In every case, addressing the problem is simple: stop “doing that.” Fight “for people,” fight “for communities,” not for “families” and “working” people and “our” communities. The tactic is, while habitual at this point in any public speaker, also unfortunately rather low-effort, like the “cheap pop” that professional wrestler Mick Foley loved to expose by calling out the name of the town he was in at a performance. Here’s a clip of him working as a standup comedian, cued to the point when the event host brings up the trope.
As Foley quite capably points out, this is pandering, plain and simple. Pandering is a tried and true political tactic…but like so many things “tried and true” here in the twenty-first century, it’s losing its power because the people subject to that power see through it. It was already grist for the Spinal Tap mill almost forty years ago.
The deeper issue is the habit of reaching for those compliance-gaining tools in the first place, rather than simply leaving the qualifiers out of the conversation entirely. It reflects an endemic problem in our discourse; that we are far more focused on the mechanics of “winning an argument” than on the objective merits of the position we’re arguing. We’re so locked in on finding ways to engage those sub-intellectual responses, that we’ve lost sight of evaluating whatever’s being proposed on its merit. Everything devolves into pedantry and lawyering, pandering and cheerleading, until we forget what we were even talking about in the first place, or why.
As information consumers, we have to break the habits of allowing ourselves to be manipulated by these kinds of rhetorical flourishes and shortcuts. Helping to educate consumers and teach ourselves how to deprogram ourselves from a lifetime of advertising sleight of hand, is part of why the Musk For A Minute initiative exists.
As information sources – and we are all information sources! – we have to break the habit of allowing ourselves to keep reaching for the ‘easy button’ of compliance-gaining tactics rather than taking the time to make a well-reasoned argument and offer comprehensive discussion and explanation. We’re so busy trying to keep our numbers up and stay popular so we can stay in office or on television, we lose sight of why we wanted to be there in the first place. Encouraging leaders to be bold about addressing and correcting the fundamentally misleading nature of our discourse is another part of our purpose and goals at CUSTODE.
Teaching leaders and speakers and others with large platforms how to build and reinforce that infrastructure of social approval honestly and organically, while (as a natural consequence) modeling more careful and complete thinking, more valid reasoning and analysis of bias, more acknowledgement and accounting for personal bias in decision-making, is essential to our ongoing success and progress as a species.
Without addressing these issues in a forthright manner, we will remain mired and weighed down by archaic and obsolete thinking and behavior. The longer that continues, the longer our systems and institutions will waver and crumble and perhaps even fall, until we accept that this is the reality, the old ways don’t work anymore, and it’s time to move forward.
Put plainly: the train is loading and the engine’s hot. You can choose to get on board. You can even choose to stay behind. But the train will move, and while you certainly can choose to stand on the track holding your hand up and stomping your feet and explaining in twenty thousand word oratories why you don’t believe in trains, if that is your choice then you are choosing suicide and, as will we all, you will have your choice.
– John Henry, “Your 2022 Reality Check…”
This is why the decision was made to develop CUSTODE as the first cohesive “product” or “brand” created with funding from the Musk For A Minute initiative. There can be no question that we as a society – local, national, or global – must focus now on helping everyone understand what literacy of information, media, and politics means in the twenty-first century and beyond, and why it is the critical life skill of the future.
We hope this article has been informative and useful to you, and we’d like to remind you that this entire initiative relies heavily on your engagement. If you’re applying the things you read here, we’d love to hear about it. Tell others. Contribute to the Musk For A Minute initiative if you can (we’ll have our own fundraising mechanisms for CUSTODE in due course, but right now 100% of our funding comes through MFAM). Follow and engage with our Facebook and Twitter platforms (both are linked elsewhere on this page), and together we can deprogram ourselves from vulnerability to the unethical or illicit application of compliance-gaining tactics and techniques of persuasion, while also ensuring that our own communication is effective and meaningful.
CUSTODE is entirely funded by your contributions. Please consider adding your support via PayPal, or you can explore other options here! Engagement is vital to our growth so please like, share, subscribe, follow, and do all you can to tell everyone about CUSTODE!