BobHarris.com - Why Bush still has 36 percent support

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Books I'm Getting

Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up —
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

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— John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
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Why Bush still has 36 percent support

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Sunday, 13 November 2005

While I'm trying to catch up to what's going on in the world, just a note on the sheer damn power of cognitive dissonance, the human mind's incredible inability to see anything other than what it expects.

Went to a Halloween party a couple of weeks ago. Didn't have time for a costume, so I just dug around the closets, looking for something mildly eccentric which I already had. Twenty minutes later, I emerged in full cricket gear.

Thing is, I didn't have a jersey and hat that actually matched. I had an Aussie jersey to wear, courtesy my pal Jono, but the closest I could come to a matching hat was a Pakistan cap, which at least shared the green and gold color scheme.

But the two really didn't match: while the shirt quite obviously says "Australia," the cap says, equally plainly -- and in Urdu script, no less -- "Pakistan."

Now granted, you're not gonna find a ton of people drinking at a party who are on the lookout for Urdu script. But the cap I was wearing quite plainly does not say "Australia." It isn't even in the the Roman alphabet. Instead, there is a big snake-looking thing with a bunch of dots hovering around it.

At a minimum, you'd think at least one person would ask, "hey, Bob -- what's the enormous dot-juggling snake on your forehead?"

Nope. Dozens of bright, engaging, perceptive people I respect. Exchanges of compliments on costumes, close examinations, long conversations. During all of which, I have this big dotted snake thing practically right between my eyes.

Nobody noticed. Not even the people who tried it on. The colors matched, and so I guess everyone assumed that the Urdu script saying "Pakistan" was some sort of Australian aboriginal thing.

And yet we on the left wonder how it's possible that Bush still has 36 percent support.

But millions of people are still emotionally invested in their votes for him. It doesn't matter how poorly the war is conducted or how many lies are discovered or how many indictments rack up. These might as well be invisible. It's not that the evidence is discounted. It isn't even processed. That's just how human minds work.

And millions of other people don't follow the news all that closely. Their mind is on other things. For them, hey, he's wearing a suit. He's standing in front of the flag and zipping around on Air Force One. People call him the "president." The colors match. Close enough.

So until the evidence of incompetence becomes completely overwhelming, the same thought process is involved: must be some sort of aboriginal thing.