The Politics of Denial

Not all Liberals are as evidently naive and uniformed as the people in the "man on the street" interviewees mentioned in my article on The Politics of Ignorance. Many are quite well informed and have exposed themselves to a broad range of political material. They have a good sense for things like the significant impact of presidential actions on economies and societal circumstances and the like. So, there must be some other explanations besides ignorance for why Leftist LUNCs frequently and near invariably occur.

One explanation is that while reasonably informed liberals have been made aware of considerable data that conflicts with their position, they deal with the cognitive dissonance by going into deep denial. In order to maintain their liberal positions in the face of compelling contravening evidence, they simply block their minds from acknowledging the evidence and/or they formulate an alternative "reality" that somehow warps the data so that it fits their partisan views.

In my experience, this occurs quite frequently in discussions with liberals--including about Leftist LUNCs. Conservatives, like myself, will at times lay out well document and cogent arguments only to receive a deer-in-the-headlights look from the liberals, or where the cogent arguments seem not to register in the least and the liberals merely continue spouting their talking points undeterred as if nothing to the contrary has even been said.

Yet, the best example of liberal denial I can think of has to do with the liberal media, particularly the elites. As Bernie Goldberg, a self-admitted old-fashion liberal, has intimated in his books on Bias in the Media, the Arrogance of Media Elite, and the Slobbering Love Affair of Mainstream Media with Barak Obama, as well as in his columns on Media Bias, regardless of how well informed the liberal reporters and elites, and regardless of how much, and the profundity of the data to the contrary (see, for instance, HERE), the liberal media continues to view itself as objective and unbiased, and many of them and their acolytes even consider liberal bias in the media to be a myth. (See HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE)

Astonishing!

Another great example is when, following the enactment of the liberal "economic stimulus package" in 2009, deplorable unemployment and job figures were published that seriously undermined the President's economic competency (see my Leftist LUNC on Unemployment and Jobs and Workforce), and the Left dealt with the substantial cognitive dissonance by manufacturing the untestable alternative "reality" that the President and his stimulus package had prevented the loss of millions of jobs. The popular refrain was that while unemployment was high and jobs were being lost instead of gained as promised, things would have been far worse had the President not spent the trillion dollars.

So, seemingly bad news about the Obama administration was reinvented and translated into good news, leaving liberals in deep denial about the alarming state of the economy, and in blissful peace about the future, and having such great confidence in the President that they reelected him.

What makes political denial as dangerous as political ignorance is,  governmental mistakes will continue to happen and even get worse. As Dr. Phil is fond of saying, you can't fix or change what you don't acknowledge. (see HERE)

Hence, denial on the part of liberals is why, in part, Leftist LUNCs repeatedly occur.

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