"Voter."
Hilarious, I know. There were stories a while back about regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission spending up to 8 hours per day at work downloading porn (How the hell did they do that? There are only eight work hours in a day!). But me? I'm the guy who turns his head around to make sure no one's looking, who knows the angle of his computer screen because it gives him a clear view of his superior, and who, when it's all clear, proceeds to sneak a quick peak at...the New York Times.
I digest news like it's cake. And I fucking love cake. I got a smart phone more or less for the Internet. Now I spend even more time out of my day reading tons of magazines, newspapers, and blogs; random crap about politics, entertainment, sports, technology, or whatever else catches my eye. I like information.
So I'm not just a "voter," I'm also a "reader." More importantly, I'm a "thinker."
Now I'm not going to sit here and say, "Wow, am I not just the shit? Everyone should be like ME!" But a big problem right now is that there are hundreds of millions of voters, but not a whole lot of readers or thinkers. To be fair, thanks to the Internet there are more readers now than there were when I was too young to care about Clintonian philandering or the Contract with America. But that's where the lack of thinkers comes in.
The other day on "Hardball" Chris Matthews made a comment I found upsetting. He was talking about the midterms with the Democrat vying to fill the seat of the late Robert Byrd as the Senator from West Virginia, Gov. Joe Manchin. The topic of his opponent's sleazy political advertising came up, and this is what Matthews asked:
"Why are the people of West Virginia, you've been bragging on the people, saying how good they are, how developed they are as a people, as a society, and yet you're saying they're getting their minds twisted by this sophisticated advertising?"It upset me because he should know better. Anyone can be influenced. As a television personality, influencing people through tricks of body language, word choice, and tone is more or less his job description. Of all the villains responsible for the last 2-3 decades of insane partisanship, rancor, and gridlock, in my mind there are few who could contend with modern advertising. Strange, right? Why not shadowy billionaires like the Koch brothers? Why not Karl Rove or Dick Armey or Ed Gillespie? Why not Paul Begala or James Carville (to be fair)?
Because for decades they've been enabled by the body of literature in subjects like behavioral psychology, communications, marketing, and branding. Who needs reason or facts when all you need to do is emotionally manipulate your viewers/readers/listeners? Democrats refer to this practice as "using code words," at least when it's used to inflame racial animus. I think we should call it out for what it is: a gradual, sophisticated form of brainwash, a "framing" of the world and certain issues in such a way that the only conclusions that can be reached are those that have been pre-packaged to bias your opinions in particular ways.
This is why Democrats lose so often: the thinkers among us imagine that straight facts are convincing, because they convince us. But they're not. Many people simply aren't thinkers when it comes to political issues. Facts require context in order to be understood. They must be organized, dissected, and analyzed. This takes time and effort. It's hard for Democrats, especially progressives, to acknowledge because they're such idealists, but most people have better things to do than spend either the time or the effort contemplating things like credit-default swaps, CFPB, habeas corpus, mandatory spending levels, Bagram AFB, SB 1070, Citizens United v. FEC, or any of the other issues that seem so important and clear-cut to us. They just don't give a shit about the facts of these issues. They have jobs, or not. They have friends. Spouses. Kids. TVs. Large whiskey bottles. All of these things demand attention, often more than they would choose to give under ideal circumstances. And today's circumstances are terrible. As far as they're concerned, they can't affect these great grand issues so unless something is about to make their bills or their taxes go up or down it's really not more important than the other things in their life.
The thinkers on the Republican side know that what convinces people is emotion. It's why the correlation between the performance of the economy and the party that wins the election is so strong. If the economy is doing well, the party in power retains power. If not, power shifts or changes hands. In aggregate, people react viscerally, almost like children. If daddy's in charge and you lose your wooby, you want mommy RIGHT NOW!!!
Richard Nixon was arguably one of the most intelligent and able politicians in America's history, and he originated modern emotional campaigning. He knew his audience, he knew whose votes he could win and whose he couldn't, and he knew precisely how to speak so as to bring certain emotions to mind so that people would vote for him and/or against the Democrats. So did Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. They all played variations of the same playbook for years: Frustration at the stalemate in Vietnam. Fears about blacks, gays, liberated women, immigrants, and poor people eroding the power position of mostly rich white Christian males. The specter of Communism on the ascent. The decline of American power and the rise of the Soviet Union.
Now we play fill in the blank:
Frustration at the stalemates in Afghanistan and Iraq. Fears about blacks, gays, liberated women, immigrants, and the poor eroding the power position of rich and not-so-rich white Christian males. The specter of Islam on the ascent. The decline of American power and the rise of China. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? It's been used by conservative Republicans for decades. Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. As long as America has a white majority, it'll be effective. The coalition it bands together is just wide enough, and progressives and Democrats are politically inept enough, that when it really counts (say, in a once-in-a-decade Census year when Congressional seats will be reallocated and districts will be redrawn), they win.
Think about this: who could imagine that only two years after the election of the first black president -- an inspiring yet pragmatic progressive Democrat who won more votes than any other president and who accomplished more for the broader progressive cause in the first half of his first term than any president since Lyndon Johnson -- progressives and the larger Democratic coalition would apparently be downtrodden, disenchanted, frustrated, and totally lost for words when it comes to arguing why they should be given two more years to govern America? Who could imagine that two years after nearly a decade of conservative Republican economic and foreign policy had rendered America nearly broke, nearly broken, and virtually ungovernable, Americans would be poised to give control back to the exact same people who were and are responsible for most of America's serious problems?
Who could imagine such things? Conservative Republicans. They know it's only a matter of time, effort, money, and the deft application of body language, word choice, and tone.
The only thing that can mitigate this mass bamboozlement is beating the bastards at their own game. It doesn't feel right to think about how best to use these communications techniques to subtly change people's minds without their permission. Sarah Robinson at The New Republic was correct:
"We don't use half of what America's world-class advertising, p.r., and marketing pros know about how to market a brand, because progressives−as partisans of reason and rational choice−tend to view these techniques as unduly manipulative. To our way of thinking, it feels dirty. It feels like cheating."Time to get over it, guys. As thinkers, our tendency is to look deeper into these things. We shouldn't. That's what's screwed us for the last forty two years.
No comments:
Post a Comment