a declaration of principle, no matter how vague, which awakens profound emotional response in us, or because our neighbor whom we do not like happens to be a Democrat.
Mr. Lippmann remarks:6 “For the most part we do not first see and then define, we define first and then see. In the great booming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick out of the clutter what is already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.”
Mr. Trotter cites as a few of the examples of rationalization the mechanism which “enables the European lady who wears rings in her ears to smile at the barbarism of the colored lady who wears her rings in her nose”7 and the process which enables the Englishman “who is amused by the African chieftain’s regard for the top hat as an essential piece of the furniture of state to ignore the identity of his own behavior when he goes to church beneath the same tremendous ensign.”