🧠 Reconceptualize cognitive dissonance as an epistemic event, exploring its impact on freedom, anxiety, and conformity through a philosophical lens.

Applied case study extending Peter Kahl’s Authoritarianism and the Architecture of Obedience. Examines the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live! under Trump’s second term as an instance of authoritarian epistemic capture. Reframes obedience as epistemic submission and explores fiduciary–epistemic scaffolds for resistance.

This paper reinterprets cognitive dissonance as structural to epistemic life. Drawing on philosophy, psychology, and fiduciary law, it shows how collapse yields illusory freedom, while fiduciary scaffolds enable bounded freedom, epistemic resilience, and institutional pluralism.