MURRAY EDELMAN

Psychological explanations of political phenomena focus largely on the
nonrational and the irrational. It is, unfortunately, all too easy to find ex-
amples of major political actions throughout American history that illus-
trate the conspicuous role of nonrational factors in shaping behavior, in al-
locating praise and blame, and in otherwise interpreting historical events.
More often than not the key dynamic in such developments is the shaping
of political action and thought in order to rationalize private interests and
prejudices, even while those who act and those who support them remain
convinced that rationality, not rationalization, explains their behavior and
their thinking ( Lasswell, 1930).

The key historical examples involve precisely those beliefs that have
been most strongly cherished by a large part of the population, most as-
siduously taught to children, and most frequently proclaimed in patriotic
oratory. We are taught, for example, that the United States is a democratic
and pluralistic society that provides an equitable voice for all group inter-
ests and settles conflicts through evenhanded procedures. This reassuring
assumption continues to be the dominant view in spite of the fact that
throughout American history minorities and dissidents have been re-
pressed, often violently. The roster of victims has included African Ameri-
cans, labor unions, strikers, Catholics, pacifists, Chinese, Japanese, the
poor, all kinds of political radicals, and, not infrequently, Jews, women,
and homosexuals ( Zinn, 1980). Beliefs that reassure and strengthen the
dominant groups persist as dogma regardless of inconvenient and contra-
dictory facts. When political beliefs on controversial subjects do describe
the world adequately, that is only incidental to their primary function: to
further the interests and ideologies of those who can get them dissemi-
nated and accepted.

The riots and rebellions that have frequently broken out throughout
American history offer another example of the widespread reinterpreta-
tion of events so as to conform to ideology and reinforce it. As they occur,

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