We all know the story: Alice follows the White Rabbit down a hole and finds herself in a hall with many locked doors. She finds a key to a door too small for her, but through it she wants to go. So, without reading any of the warnings she downs the contents of a bottle labelled DRINK ME. Then, of course, she’s too small to reach the key which is on the table. So, with exactly the same careless abandon for her physical or mental well-being she consumes a cake labelled EAT ME, causing her to grow enough to hit her head on the ceiling.
In our little allegory, Alice is, of course, the electorate – not sure quite what she wants but ready to swallow any quick fix without regard for future consequences.
In social psychology Cognitive Dissonance is a term used to describe the feeling of discomfort when simultaneously holding two or more conflicting beliefs, values or emotional reactions. Thus, “We must reduce the national debt.” and “We must borrow more money to increase the welfare budget.” OR “In the forty years we've been in the EU nobody has ever given us a straight answer as to why we should be in it at all.” and “Richard Branson says it would be terrible [for him] if we left.”
Another area of social psychology much beloved, particularly by American administrations, is the field of Mind Control (also known as brainwashing, coercive persuasion, thought control, or thought reform) whereby a group or individual is persuaded to conform to the wishes of the manipulator(s), often to the detriment of that person or group, much as in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where Doublethink describes the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct. This is the opposite of cognitive dissonance – in the end you learn to love Big Brother.
We should all learn to automatically distrust that which we can’t evaluate from our own direct experience. Lazy, handed down, accepted family beliefs are not a sound basis for decision-making - we should all become cognitive dissidents!
As the prospect of a referendum on Britain’s role in the EU began to gather momentum I warned that the inertia brigade would begin campaigning, just as they did in 1974-5,to not rock the boat. Not content with the loaded dice of the CBI and Richard Branson, they have this time wheeled out the big hitters. Barack Obama's assistant European secretary, Philip Gordon, who has all the same credibility problems as ‘progressives’ everywhere is wading into the melee and declaring that the UK must stay very much on message and in the EU.
My hackles are up already. Firstly what the very fuck has it to do with the USA, who recognise the ‘special relationship’ only when it has an advantage for them? Secondly, what the very fuck has it to do with the USA, who recognise the ‘special relationship’ only when it … you get the picture.
Instead of going with the big guns bullshit, which means nothing to you, you should be asking yourselves whether you have ever actually experienced anything positive as a direct result of involvement in the EU. If you think, for instance that being ruled from Brussels and Strasbourg in return for the odd underfunded ‘Youth Project’ is a good thing then you can elect to support, with good conscience a course of action recommended by the nation that gave us some of history’s biggest shysters and con men (PT Barnum, Frank Abagnale, Lehman Brothers) and such honest politicians as Richard Nixon and Slick Willie Clinton.
OR you could recall every rotten headline, every example of EU profligacy with your money and every example of the intrusion of European edicts on the lives of UK citizens and make up your own mind. Your own government don’t believe that after forty years you have a firm enough grasp of the EU to make up your mind. So David Cameron is now talking not of an imminent referendum, but of delaying any possible vote another FIVE years until 2018, in the hope that Greece and Spain and Portugal and France finally recover and you will forget that for the last five years we have had just six days to save the Euro.
Cabinet Meetings in the EUSSR
And if that wasn't crazy enough, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, today begins a stint as a radio co-host on LBC 97.3FM in an attempt to 'connect with the views of electorate'. If it wasn't for the fact that the whole damned world has gone stark, staring bonkers, you would have to be Mad as a Hatter to believe it.
Read this before you go. Then forget EVERYTHING
Read this before you go. Then forget EVERYTHING
