One of the things that fascinates me is the ability of people to believe something despite all evidence to the contrary. Some chalk this up to stupidity, but I think it's usually more complicated than that, involving attempts to resolve cognitive dissonance, a desire to forward an agenda, and a lust to make the world comprehensible (among other things). This is one reason I ended up doing my dissertation on conspiracy theories--what purpose does it serve to rhetorically construct an alternative reality that bears little to no resemblance to the known facts? Why, for example, despite overwhelming evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald (and no one else) shot President Kennedy, do the majority of Americans no accept this explanation?
This interest resurfaced this week with the tea party/teabag tax protests. Despite the caterwauling about the "socialist" tendencies of the current administration and the huge tax burden faced by the American people, the fact is that the tax burden for the overwhelming majority of Americans is lower than it's been in a long, long time. That's right: unless you are ungodly rich, your federal taxes have gone down in President Obama's first year, not up.
That's so contrary to the conventional wisdom and the narratives spun by not only the teabag crowd but by the mainstream media that it surprised even me. Yes, I follow the news, so I knew that Obama campaigned on and delivered a modest tax cut to middle-income Americans. That put me ahead of a lot of my fellow countrymen and women, but I was honestly surprised at the historic nature of this dip in taxes.
It's a testament to the power of narrative that even someone disinclined to believe them and who probably reads more news than the average bear found himself surprised at this news.
