A Quora reponse I would Like to share

For just over a year now I have been following "Quora" - a website where people ask questions and others answer. Many of the questions asked are loaded (i.e. include statements as "fact" designed to elicit a strong response) that I am convinced they are being posted by trolls who get their jollies by goading others. One clue is that the most outrageous questions are posed by anonymous individuals.

While I prefer reading the more thoughtful questions and answers, occasionally I do respond and I would like to share with you a recent question I came across and my response.

Question:  How do foreign heads of government such as Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron, and Angela Merkel view Donald Trump?

My Response: I will give a response as a Canadian who prefers to sit by the wayside and watch the world around me, and from those observations draw and develop conclusions. As another poster has observed dealing with a different, yet very similar question, none of the names presented is admirable in their own right. What is consistent, especially here in Canada, is that natives of one country commonly ignore the obvious failings of their own leader and instead love to mock the leader of another country and Trump is a frequent target of that mocking.

Trudeau is nothing like his father who was a very intelligent person with a quick wit. He knows nothing about ethics or morals and even when called out on that learns nothing. Here he should be the focus of much joking. Many of my family members and friends do not hesitate to mock Trump but will not say a single thing about Trudeau.

Over the last 4 years I have done a lot of research to try and find answers as to why I am seeing what I am. From that research 3 terms have bubbled to the top: “projection”, “confirmation bias”, and “cognitive dissonance”. As a quick summary of each, I see many who project onto others their own failings, who look for confirmation of their own prejudices and who just ignore what is going on around them as it does not support their beliefs.

Here in Canada a lot of people just cannot accept we are being governed by a party lead by someone so shallow, someone who, without a memorised script, can only say incomprehensible things and who awards people not on their skill but what focus group they belong to. Cognitive dissonance rules here, as no doubt it rules in the other countries named. As a result many of us project his failings onto an outsider named Donald Trump, a person we had nothing to do with being elected yet we have the right to take anything he says as proof that he has to be worse that what we have. This so we can feel good about ourselves and the bad situation we collectively have got ourselves into. Donald Trump is the avatar of the person too many of my fellow citizens have elected to the highest post in the country I reside in. Why? Because we can and one we thing we Canadians like to be is sanctimonious, especially if it is my mocking someone who isn’t one of us.

Now I am sure you are asking “but aren’t you suffering from those three conditions too”? Maybe I am, but I try my best to be as unbiased as I can. That is why I have always worked hard to be independent. I seldom have joined a political party and then it was only to support an individual who’s message, at that point in time, resonated with my core beliefs. Even so I still wonder. When I do if I can come up with rational answers based on unbiased observation then I think I am above those failings. I try my best to not choose sides, or at least not until the evidence is overwhelming one way or the other.

In conclusion I would like to make a comment toward the person who posed the question. This one is too much like many here on Quora; either they are a troll trying to antogonise a partisan group, or one looking for confirmation to their own biases. In this particular case I am thinking the latter. Sorry if I have disappointed you.