It's The Salesmanship, Stupid

I'm always on about what a lousy salesman 45* is - and he is.

But he isn't a lousy magician. He's a pretty good one. Or rather, he's been good at it for quite a while, but now he's playing to an audience that includes people who aren't here wanting to be fooled.

Inside The Hive with Nick Bolton - interviewing David Kwong:



It's not just the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Sometimes, under certain circumstances, your "audience" wants to believe; needs to believe; and that desire can be so intense they go way out of their way help you. They go along with the illusion to the point where they fool themselves.

It's about giving the audience something that seems it be of greater value to look at - a different trick - while you do what you're really trying to do.

The Turnaraound

WaPo:

The 2016 election was just a month away when Steve Curtis, a conservative radio host and former Colorado Republican Party chairman, devoted an entire episode of his morning talk show to the heated topic of voter fraud.

“It seems to me,” Curtis said in the 42-minute segment, “that virtually every case of voter fraud I can remember in my lifetime was committed by Democrats.”

On Tuesday, Colorado prosecutors threw a wrench into that already dubious theory, accusing Curtis of voter fraud for allegedly filling out and mailing in his ex-wife’s 2016 ballot for president, Denver’s Fox affiliate reported.

Curtis, 57, was charged in Weld County District Court with one count of misdemeanor voter fraud and one count of forgery, a Class 5 felony, according to local media.

The case is the only voter fraud investigation related to the 2016 election that has resulted in criminal charges in the state, the Colorado secretary of state’s office told Denver’s ABC affiliate.
In sales, it's called The Turnaround. You take a negative, restate it, and either make it a positive or at least make it sound better or deflect the criticism or duck your responsibility, etc.

"We never go out anymore"
=
"Gee, honey - I guess I was being selfish; I just wanna keep you all to myself"

"It's expensive, but it's worth it"
=
"It's the best quality product you can buy and the investment you make today will pay off for a long time."

In politics, it's a way to slam your opposition and invite the inference that you're a swell guy by comparison. And it can be a very effective tactic when you're selling your way into power - which is how it works now. We don't evaluate the resumé to make an informed decision. We vote for the one who looks good and sounds OK and carries fewer negatives - the one with the better Marketing Campaign.

But it gets full-blown destructive when it flops all the way over into the kind of Authoritarian Gaslighting we've seen from the Trumpsters (most recently), and from guys like Mr Curtis for a coupla generations now - because eventually:

• Every accusation is a confession
• Every boast is an expression of inadequacy
• Every warning of a threat is a statement of intent

Get woke - stay woke.

Slice-N-Dice

Getting a majority of the votes doesn't necessarily mean you get a majority representation.  

WaPo:

A recent analysis by political scientists John Sides and Eric McGhee suggests that Democrats are poised to win a majority of votes in U.S. House contests but walk away with a minority of seats — again. As I wrote last week, a big factor in this odd disparity is the way some Republican state legislatures have gerrymandered congressional districts in a way that gives them far more House seats than their popular vote totals would suggest.

For a refresher on how gerrymandering happens, recall that the Constitution mandates that every 10 years, seats in the U.S. House are doled out to states according to state populations, as determined by the decennial census. In 2010, for instance, it worked out that a state got one house seat for roughly every 710,000 inhabitants. States have to assign each of their House seats to a congressional district. This requires drawing a map that splits a state up into a number of geographic regions, each with a population of about 710,000.

In most states, this process is done by the state legislature with the approval of the governor. So you see where the potential for shenanigans starts to creep in: If the statehouse and governor's mansion are controlled by the same political party, there's not much to stop them from drawing congressional districts in a way that maximizes that party's representation in the U.S. Congress.

But first - is there a better name for a Political Scientist than "Sides"?

Anyway it seems the marketing geniuses have taken over the political process just like everything else.

Who Are Those Guys?

Bratislav Zivkovic - leader of a Serbian militia, fighting in support of Russian troops as they fuck up Ukraine:

This guy is Fazal Hayat (aka: Fazlullah) - born in Pakistan, doing what he can to help the Taliban in Afghanistan:

Meet Thomas Lubanga Dyilo. Thomas enjoys jungle camping and the company of young boys in camo fatigues:

And bachelor #4 is lovable lug Stewart Rhodes - the founder of Oath Keepers right here at home in USAmerica Inc:

Wanna know the difference between these jagoffs?

Branding.

The Matter With Words

Crappy sound quality - high-sounding message.



You can't make it work if you can't sell the idea, but it bothers me that feeling you have to play the other guy's game is the beginning of a process that leads to your becoming those other guys.

Let's be careful out there.

Little Jemmy Tried To Warn Us

By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.
-- James Madison, Federalist 10, November 22, 1788.

We seem to have an extraordinary surplus of bean-counters who think knowing everything there is to know about slicing and dicing the numbers is all anybody needs to know about anything; and who understand how to make sense of (and how to make money off of) a jillion smaller and smaller segments of demographics inside the larger demographics etc etc etc.  Unfortunately, while minting all these MBA-types, we haven't been teaching them much about the simple fact that those numbers are made up of real live human-type individual flesh-and-bone people.

So it doesn't really matter that a mom and a dad somewhere in god's America have to live in fear that their insurance will "run out" before their 11-year-old can finish up the chemo treatments for leukemia.

It doesn't matter that a grandpa will have to put up with the debilitating pain of an arthritic knee for another 5 years before he qualifies for Medicare because there's just no way he can afford the insurance even if he could get it.

It doesn't matter that a 24-year-old who graduated 18 months ago with an Engineering degree has to wait tables and deliver pizza and sleep on the couch at his step-dad's trailer - praying his asthma doesn't kill him in the middle of the night because there's always a little month left over at the end of his inhaler.

The list of incredibly shitty examples of unnecessary anxiety and suffering stretches out  beyond the horizon - but none of that matters because some politicians think their opposition to ObamaCare is "a winning argument".

They believe a sliver here and a sliver there - slivers that might add up to about 23% of the whole population - means they can then run around pretending that 23% is really "what the American people want".  Because they "polled" their own districts, and wow, it turns out 65% of those rubes think what that other 23% think, and that must surely mean they have the one Congress Critter in the whole joint who really knows what he's talkin' about.

"We've been talking amongst this group for the last four weeks about fairness, about whether or not it's fair to give extensions to people who have political connections and make our families live under a different law," he continued. "That is a winning argument for us. But no one asked that question. ... Somebody asked whether it would be different next time, in January or February, whenever we take this up again. The natural inclination is to say 'No, it will be exactly the same.'"

These people have no soul and no honor.

None Of It's Real

Fugelsang

It's The Policy, Stupid

Or more accurately, it's the stupid policy.

Repubs and the Conservative Entertainment Complex are very busy analyzing the Romney Fail, and everybody's talking about everything except the simple fact that the GOP Platform and the GOP Voter Strategy were repulsive to a majority of the voters.

But first, guess what - Obama is the first POTUS to get a majority of the vote in 2 elections since St Ronnie the Reagan did it in 1984.  28 years.

(Just wanted to throw that in because it's kinda important once we get it through our think skulls that there's really only about 10 or 20% of the voting public who actually come under the heading "The Base" in any party)

So anyway, one of my favorite rationalizations for Romneybot's Malfunction is that Obama played Identity Politics to pump up his base and get them to turn out for him.  I think "turning out The Base" is a tired old saw in politics that people just need to let go of.  "The Base" is always there - they show up come hell or high water.  It's everybody else ya gotta worry about.  Which is why the "Identity Politics" crack is so hollow.  First off, it's just another example of (what's become) a trademark Republican tactic of taking your worst shortcoming and projecting it onto your opponent.  But it seems emblematic in that practically every GOP campaign in the last 30 years has been all about Voter Identity, and has worked hard to narrow the party's appeal to the point where they might as well hang a sign on the door - "No Dogs, Jews or Coloreds allowed".

It suddenly occurs to me that Romney felt totally blindsided because he truly felt he'd run the campaign according to the formula you apply when you're selling Goods and Services; he did everything you're supposed to do, but I think the results prove it's a big mistake to base your pitch on Snob-Appeal and Exclusivity, and believe it works in politics the same as it works in Retail Selling.  Cuz it don't.

So, Repubs - if you guys wanna go on losing, all you have to do is keep lying to yourselves (and to each other) about how Party Purity is the best way to expand Party Appeal.

And BTW: Adults stand up and accept responsibility while children point fingers and assign blame.

The Political Stage

Episode 3 from Andrea Seabrook and Decode DC:

Spin Doctoring

This is not new.  it just bears repeating.  And repeating. And Repeating.

From DecodeDC:

Willard's GOP

What in the blue-eyed buck-naked fuck were they thinking?

Old (and maybe a little tipsy?) white guy arguing with an imaginary Obama.  That was the big electrifying surprise?

Really, Repubs?  You wanted us all talking about Clint Eastwood the day after your convention, and not about the guy you just got done nominating for president?



I can get a little squirmy when Alec Baldwin or Barbara Streisand start diving into it, but that Eastwood schtick was cringe-worthy on an epic scale.

The Self

Your homework assignment for this weekend:

Starting at about 25:00, try not to think about Leo Strauss or Freddie Hayek (an elite group controlling the herd's animal instincts).

Part 1


Part 2
(at about 23:15 - getting the consumer to substitute your product for what she really wants - "nearly 4 inches longer...", and the lady goes "ooooooh!")
Nuthin' but brilliant.


Part 3


Part 4

Modern Methods (updated)

I caught this episode on The Science Channel the other night - this is what explains to me some of the methods political hucksters use to get us leaning and keep us in line.

It's what prompted a previous post - Modern Methods.

And for all the Centrists out there, please look around and tell me what examples you can find to show that the Dems are trying to pull the False Memory trick.  I realize they're using a lot of the same advertising gimmicks, but I've not seen the outright attempt to change the facts of historical events to fit their ideology.  That seems to be the near-exclusive province of the Wingnuts.



Full episode on YouTube

At about 14:30, they start talking about the causes and effects of Memory Errors.  Once this is understood, it's a short step to manipulation.  ie: Play up the fear, which revs up the amygdala; plant the new memory, and you've got yourself a new convert.  Sounds like a pretty handy little tool to me.

Conform And Be Dull

This is nothing new.  The marketeers (commercial and political) know about all this, and they use it to manipulate us at every turn.



The Asch Experiments:
Of particular interest to me (in the context of the current political climate) is the bit regarding united opposition at about 3:00.



Now, try not to think about DumFux News, and the simple fact that there's an awful lot of "low-information voters" (aka the independents) out there who pay no attention to what's happening until it's time to decide; and who then simply try to get a feel for which way the wind is blowing so they can vote according to what they perceive as the "majority sentiment".

Differentiatin'

I've been watching politics for a while now, and one of things that's been hard to miss in the last 25 years or so is that Repubs and Dems are a lot more sharply divided.  (Brilliant observation, Mikey - please tell us more)  Right.  No news there, but the way it's evolved into the current depiction of GOP=Man, and Dem=Woman is pretty interesting.

It was there back in the 90s when the narrative was "Dad's the hard-working Republican who puts food on the table and protects the family, while Mommy is the Democrat who spends all the money."  We've heard that repeated in one iteration or another for what's getting to be a long time.  Hell, Ahnode Schvartzenbooger said it straight out when he called the California Legislature a bunch of girlie men.  It could be that the Dems now have a chance at turning it back on the Repubs.

So here's what we should all push the Repubs to ask of their candidates:  I'd like to see Gingrich shoot a few baskets, and I wanna see Romney throw a football.  Seriously, take a look at how these guys carry themselves some time and then try to convince yourself you're not thinkin' about the kid in grade school who always got picked last when you were choosing up sides for kickball - even if you do feel a little guilty when you're thinking it.

The point is that the rubes are so macho-centric, I'm thinkin' it won't take more than 30 or 40 seconds of Newt and Mitt playin' a little catch on YouTube to make sure nobody ever hears from either one of those buttheads ever again.