I would argue it's cognitive dissonance that got us here. You hitch your wagon to the wrong horse, you're going to be reassuring yourself about everything the horse does right and ignoring everything the horse does wrong for as long as humanly possible until your choices are (A) utter catastrophe (B) switching horses and dealing with the recrimination, regret, self-doubt and personal strife that accompanies ignoring everything that has gone wrong since you first made the wrong decision. That's the way cognitive dissonance works: it's easier to keep being wrong than wrench your brain in the direction of rightness because you'll lose all your friends, you'll lose all your truths, you'll lose your very identity. If you've spent the past 24 months owning the libs, joining the libs is going to be nearly impossible.