The War Against Rationale

Every so often, I'll happen upon one of those Internet "Top whatever" lists and find something I can really use in my day to day. In this case, it's well-articulated clarity.
The usually smug and frat-tastic CRACKED MAGAZINE website recently posted "5 Common Ways Your Senses Lie to You Every Day" (an innocuous enough title...)

Here's the full article: http://www.cracked.com/article_17142_5-ways-common-sense-lies-you-everyday.html

Here's my favorite entry:

THE NIRVANA FALLACY

You'll Hear it As:
"You gave that homeless guy a sandwich? Ha! Like that's really going to fix poverty!"How It Screws Us:The Nirvana Fallacy is when you dismiss anything in the real world because you compare it to an unrealistic, perfect alternative, by which it pales in comparison. It wouldn't be a problem, except it keeps us from getting anything done. "We were GOING to write an album, but...Nevermind."

For instance, procrastination can happen for a lot of reasons--you drank too much the night before, or you're feeling uninspired, or it's your first time doing gay porn and you're having second thoughts--but one of the most common reasons we procrastinate is fear that the end result won't live up to the "perfect" idea in our heads. Think about the writer friend of yours who has never actually written anything, because they're "waiting for the right idea" for a book to come along.This is why people wind up living in their parents' basement--waiting for the perfect job, the perfect girl, the perfect friendship--before committing to anything.

If you're not full of that kind of self-doubt, don't worry, there are plenty of assholes willing to supply it for you. Any incremental improvement on someone else's part is mocked as some kind of deluded hypocrisy, because anything short of perfect is not worth doing, so you might as well do nothing, like them. "Ha! You're drinking a Diet Coke with your hamburger? Like that's really going to make a difference!" "A wedding dress. Right. Like THAT will attract a guy. You're pathetic.

"It Gets Worse..."
Politicians use this to attack any idea they don't like. "Sure, your plan is helping millions of families in poverty. But I found examples of people abusing it! So we might as well scrap the whole system!"
Or, you'll hear radical political types on the Internet say, "I'm not voting for any of those guys! They're no better than Bush! They're all corrupt agents of the NWO! I'm staying home until you can show me a perfect, incorruptible, intelligent politician who believes the exact same things I do!"