Great post. I too think I will be laughing when everyone else is crying.

Great post on the upside of recession too. Good job, Scott, one of the best blogs.

Since there are no seriously dumb people on this list, just spirited supporters of our individual personal and political philosophies, I would just want to offer this URL to this recently published (where the un-nice word was this article in 2004?) piece on John McCain. I'm looking for a similiar article on Barack Obama for balance. I'll post it as soon as I find it.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain?utm_source=weekly-newsletter&utm_medium=email

tkwelge, I just received your post in my email, and you illustrate a good point. Both extremes of the political spectrum have very severe misconceptions on society, but with one difference. The difference between the Left is that I cannot avoid them, because they are in every crevice of government and business and profession that deals with the public, writing laws to take away my property and freedoms. I can pretty much avoid The Right by avoiding some churches and skipping over one or two channels on my televison.

If I were living in Nazi Germany, (and hardly anyone would be living that long there) I'd befriend the communists because they are out of power, not because they are right.

The first link makes mention of people believing that 9/11 was directed by Saddam Hussein. I've seen that statistic used often to poke fun at conservatives and belittle their intelligence. But see here:

http://www.scrippsnews.com/911poll

At the time of the poll quoted in this article, 36% of people believed that it was very likely that the federal government had a direct roll in 9/11. 16% of those polled believe that the towers were taken down by explosives rather than airplanes. So, what should we take away from this statistic? In 2004 41% of Americans believed that Saddam caused 9/11 while 36% in the other poll believe that George W probably had something to do with it. So who's dumber? Is it the folks that believe Saddam took down the towers, or the folks that believe Bush took down the towers? I don't want to bet on either, since I think that they are both idiots. I will say that the evidence that rightys are dumber than leftys should be reevaluated. If you look at both of these polls, you could say (spuriously) that only 23% of Americans have the ability to think clearly.

I find it funny that the people that wrote both of these articles focus primarily on cognitive dissonance on the Republican side. The first story explains that only the conservatives have yet to be researched, but the second makes no mention of this. The second link also directly comments that the Bush administration should be humbled by this new information. However, isn't it worse cognitive dissonance to believe that you (not anyone specific), a democrat are not susceptible to such things? I find people on the left burying their heads in cognitive dissonance whenever it suits them. Sometimes they just say things until it becomes an accepted fact. Like, we're all supposed to know that it's the Republicans that are stopping alternative energy and the Democrats that are trying to fund it, but before 2000, I can honestly say that neither party had more than a novel interest in either solar or wind power. With the technology and the pricing schemes of the previous decade, nobody thought that alternative energy had anything but a potential, far off future. But now I can't turn on the television without being reminded how the Republicans have failed to deal with the energy crisis while Democrats have the luxury of being perceived as the party that would have had a wind mill on every street corner by now. So it's kinda a mixture of cognitive dissonance, revisionist history, and ego. One of the latest books from "The Economist" points out how any isolationist trade policy would be bad for the world economy as a whole, but look how many Democrats wander around the country screaming about jobs being shipped over-seas. George Clooney was quoted saying something along the lines of, "I can't think of a time when the left was on the wrong side of an issue." Cognitive dissonance anyone??????

Democrats commonly point out right wing talking heads whenever possible, but any attempt to point out liberal bias is met with derision, "We all know that reality has a strong liberal bias." Har har har......... If I hear that again, I'm going to puke. Why? Because it's not an argument! It's an f ing one liner. I'm sorry Democrats, but there is still a debate. There are still debates about energy policy, healthcare, religion in society, and economics. Both sides try to pretend that the debate is over, but none do it so vehemently or vilify their opponents like the Democrat party. I'm white and starting to go bald. Should I don a suit and tie, I'd become everything that the current populist left wants you to hate. And as a white guy in a business suit, I would suddenly have the urge to chop down trees while counting my oil money while cackling like a mad man.

This strip makes "doomed" seem all the more funny:
http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/1993-02-07/

Thanks for bringing attention to these. Both are great articles (and obscenely humorous)!

If you like the word "doomed", you really need to watch some Dad's Army - fab 60s-70s British sitcom based on the Home Guard in WW2. One of the most memorable quote was Private Frazer's "We're DOOMED!" in a broad western-isles accent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_James_Frazer

As a trial lawyer, I am frequently required to evaluate arguments and facts, to try and guess which will be most persuasive to a judge and/or jury. Fortunately, most jurors come in without pre-formed opinions about our specific facts.

However, they all have opinions about economics, fairness, and other applicable topics. I have to find ways to simplify and explain complex topics, so that the jurors will understand them in a way that fits into their prejudices and yields findings in favor of my client. This cannot always be done, and that is when I recommend my client settle.

At some level, I have known the principles in these articles for a long time. Sometimes, the hardest part is keeping my mind open in order to evaluate the facts objectively.

Assume we knew or felt that it did not matter who we voted for, because they all represent the same interests anyway. Incidentally, not our interests.

How would being informed make us change our mind about who to vote for? The area of accepted discourse is so far removed from reality, that any position within that discourse bears no resemblance to what we really think.

In other words, we can safely hold on to our opinions in the face of any reporting to the contrary. After all, what difference does it make?

It's also strange that people who believe in evolution (me), also believe that global warming is happening (me, too), but also believe it's a bad thing (not me). After all, doesn't life adapt to it's surroundings, not the other way around? At least that's been the way it was before we perceived that we could change, not adapt to, the environment. Even Scott Adams has said that airplanes and other artificially created things are products of the environment, not man's genious.

It's all about selfishness and nature worship, not about facts, that's driving environmentalism today.

Just so you know, I still prefer PS2. I guess it's because I still like going back to games I've beaten from time to time. Someday I will get an Xbox.

The one thing I cannot explain is how people want a socialist system, yet continue to have dreams for themselves such as large families, longevity for themselves when they are older and the carreer of their choice. Monday through Saturday they believe in government's ability, then they step into church on Sunday and read the Bible and have faith in God. Why do we think that we, ourselves, will be the exception to the rule, that we will have absolute freedom in this type of system?

I frankly don't care what type of economic or social system we have (I survived one of the worst public school systems in the nation, so I can probably survive in any system), but people should at least be aware of what they are getting into when they demand more social services from the two political parties.

However, if Scott Adams is right, people will continue to think they live in a free country, long after those freedoms are lost.

Excellent articles - thanks! The behaviour they examine highlights how recently (cognitively) we've come down from the trees. Monkeys driving cars and voting - how bizarre!

A little while ago I realized that the problem with cognitive dissonance was that it required cognition. That seemed very rarely to be in evidence. We're DOOMED!

A little skepticism or a touch of incredulity would go a long way to helping things out. People would still have opinions, but they might be less sure that their opinions are right.

If you find the word "doomed" funny, you'll love "Invader Zim". "Doom" appears in nearly every title and is probably the most common word. Also, you have to see the school teacher explain to the children why they are "doooomed". Also, Gir singing the "Doom Song" is cuter than "Kitten thinks of nothing but murder all day".

Scott, you need to fix the share-to-facebook functionality on your blog. As a lazy college student into counting clicking a bookmarklet or sharing widget as my share of political activism for the day, you're making life really, really hard. Rather than showing my friends how learned and cultured I am with a single click, referencing the Dilbert blog requires torturous minutes of typing and copy-and-pasting. There have been several occasions when I've agreed with a view you espoused, but ended up internet-asserting a completely different one, because the blog arguing for the irrelevance of economics/rationality of religion/killing of cute little kitties/whatever had more elegant integration with Facebook.

The problem in detail:
When you try to share to facebook, all it shows is a link to "dilbert.com," when most sites manage to output the title of the particular subpage or blog post, a relevant thumbnail (you can have it scrape from each post, or define one for the whole site), and a brief synopsis of the content (either scraped from the blog post, defined on each post, or defined for the whole site). If you'd like screenshots of what the share widget should produce versus what it produces from the dilbert blog, hit me up.

BTW, today's strip (the sky's the limit!) is one of your best strips ever. Better start clearing the shelf space for that Pulitzer.

Not voting. Moving.New Zealand. Not that it is any better, psychologically-wise, but it'll be fifty years before that country allows itself to get as messed up as this country has. Already Canada is following the USA into the abyss.