One of the more masterful analyses of the resistance to changing one's beliefs. Especially one's political beliefs. Especially when one's beliefs are contradicted by reality. Especially when one's beliefs are repudiated in a very public fashion....like a National Election.
Jeffrey C. Stewart, professor of Black Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara writes:
"Charles Sanders [Peirce], the greatest of American philosophers, wrote a brief essay, "The Fixation of Belief," that holds some lessons as to what is wrong with the GOP and how, most likely, it will not solve its problem in the immediate future.
Pierce showed that humans are not fundamentally seekers of truth; we mainly want to avoid doubt. And when events occur, like the 2012 presidential election landslide by Barack Obama when most Republican analysts predicted a Republican victory, doubt emerges. But as Pierce shows, people hold to their beliefs tenaciously long after it has become plain they no longer accord with reality.
Notice how Karl Rowe refused to believe the conclusions of Fox News's own statisticians that Ohio had been won by the president. Or Donald Trump's rant that "We can't let this happen. We need to march on Washington and stop this travesty." These comical reactions are merely extreme versions of the looks on the faces of those assembled at Romney headquarters in Boston who could not believe that their beliefs were so out of step with most of America's voters; and the paid Republican prognosticators - George Will, Dick Morris, etc., etc. all failed to anticipate the 100 electoral vote thumping that Barack laid on Mitt Romney. "
Read the rest of his article at the link below:
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