I think if people were given the choice between being rational and being right, they would choose to be right even if that risked sounding irrational.

I think that is a seriously far fetched assumption. I also think this kind of assumption is the evil that poisons what is right. Splitting the two, the right and the rational, is the constant mistake of all humanity.

There cannot be anything right which is irrational, and by effect, anything irrational is probably also wrong. Your whole point with Bernie supporters being hammered into voting Hillary because that is “rational” is not a case of rational versus right, it is simply a rationalization of giving up to the behemoth system’s inertia.

Making rational decisions is by definition an activity that works for the long term. Short sighted actions, even medium term decisions, are all bound to look right, because we cannot be fully rational if we do not consider the long term implications.

In this case of Bernie v Hillary, supporting Bernie is the rational thing not the right thing. If Bernie supporters continue to side with the good instead of the rational, they will loose to the one notorious bitch: reality.

Which, again, I think if you asked people what they wanted, they’d tell you they prefer to be right than they do being rational.

No. Being right is a modern, social, newly evolved construct of groups and education. In case of bland, clear and mandatory choices people will really not even have a choice, they will be rational, to the extent of their reason and if there is anything that threatens them, to the maximum extent of their reason.

Morality, even the most fair and pure, is not, or at least should not, be concerned with being right. Morality, as an expression of our collective consensus of what “good” means, should be rational.

Morals aren’t things that should be crowd-tested. When they are, they cease to be moral and become rational calibration to a fucked up situation.

Oh, but they are, and they have been since the dawn of time. That is how humanity does its thing, and it is so because in general life does this, it crowd tests the shit out of everything. Morals without rational calibration is elitism. The good that lacks rational insight alienates people and fabricates Trump supporters. As long as we distance ourselves from Hillary voters and Trump supporters based on concepts like good and morality, we’ll continue to fuel their main problem, and at some point in time, their time will come, again!

But rarely is a child asking an adult, “What is the rational thing to do?”

That is exactly what the child is really asking, unless we slide into a purely pseudo religious discussion about soul and whatnot. People are innately neutral, because if we assume we’re good by default we fail to explain reality very well. And a neutral being whats to know how to reason about abstract things. And no, parents usually do not stop to give the rational answer, they tell the child what they think it’s right, and that I think is wrong!

In my opinion, a political shift in the US is required based on very solid reasoning. There is history behind us that teaches how Hillary type of incremental change does not in fact change anything. There is history behind us that teaches about what a Trump can do to a nation. That is as close to the scientific method as you can get with society: learn from history and stop repeating it, for fuck’s sake. And that is rational, it is neither good nor bad, until we can evaluate the experiment’s results.

This idea that supporting one doctrine, one politician, one party, has anything, and I mean anything, to do with morals, or the right thing, is deeply flawed, yet overused because that is how you get people to do what you want them to do: dim their reasoning. Voting is a rational act and if you don’t or can’t do it rationally you’d better not be doing it at all.