Psychological Abuse
Cognitive Dissonance, whereby a person is forced to reconcile new information that conflicts with a long-held belief, and thus reassess that belief, is one of the very hardest mental processes for people to deal with. It can cause immense psychological trauma, and YET we compel individuals to do this ALL THE TIME, without any support, without any sympathy, and without any attempts to mitigate the feelings caused by cognitive dissonance.
The people engaged in causing such feelings are effectively ABUSERS, and need to really question themselves here (yes, I suppose *that* is also a form of cognitive dissonance).
And the media in particular needs to be more CONSISTENT. It should be a CRIME to say one thing one day, and report another thing another day. It messes with our heads. Get it fucking right the FIRST TIME. π And stop believing it's easy to do a 180 degree mental process.
Maybe for people with very SHALLOW emotions (i.e. materialists who only care about getting rich/having lots of sex/being popular) it's 'easy', but for those of us with more substance, and with deeper values, it's EXTREMELY difficult to be forced to reassess one's belief system. The spoiled, shallow, airheaded, facile, reckless elites who dominate the media, Hollywood and even academia, need to get their heads out of their asses, and settle on a clear position, rather than asking the rest of us to jump through hoops at a second notice.
For them, life may be a game. For the rest of us, it's much more serious. π