Millennials, politicians, and cognitive dissonance
Tom Pinney
Because my parents were working a bunch to support the family, my siblings and I were mostly raised by my grandmother, and most of what I remember about those days are the life lessons. You may remember some of the same ones. Clean your plate, say ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ treat others the way you want to be treated, share, flush…
Those life lessons still haunt me, as I’m sure they do those who are reading this. We’ll call them general rules for not being a terrible person.
Here’s why I bring that up. It’s a term known as “cognitive dissonance.”
Cognitive dissonance, according to the psychology class I took in grad school, is what happens when you hold two conflicting beliefs (such as peanut butter is really good, but someone told me it’s unhealthy), or when you do something that violates your beliefs (such as believing you shouldn’t eat peanut butter because it’s unhealthy, but then eating peanut butter).
Although, truth be told, whoever tells you peanut butter is unhealthy is outright lying to you … not the point.
This election cycle is an exercise in cognitive dissonance.
Let’s start out with the elephant in the room: a tape was leaked last weekend wherein Trump bragged about being able to commit sexual assault because of who he was. One of the major defenses of Trump’s character is that it was “locker-room talk” and that every man has either heard that said or said it themselves.
Let’s go ahead and debunk this point by point.
First of all, the problem with general arguments (the “we’ve all heard/seen/said/done, etc.” arguments) is that they are debunked by a single dissident. Enter, me.
In every locker room I’ve been in, from seventh grade and football to the community gym, you know what was said?
NOTHING. It’s utter silence in there. Just the sound of a shower in the background as every guy averts gazes and changes as quickly as possible so that we can get out of there.
Sure, you may be talking about lewd conversation in general, but it’s also not “locker-room talk” in that sense, because guys aren’t bragging to other guys about sexual assault. There’s a vast difference between that and dirty talk.
Second, it was during an interview for a feature story about Trump’s appearance on a soap.
Third, even if you accept it as “locker-room talk,” that still doesn’t make it right.
The argument that is presented is that it’s okay because it’s been done before. The problem is that two wrongs don’t make a right. Nor do 20, 200, or 2,000.
This is a man running for President of the United States confessing and endorsing sexual assault, there’s no way around it. No matter how many times it’s been done before, it’s still wrong, and incredibly so.
How does this tie in with cognitive dissonance? It’s simple, distant voice I invented to advance the narrative: we’re being forced to choke him down.
Millennials have been taught right and wrong by Gen-Xers and baby boomers, and that’s great. We’ve been taught by our elders how not to be terrible people.
Then this election comes about, and when we vote for someone who isn’t a terrible person (by and large, millennials voted for Bernie Sanders), we’re ridiculed and forced to choose between your corrupt establishment cronies.
And before you start arguing that Trump is anti-establishment, give me a break. Sure, he isn’t bought out like normal politicians, but he spent his life buying out corrupt politicians, including the Clintons.
He’s not just part of the establishment – he IS the establishment.
And so you’re forcing us to think about the lessons you taught us – the general guidelines on how not to be a horrible person – while telling us we must buy into your system which offers us horrible people. And we’re supposed to keep our morals while voting for one of these people.
The menu for November 8, 2016: A healthy portion of cognitive dissonance, with a side of broccoli. And not even steamed broccoli; old, stale broccoli that’s been sitting in the back of the crisper for several weeks.
Millennials, we lost. We are forced to stomach the two-party system for one more election cycle.
It’s too late for us to do anything in 2016, and really, we didn’t ever have a chance because, even though millennials actually went to the polls in higher numbers than the past, we still didn’t go to the polls in the primaries.
However, we can look forward to great things. In 2020, millennials will be the majority of the voting population, and the generation which follows us will be sending its first kiddos to the polls.
With the extremes this election has gone to, and the added fact that these parties don’t fit us, it’s time for a change. A revolution, if you will.
