Cognitive dissonance.

Via Claire, here's one for anyone you know who needs a working example of cognitive dissonance.

It seems that a former director of the Nobel Institute has now stated in a memoir that he regrets awarding Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.  Okay, plenty of ink has been spilled about that absurdity already, and justly so.  Here, I'm more wanting to call attention to the pluperfect cognitive dissonance that illustrates how Statist Beer Goggles* can produce such a shark-jumping result in the first place.

Behold, from the article:

According to Lundestad, the argument which swayed the committee was that the prize would help him [Obama] achieve his goals.

"Help him", roger that.  Scary enough just taken on its own, of course.  But then, later:

The Nobel committee, which fiercely guards its independence from the politics of power, ...

I know:  ha!  funny!  Sing it, cheese shop patron:

And yet, people still believe contradictory nonsense like this.  Or, if they don't, they nonetheless continue to give power over other people's lives to "leaders" that do believe it--which is not only worse in a practical sense, but it's also a fractal representation of the same cognitive dissonance problem in the first place!

Oh well.  At least this "revelation" was able to wait long enough for the desired effect to run its course...

Right?


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* Because really, that's what this is, isn't it?  I find myself using that term more and more;  just like the battered-spouse analogy, it works.