Perception and Reality

The propagation of a certain meme type throughout the left-hand side of the body politic is troubling. The meme-type in question is the idea that if you believe something strongly enough, it must be true. Or, to put it another way, sufficiently strong perception of something creates it's own reality.

Chrenkoff addresses one variant of this meme-type when he writes persuasively about how those who claim the threat of WMDs in Iraq are practicing selective amnesia. Belmont Club addresses another when he takes to task those who believe that international terrorism is a 'phantom':

Although the proposition that organized international terrorism does not exist may seem funny, many writers on the Left seriously believe that terrorism is a derivative phenomenon with no independent existence of its own. It is simply a reaction to Western, and particularly American oppression. It is the shadow, as it were, of the USA, which would cease to exist once the solid being that gave rise to it vanished. According to this point of view, it is entirely correct to refer to terrorists as 'insurgents', 'resistants', 'militants' or even 'freedom fighters', because they have no actual violent goals arising from their consciousness except as are suggested to them by their oppressor; entirely correct refer to them as 'phantoms' because they do not exist of themselves, except as emergent phenomenon in relation to the United States.

The common theme here is a willful disregard for facts. Althouse discusses the idea that this is a symptom of something called "framing," in which the frame is the sphere of ideas that can be integrated into a partisan world-view; ideas outside the sphere are ignored or subjected to invective. The frame is the belief-sphere, the meme I was referring to. If one believes strongly enough that it is righteous that a liberal hold power therefore Bush is evil, quod erat demonstrandum. Ideas that contradict that will be suborned or ignored.

Cognitive dissonance is a very uncomfortable thing to go through. I believe that many on the left are undergoing this discomfort felt at a discrepancy between what you already believe, and new information that contradicts it.