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‘Messaging’ Is Difficult When Your Message Makes No Sense
Democrats struggle with “messaging,” because their message doesn’t make any sense. Critical Race Theory is not taught in schools, and parents shouldn’t be allowed to stop it from being taught in schools. It’s wrong to give experimental vaccines to dogs, and all children should be required to get a COVID vaccine despite the lack of research. Lack of minority representation in American culture is proof of our underlying racism, and we should remove all minority images from everything from baseball teams to pancake syrup.
Democrats can’t figure out how to unload a cargo ship, but they can control the weather 100 years from now. Blacks don’t have the opportunities that whites do, and it’s wrong when white kids claim to be black on their college applications so that they can get into a good school. Democrats want to spend trillions of dollars that don’t exist to fund projects that won’t happen because of setbacks that aren’t real.
Their message is very complicated – no wonder they have messaging problems.
What’s odd about that is that when Republicans lose elections, we try to figure out what we did wrong, and how we can improve on that in the future. How can we earn more votes in future elections? But when Democrats lose elections, they immediately blame the voters for being racist or ignorant or something. Is it possible that the voters don’t understand where trillions of dollars that don’t exist could possibly come from? No. It’s because they hate black people. Or whatever. Obviously. Again, for Democrats, messaging is complicated. As you might imagine.
I think this is one reason that America has moved further and further left. Never moving to the right.
When the Republican party overreaches, they back off. They try to become more inclusive of those who disagree with them. Or they try to change their message to expand their appeal. Regardless, if their right-wing message is rejected, they move further to the left.
When the Democrat party overreaches, they push harder, and further to the left. Those who disagree with them are obviously evil, and should be ignored or persecuted. So when their left-wing message is rejected, they move further to the left.
Which appears to me to send the following message: “Screw messaging.” Or perhaps I am misinterpreting something here? Or perhaps, Lord help us, I am not…
But every time a Democrat manages to lose an election by a sufficiently large margin that even the Democratic Party can’t get them into office, what do we hear? It was a failure of messaging.
I think this is primarily an effort to reassure the Democrat supporters. “We are right. You are right. Those who are wrong are either evil, or they simply don’t understand our messaging. Those Republicans just don’t understand reality.”
So you have the party which supports teaching racism and abortion accusing the other party of being evil. You have the party who thinks it can spend trillions of dollars that don’t exist accusing the other party of ignoring reality. You have the party that thinks that men can have babies accusing the other party of not believing in science. You have the party who pretends to be able to control the weather 100 years from now accusing the other party of being unrealistic.
This seems odd.
“Messaging” is certainly a problem for Democrats. But I don’t criticize, because I can’t imagine trying to present a coherent message based on, um, whatever it is that the Democrats believe this afternoon. And keeping it flexible enough to fit with whatever the Democrats believe tomorrow afternoon. I would struggle with that. But in my defense, so would JFK. Heck, so would Bill Clinton.
As a fun experiment, imagine JFK today – he would be a Republican. And then, imagine AOC in 1960 – she would be considered a vicious lunatic Communist. JFK Jr.’s Godfather (Joe McCarthy) would view her as a threat to American society. But I digress…
Messaging is difficult when your message doesn’t make any sense. James Carville is a smart guy, but even he can’t help make sense of this unholy mess.
This is one point on which that I suspect that, in private, Joe Manchin and AOC would likely agree.
That point is, not to put too fine a point on it: “If you are a Republican, you are evil. Or a fool. Whatever.”
Humans are not rational. We make decisions based on emotions. That’s what makes us human. And that’s what makes so many of us vote Democrat.
If you don’t understand that type of ‘messaging’, then you’re not really human. Those who are subhuman should not be permitted to destroy western civilization. So canceling you is not unfair, but rather a virtuous attempt to improve American society. Thank goodness for the ‘fact-checkers’ at Facebook and Twitter.
Surely you understand that message, yes?
Perhaps ‘messaging’ is not so complex, after all.
Now sit down, and shut up, and accept what is coming. It will be easier that way. For all of us.
Thank you.
Published in General
Nice. I tried not to let the picture of the Mittster distract from the prose.
Know anything about the last pic? I don’t suppose the Zebra lounge is still around, unfortunately.
The Dems have a problem messaging, because they don’t need to be good. The media does the heavy lifting and they just need to shout “racist!” and the dim-witted vainglorious voters do the what they are told. Hypocrisy is not a problem. Double standards? Who cares! Logical consistency? Unnecessary. Facts? Truth? Those things are anachronisms.
The nature of Democrat messaging was explained by Stalin’s master propagandist, Willi Munzenberg, in a conversation he had with Arthur Koestler back when Koestler was still a Communist:
Don’t argue with them, Make them stink in the nose of the world. Make people curse and abominate them, Make them shudder with horror. That, Arturo, is propaganda!
https://www.thezebralounge.net/
There are some theories about human psychology and persuasion that explore the strategy of deliberately sowing confusion – to actually create falsehoods to assert that are literal opposites.
The goal is to be able to rule by assertion.
When up is down and down is up, the words are now rendered meaningless. These things still exist, but you are now deprived of the language to describe reality as you see it.
You establish consensus, in this case through the corporate and social media ,and then simply assert your claim.
They kill the meaning of words, then resurrect them as zombies to invade our discourse.
It’s a direct attack on rationality. Rationality is a problem for them. To meet their goals it must first be obliterated.
And they are close.
This is revolution. Literally.
You get the culture confused, afraid, hamstring any opposition, then create a crisis whereby everything flips. Whether that is COVID or something to come. They desperately want Jan. 6 to be some grand turning point a la 9/11 but it’s not sticking.
They are prodding and baiting. It’s amazing how chill we are in general. They will crack down on the first major pushback if it is not legal. And of course, whatever you do can be found illegal if you don’t have any power. I know this because they seize on every right-wing transgression as some kind of seminal event that should change history.
They are now dealing with the opposition in a more blatant way, signaling power, encouraging the peasants. Dividing as much as possible.
They are segmenting people into groups they define. Why not tall people versus short people? They have disparate outcomes too. (?)
The importation of peasant-class foreigners may be more useful as revolutionary allies than voters.
Whose side will these people be on? Newly arrived, no money, no prospects and hey, let’s sack the ruling class and take their stuff because they stole it from us.
They are using blatant racial politics. Openly!
Amazing how they are getting away with that.
These people are way ahead of most of us on language.
I’m no scholar but I have read Alice in Wonderland, 1984, watched the Wizard of Oz as an adult ( amazing!) read Stephen Pinker, dabbled in Semiotics ( scary!) read some of Aldous Huxley, Carl Jung and Freud, listened to many podcasts and videos about propaganda and psychology have a rich and varied exposure to people.
How people label and define things is the absolute key to political power.
The intellectual left knows this. The right – even the intellectuals – don’t seem to understand this.
Thank you Dr. Bastiat for stimulating me to write this with your wonderful post!
That’s my brother at the bar.
[corrected]
You’re asking who the man in the picture is? I’m sure it’s Saul Alinsky. He was the personification of what @franco describes. His book may be the most disgusting thing I’ve read.
The hopeful take – and I always want to scrabble through the ashes and rubble for some green shoots we can remove and transplant – is that the final form of the left, in our times, requires agreement with things that strike most people as fundamentally untrue.
1 Everything is white supremacy, from math to gender to lawns to birds to music, and this idea must shape every institution.
2 Men can give birth and women can have the sausage and two vegs, and there is no place in civil society for people who think otherwise.
These fall outside of the old parameters, which used the left-right definitions of 20th century American politics to Trojan-horse the radicalism of the New Left and slide it into the accustomed discourse. The two points also fracture D coalitions, because many casual cultural liberals just don’t buy that stuff. They’ll probably sigh and go along with #2, because it’s easy and what’s the harm, but not #1.
I wonder if it’s that the Democratic establishment looks at their far left and says “these people are fundamentally correct – we may not be able to do everything they want right away but we’ll push as far as we can and back off if necessary”, whereas the Republican establishment looks at their principled right and says “how do we shut these folks up before they cost us donations and Georgetown influence”?
Correct. It’s Saul Alinsky.
He wrote the instruction manual for the modern Democrat Party.
When?
Rules For Radicals is a must-read if you want to understand the left . . .
Conservatives look for discrete statements that are true or false pursuant to rules of reason and the repository of experience. The left seeks to create a zeitgeist, a cognitive totality. It doesn’t matter if a statement is true. It only matters if it fits /serves the narrative. The actual count of polar bears does not matter. The belief that they are nearing extinction is what matters.
People are not persuaded by the Narrative so much as they seek a comforting membership and freedom from uncertainty. They are among the believers in The Science, the Reality-Based community and the anti-hate side (the people they are urged to hate being the real haters). They defend the oppressed and save the planet. It is a cult.
“Messaging” for the left is the issue as to why the utter and complete bs they sell each other often does not work in elections. The answer is usually to make more of a government-media-corporate effort to suppress dissident speech and to strategize how best to signal their people while deceiving the trogs as to true intentions.
“The definition of morality is that which advances the revolution.” – Marx, Trotsky, etc. (they all said it in one form or another)
If screaming “my body my choice” in the morning gets more money to Planned Parenthood, while ignoring that same statement in the afternoon in regard to vaccine mandates gives more power to OSHA, then their definition of morality remains consistent.
If marching against the gender pay gap on Thursday sways public opinion toward more women friendly regulation on businesses, while promoting trans activists and claiming anyone can be a birthing person on Friday helps defeat a Republican bill to keep competition between only biological women in sports, then their definition of morality remains consistent.
Logic and morality is whatever accumulates power and defeats/destroys/cancels whomever stands in the way of acquiring that power. Consciously or unconsciously, they are engaged in Marxist revolutionary tactics behind the veneer of participation in representative government. Anyone who voted for Biden is laughably naïve, a useful idiot, or both.
The Left plants these thought seeds in defiance of truth knowing that a few crazy whackos, including within the media, will consume them and repeat them. And given the whacko predilection for drama and panic, the whackos will begin, first with a slow burn, turning fire and ending in an inferno of hateful outrage and protest. It isn’t rational, but when everything is “hope and change” and “community organizing”, it just seems like the right thing to do. Books are banned, statues toppled, police precincts burned, opposing voices silenced and entire factions of opposition, declared unhuman. They accuse the opposition of the same, citing “dog whistle” gatherings of racists. It is difficult for truth to exist at a time when it can be banned, exchanged or outlawed for what is convenient for the Left.
I like ambiguity in movies sometimes because the dissonance introduces new thinking.
It is possible, though, for a viewer of a movie to completely miss ambiguity or to overlay a more simple view over top.
This often happens when young people watch a movie that is to mature for their development.
It is possible to disnurture development to the point that people simply don’t notice that things don’t add up – they are immune to cognitive dissonance because they are uninterested, or anti-interested, or inoculated through having a rote solution to reflexively apply.
All of this is to say; things don’t have to make sense to the senseless.
“Trust the science” means, “I didn’t understand the homework either, but shut up.”
I think that fundamentally the relative great ease of living in this age is what allows such cognitive abandon. If the western world were harder to survive in and most people had to work hard to have less I think most people would see the lunacy in the leftist paradigm.
It certainly seems so.
After reading this post, I declare Dr. Bastiat to be “The George Carlin of Ricochet!”
That is high praise indeed! Thank you!
Right. Now just don’t start discussing the dirtiest words.
I’ve read it twice. That was not enough.
Trump, gay marriage and evolution.
Money.
BTW, I noticed that Mitt was placed on the left side of the page. Did the image drift there, or was it there all along?
I’m proud that somebody noticed! I thought that was so clever!