Cognitive dissonance is a phenomenon wherein individuals experience mental distress when they must hold beliefs that they know are contradictory. When confronted with facts that refute said beliefs, people either need to discard one of them (thereby solving the dissonance) or perform mental gymnastics to try to resolve the contradiction in their mind.

Alas, cognitive dissonance appears to be the affliction of our day, and the cacophony of contradictions of “woke” culture is to blame. Indeed, there is a psychologically confirmed positive correlation between depression and liberalism. There are so many contradictions to resolve: We must rid the world of nationalism, but we must also have socialism. Capitalism is terrible; read more about this every day on your iPhone. Anthropogenic climate change is making the world warmer, even though we’re experiencing an irrefutable cold wave. Plastic straws are evil, so we’ll use paper straws in plastic wrappers.

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Anyone can change their gender at any time with the stroke of a pen, but we must have 50 percent equal representation between men and women everywhere. We must celebrate homosexuality and Islam at the same time. Donald Trump definitely colluded with Russia, but Barack Obama didn’t when he promised Russians “more flexibility.”

Drowning out all this dissonance might be the reason for the relentless stream of propaganda against the president — noise pollution makes it easy to ignore any contradictions.

The most galling paradox among so-called progressives is their crusader’s zeal for absolute rule over all aspects of life when they cannot even run cities over which they have long had complete control. The urban rot of hopelessly blue cities and states are testaments to the failure of the modern Democrat, who is more interested in virtue-signaling their support to the cause du jour rather than running a functional government.

Los Angeles has become a cesspool of vermin and medieval disease. Homeless violence has risen drastically. Last week, there was a much-publicized report of a homeless individual dumping a bucket of human waste on an unsuspecting woman. This kind of nightmare isn’t new for California, but the contamination is spreading to once-great red states.

In Denver, vagrancy is so bad that the city streets have begun to look like “bathroom stalls,” and city officials have decided to fine businesses for refusing to clean up after the homeless, rather than insisting that the homeless show some responsibility.

The lunacy of modern left-wing politics — of people insisting they can save the world when they cannot even keep the streets clean — isn’t just contained to the political realm, either. Cognitive dissonance is rampant throughout all forms of leftist operations. And no liberals, it would seem, are immune.

One of the ways that power-seeking groups reinforce control is through social pressure — the modern-day term for this is “shaming.” People won’t admit what they know is true if the inquisition won’t let them. A KGB defector many years ago described this as “ideological subversion,” where hostile actors change “the perception of reality [so] no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves.” Mayors won’t act to clean up dirty streets, or CEOs won’t act in concert with their stated beliefs. The KGB would be delighted.

(Excerpt from The Washington Times. Article by Jared Whitley.)