Changing One's Story of How Things Work

The Washington Post began a series on Dick Cheney Sunday. It's June 2007, almost six years after 9/11, and I'm sure that there are still people who will argue that this series is just a liberal smear of the vice president.

How many people have actually examined and tested the ways they distinguish between truth and falsehood and the various stages of uncertainty in between? How many people examine the 'stories' in their heads that they use to explain how the world works? Or even know that they have such stories?

Cognitive dissonance is when the actual world we experience is inconsistent with the world our stories lead us to expect. For a while, especially in national political situations, we can just dismiss what we are told as political maneuvering - in fact that is one of the 'stories' most of us have in our heads. We have to figure out when the story and the facts more or less match, and when use of the story is a way to distract from the real facts.

Questions about whether the dismissals were politically motivated have been swirling since January. But they reached a fever pitch on Tuesday with disclosures by the White House that Mr. Bush had spoken directly with Mr. Gonzales to pass on concerns from Republican lawmakers, among them Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, about the way certain prosecutors were handling cases of voter fraud.

NY Times on US Attorney Firings

At the moment, the state's former Democratic governor, Don Siegelman, stands convicted of bribery and conspiracy charges and faces a sentence of up to 30 years in prison. Siegelman has long claimed that his prosecution was driven by politically motivated, Republican-appointed U.S. attorneys.

Time

Did NEJM and politically motivated whistleblowers conspire to upstage the FDA on Avandia?
The May 30 Heartwire report on fallout from the Avandia controversy (to which I linked earlier today) suggests so:

But new reports go one step further--suggesting that FDA whistleblowers coordinated with politicians critical of the agency and the study authors to get damaging data into the public arena before the FDA could issue a safety statement on rosiglitazone.

Notes from Dr RW

After politically-motivated delays, FDA approves Plan B without a prescription

NewsTarget.com

"This politically motivated move of the Andhra Pradesh Government, supported by the UPA Government at the Centre, is violative of Articles 14, 15, 16 and 340,'' he said.

The Hindu


Perhaps the dissonance is temporary, we can then retreat back into our old stories. But if it persists, eventually we have to question our stories and find better ones to explain what is happening.

This happened with Watergate. People had various stories that kept them from believing that Nixon was lying. A major story was tied up with the idea of the president of the US being our leader. He wouldn't lie to us. The Watergate hearings, live on tv, or the evening news' highlights, caused some to waiver. Eventually the tapes of Oval Office conversations convinced most people. But even then, I'm sure there were people who would have excused Watergate because they felt overall Nixon represented the greater good for the US and the world.

It seems today the same thing is happening. We don't have such a tangible clear cut single event like the Watergate tapes, but we do have dead soldiers (even if their coffins are hidden from the tv cameras), the tv coverage of Katrina, the daily Bagdad death count, the growing gap between rich and poor, the cost of medicine, etc.

And for those who read, the Washington Post series on Cheney appears to be one of the first in-depth reports on what has gone on behind the scenes in the White House.