It's a long game. This administration will (eventually) turn over, and we need the new guys to be very clear about where the old guys fucked up.

The fake news is also in favor of the "new guys".

Cognitive dissonance is when you hold two opposing viewpoints at once. Like if you think killing animals for food is wrong but you love eating steaks and plan to continue doing so.

It does not mean choosing to ignore reality or being willfully blind like you are using it here. I'm not sure how it has become popular to misuse it in that way over the last couple years, but it seems to be a thing.

I think notadoc meant to use the term "mental gymnastics".

(I agree "cognitive dissonance" seems to be misused lately. That's how language evolves, unfortunately. And to add to your definition, it's the stress from with holding two opposing thoughts, hence the dissonance.)

How about "cognitive disconnect" as the better descriptive phrase?

It's just plain old confirmation bias, though I like the more recent[1] semantic extension of the phrase "epistemic closure" to describe belief systems impervious to outside information.

[1] - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/books/28conserv.html

If the FCC ruling is challenged in court, then hopefully the court would do that. The FCC doesn't have to follow what the comments tell them to do, but they do have to take their arguments into consideration.