Analysis, Case Studies, and Commentary
This week's prized Cognitive Dissonance award goes to D6 CM Michael Mulcahy. He praised—even after five adults were sent to hospital after a wild shooting spree in SJ's boozy San Pedro Square post Super Bowl— “the power of the experience economy.” An Opp Now exclusive.
Measure A hasn't even been implemented yet. But that hasn't dissuaded SJ City Council from aiming to squeeze hapless businesses and residents with altogether new ways of funding the City's bloated budgets.
Super Bowl gameday proved to be a Sunday Bloody Sunday in downtown SJ, with multiple shootings resulting in yet another fatality and multiple serious injuries. Various local media outlets report.
Financial pressures limit the expansion of the city's interim housing strategy; D9 candidate Hennessy elevates high-capacity shelter strategy.
A couple decades after Prop 209 protected non-discrimination rights for all Californians, Prop 16 tried to re-impose racial quotas. Local grassroots organizer Tony Guan worked tirelessly to defeat Prop 16 by showing how affirmative action actually hurts the Asian community and erodes the rights of all Californians. An Opportunity Now exclusive Q&A.
Cristabel Cruz can't help but play therapist and try to help Dem candidates escape their denial, cognitive rigidity, and constrained worldview when it comes to CA's chronic problems. An OppNow exclusive.
In 1879, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow explored, in The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls, how a wanderer's mindset can travel through and beyond stasis and repetition: "nevermore/The traveler returns to the shore."
Political parties and politicians change positions regularly--and sometimes dramatically. Sage Journals explains how successful volte-faces employ clever techniques of reframing.
A worldview isn't just a casual set of beliefs, says Nora Williams on Medium. It's a deep-rooted mental framework that creates cognitive patterns of behavior--or in the case of politicians--policy choices. So what to do when that worldview no longer aligns with reality? Step one: realize that our worldview has been taught—not chosen. Then we can begin the difficult work of reshaping it.