Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for December 23, 2009

doesn’t everyone? i seem to remember at least three different dial positions for NPR stations when i visited DC in May.

Just thought of a new bumper sticker: “Practice cognitive dissonance.”

After glancing at the comments over the last couple of days…Doesn’t anyone else think Trudeau is also criticizing the too-many members of the left wing who can’t handle the cognitive dissonance of every day modern life?

What other president in recent memory would actually know that? Heh, Trudeau is just letting us know that there are more fanatics on the left than we like to admit. And NPR has had a few well balanced criticisms of the new guy. Even on Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me, last weekend.

… thought I was seeing double there for a minute …

Hope “Leon” is present at the House/Senate Health Care reconciliation meetings.

Wait, wait is basically a commedy show. Everyone is always fair game.

Lately APHC has been awful. GK is not penning political jokes anymore. Maybe he will pick up the pace.

The best way to handle cognitive dissonance is to ignore it entirely, and go through life creating one’s own reality. Otherwise one will just get frustrated and grouchy.

Its one of the aids saying “Who the hell is…” and the prez answering. So Trudeau is having it both ways a little bit by saying that even though this president’s Afgan policy is wrong, he’s smart enough to know who Festinger is, and to know that Mark is right.

child of divorce.

No question Obama’s smart. Probably the smartest president since Nixon… whose war policies he seems to be following to the letter. Expect the “surge” to be followed by expensive, high-profile programs to build up the Afghan military (“Afghanization”?), followed by a withdrawal (“the Afghans stand up as we stand down”), followed by a “decent interval” before the puppet government’s inevitable collapse (“wasn’t our fault”). Nobel Prizes for everybody!

He’s certainly the smartest since Bill Clinton.

OMG - i just wiki’d “cognitive dissonance” and the definition and explanations sounded Exactly like a fair and accurate description of what went so horribly Wrong with the Bush presidency - now there’s the “Joke”

I am either wonderful at denial or am just goofy, but I do not see anything ‘dissonant’ about what Obama said in the campaign and what he is doing now.

I see no more dissonance in recognising that to have peace we must sometimes have war than recognising that to have a safe society we must sometimes arrest and incarcerate people.

Maybe I am simply naive.Or I listened to what Obama actually said.

@mwthurlow - I believe you got that exactly backwards.

It seems like people are having a hard time comprehending that Trudeau would have a complaint against Obama. I don’t see any double-meanings here, he is complaining about Obama. It happens people. If he didn’t want to be complained about, he should have stayed on the picket line and voted “present” where you can never go wrong.

On a side note, Why are we still getting a highlight for spelling error when you write Obama? Why in God’s name does it think I meant to write Obadiah? Who writes Obadiah?

thanks diane

there’s nothing cognitively dissonant about the short attention span and the impatience of the American psyche. it’s incredibly consistent.

Excellent easy-read book on the importance of understanding our brain’s inclinations with regard to cognitive dissonance and the outcomes:

Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me); Why We Justify Follish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Tavris & Aronson (2007)

It takes great personal strength and courage to override our brain’s auto-denial and strive to understand where and how we made mistakes. Yet, it’s the only sure way to avoid making the same mistakes again.

I don’t understand why they give him a Nobel. Is it just a prize that they give out to famous people? I’da thought the peace prize would go to someone who did something to cause peace. Maybe to the person who did the most to cause peace. ?

I’m predicting an Obama avatar! Finally. I think Doonesbury finally has enough on this guy to make one. How about a tarnished Nobel prize as an avatar? Or a rifle with a daisy in it? Or a worthless, watered down health care bill which only protects the insurance and medical industries?

Cognitive dissonance is right.