Seems like you might find this interesting.
http://reason.com/archives/2013/01/01/how-to-spin-conservatives-into-worrying
How to "Spin" Conservatives Into Worrying About the Environment - Reason.com reason.com
Make them feel disgust, say researchers.
D.G.: Interesting! I think this kind of framing is hugely important for effective politics, or any form of persuasion. It can potentially be manipulative or propagandistic, but at its heart it's a form of empathy and finding common ground.
Me: Manipulation has rarely been an obstacle with many parts of the Left...
D.G.: Tu quoque, Rich, tu quoque... ;)
Me: Since liberal political policies tend to be governed by emotion, I'd say it's the left who is more guilty. There's always someone in a wheechair, a bunch of cute little kids, or a weeping woman on stage with leftist politicians.
Google "it's for the children" and you'll see few if any hits for conservatives. Or consider the bill for relief of hurricane Sandy. How could those republicans be so heartless. *sob*
M.W.: Rich, no act is "logical" in and of itself--only in the service of some motivation, which can be crudely termed an "emotion." If you want another spin on the article, you could say it is "How to prevent liberals from 'spinning' facts in a way which appeals only to them." It makes no difference to me how you interpret the results, but I thought them interesting results, if not surprising.
Me: Granted. I would suggest, however, that elected officials are (or ought to be) governed by the law. A minimum of logic would be required. Legal/not legal is simple. Authorized/not authorized is accessible even to the low IQ'd.
D.G.: Rich: fear is an emotion. Disgust is an emotion. Greed is an emotion. Recent conservative policies--such as the invasion of Iraq, mandatory minimums sentences for drug possession, or deficit-financed tax cuts during a period of economic growth--were justified with emotion just as much as any excess of the welfare state.
You are a logical person; so am I. We'd like to believe that the folks who agree with us are also logical, but that's not necessarily true.
Me: I did not intend to suggest that we aren't all influenced by emotion. The subject is emotional manipulation as a political strategy. Such strategy is primarily a leftist technique.
Fear in particular is a charged frequently leveled at conservatives whenever conservatives express their opinion. I resent it. It is a rhetorical technique to de-legitimize an opposing perspective, in order for the leftist to relieve himself of the necessity of responding to the points raised.
The invasion of Iraq was not a conservative policy. There is no such thing a s deficit-financed tax cuts.
M.W.: D.G., about that assertion about the Bush Tax Cuts occurring "during a period of economic growth." My recollection of that period is not so rosy.
D.G.: Fair enough, the tax cuts were originally passed during the '01-'03 recession. They were continued through the rest of the Bush presidency even after the economic recovery, though.
M.W.: The other fact I had in mind is that economic growth has been slowing for decades, in a way which resembles logistic growth rather than the commonly-assumed exponential growth. Even during the Bush year "recovery", growth was pretty sub-par. The current non-recovery simply continues a trend.
Me: My theory on that is the correlation between government growth/intervention and lack of growth.
M.W.: That could be a factor--more and more capacity being taken up by jumping through hoops instead of actually producing more output--but there are other explanations possible, including limited natural resources, finite real estate, and declining birth rates (this seems pretty fundamental really). Of course, these constraints would probably be multiplicative: more than one can apply and they would all limit your growth in different dimensions.
Me: Interesting. So could we possibly say that limited natural resources, finite real estate, and declining birth rates might be politically induced, at least to some extent? For example, we have plenty of fossil fuel, but it's very difficult to clear the government hurdles to extract it. We have a lot of real estate, but so much of it is public land. Might declining birth rates be tied to some extent to environmental (just to tie back into the original topic) as well as economic concerns which have been exacerbated by government?
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