There are a lot of correlations between liberalism and mental disorder, but this is a great—and new—take; the idea that cognitive dissonance is mental trauma and the inability of liberals to confront their cognitive dissonance and accept things that are true is a serious mental condition that deserves some attention.  Let me quote a few parts of the article above:

Cognitive Dissonance theory might be more important in explaining the Left’s mindset than we appreciate. Although frequently invoked by mainstream conservatives to superficially skewer liberals’ incoherence and hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance should be applied more broadly and explored more deeply. According to psychologists, the dissonance produced in the mind when holding mutually exclusive beliefs is actually nothing short of a form of mental trauma. Facts and opinions which challenge, for instance, one’s self-identity or long-held conventional wisdom can, say experts, result in agony for the afflicted, producing a feeling of desperation akin to starvation or intense thirst. Unsurprisingly then, the resulting discomfort can push the sufferer to great lengths of irrational and extreme behavior in order to obtain relief. Understanding cognitive dissonance, therefore, may go far in explaining our opponents’ aggressiveness and, given the growing unreality of today’s society, their increasingly toxic and desperate behavior.

Nephi says that the wicked take the truth to be hard.  In my experience, everyone takes the truth to be hard, because everyone struggles to accept something that's clearly true but which challenges their sense of identity, or their belief about how the world must be because they feel bad about it not being that way.  This is certainly true with most of the core conceits of liberalism as an ideology; it requires accepting all kinds of wishful thinking and delusional ideas in spite of and in the face of all kinds of daily evidence that those conceits are clearly false.

Political psychology professor Drew Weston has found that the same brain circuits activating biased reasoning are actually the same ones activated in drug-addicts when getting a fix. Like drug-addicts, the cognitively conflicted will do anything to return to a state of comfort and euphoria. The minds of the conflicted can employ numerous stress responses when, for instance, one’s long-held belief or self-image is challenged, such as avoiding the conflicting evidence in question (and any possible sources of such evidence); resorting to self-denial and magical-thinking; even intentionally misremembering or suppressing past experiences i.e. previous episodes of ethnic tension, etc. And when confronted by ideological opponents, the afflicted can resort to convoluted, fantastical arguments as well as hostile or nakedly diversionary ones, such as making dismissive, personal attacks on the opponent’s motives. No doubt many readers have experienced such episodes from liberals before, even to the point of visible neurosis, hysterical anger, or even threatened or actual violence. As Cognitive Dissonance expert Margaret Heffernan says, "we are prepared to pay a very high price to preserve our most cherished ideas."

Ouch.

Although blocking out evidence disruptive to one’s sense of self can, in theory, also apply to White advocates, it’s important to note why it’s largely a White liberal phenomenon. White liberals operate in a constant state of neurotic discomfort and confusion. From noticing wildly different behavioral patterns of, for instance, Blacks in public and the workplace, seeing disparate levels of Black achievement in school and professional life, and experiencing instances of anti-White intimidation and violence, etc., for White liberals, nearly every day is a challenge to their worldview which can be summed by the belief that racial equality and diversity are, now and forevermore, right and good. This doesn’t apply to White advocates. Although no doubt extensive, our daily discomfort is nonneurotic, and relates to real, non-self-contrived troubles, such as worrying for our future progeny or lamenting over a healthier past. Our concern about the future is well-founded, to say the least.

I don't know why advocating for your own people in their own country should be considered a controversial thing, but in the world of cognitive dissonance, it is.  I wonder how much I'll have to "defend" that quote, because equality or something.  It's fairly easily done, but I'm surprised at how much it has to be done because of Pavlovian reactions to the idea that different populations have different traits, or that America was founded by Americans for their own posterity triggers people so badly.

And it brings to mind the fact that this isn't really a liberal problem.  Old-fashioned "conservatives" who have failed to conserve anything about America because of their false wishful thinking delusions about reality may suffer from this even more than liberals, or at least as much.  Heck, I had a brief conversation with my Dad not long ago—in talking about being disappointed that Hispanic, Indian, Jewish and other non-Hajnal Line Americans might be great at what they do, he was shocked that they practiced tribalism and nepotism rather than meritocracy.  Well, yeah—because in their cultures, meritocracy isn't valued; tribalism and nepotism are.  You import people with different values, you get a change in the culture.  That's bleeding obvious, but he has the typical Boomer Conservative cognitive dissonance about it where he still believes that people can become American by virtue of geographic relocation and the filling out of some paperwork, rather than, naturally, remaining what they are, because what you are is immutable.

That doesn't mean that people can't change their minds about things, and learn and grow and progress, of course.  But just as it would be absurd to suggest that I could ever become Chinese, it's equally absurd to suggest that a Chinese person could ever become an American, and for the exact same reason. Maybe that Chinese persons descendants could be Americans—after a few generations of abandoning their Chinese identity, intermarrying with Americans and adopting American customs as best they can.  But the original Chinese person never can be.  It's absurd to suggest that they can be.  And yet people believe it all the time.  As Joseph de Maistre said, "False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing."  Many of these lies were told very deliberately, indoctrinated to our children in the schools very deliberately, and propagandized by anti-American media and academics very deliberately.  So that regular, decent and mostly honest people spread ideas that are demonstrably untrue, yet they can't perceive the obvious untruth of what they are saying.

So yeah, that's cognitive dissonance.  Let me let the article bring it home.

Apart from reinforcement-learning during development are the broader institutional and social foundations for cognitive dissonance. Heffernan points out the importance this area of support played in the X-ray case, specifically that the doctors’ intolerance of the countervailing findings was likely due to their industry being dependent on the status quo. Moreover, she notes that the doctors were in positions of great, institutional power, resulting in their colleagues and subordinates likely reinforcing, rather than questioning, the official line. 

That similar institutional foundations undergird White liberals’ individual worldviews needn’t be argued in detail. The equality-diversity paradigm reigns supreme over every major institution in the country as well as in the broader Western world. Numerous sources (the mainstream media being one) are at work daily to provide the reinforcement, assurance, and social pressure, White liberals need to stay on point. Needless to say, this type of support for cognitive dissonance does not apply to White advocates. We operate no institutions nor depend on any institution which relies on or reinforces our beliefs (in fact, no such institution exists). 

We also don’t subscribe to beliefs deemed respectable, virtuous, or because of who or what they’re associated with (in fact, some of us routinely try to disassociate ourselves from many of those who actually share our beliefs). 

Importantly, Heffernan also notes the doctors’ worry over their self-image as health experts as a basis for their rejection of the conflicting X-ray findings; that is, any public perception of them having hurt, rather helped, patients in their care. This concern for self-image analogizes well with liberals who, of course, preeningly view themselves as righteously doing good for society (i.e., fighting for social justice, equalization of outcomes, the oppressed, righting historic wrongs, etc.); efforts which would be all for naught should they accept countervailing truths. 

Moreover, notes Heffernan, accepting the truth would have forced the doctors to admit to the harms they had unleashed on the public, which in liberals’ case would be the White public — the harms caused against Whites through discrimination in hiring and school admissions, denigrating White flight and ignoring the plight of the White working class, erasing White identity and historical achievement, etc. 

By contrast, we, as White advocates, don’t hold beliefs that would make the world better if they were true. We’re simply too intellectually serious not to accept reality as is, knowing that by relying on dishonesty, only harm can come—As AmRen’s mast head on its old print edition used to read (quoting Thomas Jefferson): “There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world.” Unlike White liberals, we know it’s in the best interest of those we care about for them to fully understand the world they live in. 

There are two dissonance-inducing stress responses acknowledged by analysts which I think deserve greater emphasis: the mind’s ability to adjust the importance of challenging cognitions; and its ability to add on new cognitions so that challenging ones become outweighed (such as the ghost-narrative in Festinger’s Ifaluk case). These strategies may go far in understanding those White liberals (there are bound to be some) who do not betray their observational faculties and internally acknowledge innate race differences, but who, nonetheless, zealously pursue the equality-is-right-diversity-is—our-greatest-strength worldview. 

Regarding the former, “honest” White liberals may adjust downward the importance that IQ disparities play in society (thereby reducing their discomfort), telling themselves, for instance, that they can be overcome through better diet in childhood, or investing more money in education, etc. This would work to lessen the dissonance between the realities they privately acknowledge and their desired, more convenient, equality-diversity worldview. 

On the latter, similarly situated White liberals may add on new cognitions, for instance, by telling themselves that, regardless of the reality of race, White advocates wish opprobrium and even depredation on non-Whites and they must, therefore, be countered. To do so (however correct White advocates may be) is to help to defeat ugliness and evil in the world. Again, the mental anguish of having to deal with uncomfortable facts (and becoming like us) is therefore resolved. 

Although paper-thin and routinely challenged, the White liberal paradigm rests on a solid foundation; one which we all must strive to understand. Ignoring or blocking out inconvenient facts regarding race draws numerous psychological and emotional benefits in today’s society, including social and financial ones. By contrast, the race-realism and White advocacy we voluntarily pursue provides us with no such benefits; only the bracing satisfaction of living in accordance with the truth and doing what’s right.
Although their paradigm will develop cracks as the level of contradiction to reality in society increases, the fear and anguish caused by being on such intellectually shaky ground might actually keep much of it intact for some time, producing more denialism and dysfunctional thinking, more hysterical calls and campaigns for our moral exclusion, and more desperate measures in general.