Arrogance...

...and Delusion:

Rather amazingly, it seems the Obama campaign has decided to stick with its panicked first-day response to Romney’s debate victory and keep insisting that Romney is lying about his own proposals, and that that’s the only way he could have made such a persuasive and powerful case for himself Wednesday night.

This is, first and foremost, an instance of something that a lot of conservatives in Washington have run across when debating liberals: Because they basically control the mainstream media, and because they have created for themselves a fictional conservative worldview (evident in many an Aaron Sorkin project and Barack Obama speech) rather than confront the actual conservative worldview, liberals are often caught off guard when faced with an actual argument for positions they disagree with. What we’ve seen in the wake of the debate is that some on the Left are so wedded to their imaginary right-wingers that when their actual opponents advance positions or make arguments that are different from those imaginary ones they will call those actual opponents fakes and liars. They believed their own caricature of Mitt Romney, and his unwillingness to play into it strikes them as dishonest. Or put another way: Confronted with evidence of their own dishonesty about who Romney is and what he stands for, they call the evidence a lie.

At some point, we all come upon a very important fork in the path of life. For most of us, this occurs relatively early in our careers, usually when we're in our twenties. You are young, smart, educated, full of fantastic ideas which nobody else in the whole universe has ever conceived before (certainly not those hide-bound old fogies who have unfairly been granted private window offices) and you are going to show the world that your way is the best way, their stupid processes and procedures be damned.

The fork in the path comes shortly after you've been handed your first major project, usually a few weeks after making a Really Important Decision about that project. A decision you made against the advice of others, (because they're all stupid, stupid people in their stupid corner offices). It is the moment when you realize that you have made a blunder of massive proportions. It's the precise second when look at that spreadsheet summary which obstinately refuses to change or listen to that voice mail for the fourth time. You feel your stomach coil up into a tight little neutron star and try to puncture your lower intestines in a belated attempt to escape the impending doom you've just recognized.

This doom is the humongous, stupid, idiotic error you've committed that will probably end up costing the company a lot of money, and that many people will have to work hard to correct. It is made worse because you know this catastrophic mistake was given birth by your own bullheadedness and arrogance -- two of the more common synonyms for "youth." You refused to listen to and learn from people wiser and better-informed, and now there is no place to hide.

There are only two ways in which a person can react to this crisis of their own creation:

1) Humility. Admit your error, fess up, and most importantly admit to yourself that it was your arrogance and carelessness that got you into this pickle. You resolve to learn to be more observant and attentive to reality, seeing what is there rather than what you want to be true.

2) Double-down on the arrogance. It's obviously the fault of someone else. If you play your cards just right, you can blame this on them. You're smarter than all those sheep, dammit! There's a way out that will save face, you just have to find it, and damn anyone who gets in your way!

I trust I don't need to connect the dots for you.