A left-leaning social scientist has a message for his fellow progressives: memes are not persuasive. If you want to win elections, sharing back-slapping memes like this doesn't get it done.
That's true! You know what else is true? You can't persuade people you haven't taken any trouble to understand in the first place.
Take that “Obamacare” meme. For many conservatives it felt like an “epic burn” to liberal supporters of the Affordable Care Act.If the joke doesn't even make sense to you, you might take that as a warning that you haven't understood your opponents' position. I frequently see liberal memes that I don't get, and when I do I make it a point to look up what they're about. You aren't required to agree, but you should at least understand why they think it's funny. That's an important part of understanding how the world looks to them.
But if you’re a liberal like me, it doesn’t even make sense. Obamacare isn’t a “thing” you can “have.” It’s an individual mandate to purchase health insurance, a Medicaid expansion, a bunch of regulations, and tons of other stuff. But aside from that, it’s not even clear what point this meme is making. Why wouldn’t Democrats want to be “first in line” to “have” Obamacare?
In this case, the author doesn't understand the conservative position enough to know that the joke wasn't pointed at "Democrats," but at Congress. Congress passed a huge and burdensome law, and while they didn't take time to read it before they passed it, they did take time to include provisions exempting themselves from the burdensome positions. That's the joke: if it's such a great law, why did they go to so much trouble to make sure they would never have to live under it?
That act fed the popular sense of Congress as a bunch of distant elites who didn't care about the country they saw themselves as ruling. They wouldn't pass laws for you and not for themselves if they didn't see themselves as different from you, separate from you. They wouldn't pass laws they didn't bother to read but that would govern your life if they cared about you. That emotional sense of distance and disdain is what is at work in this meme, and it is also what won Trump the White House in November of last year.
But hey, no need to understand that. Let's get on with persuading people to vote for leftists instead.
Some of these people have views that we might think of as racist. It might seem "wrong" to be nice to people like this. But in a democracy racists can vote.Emphasis in the original.
We can’t stop them from voting unless we are willing to sacrifice the entire idea of democracy. So if there are enough racists in America to swing an election, and we don’t want them running the place, our only option is to convince at least some of them to stop being racists.
"Be nice to the racists" isn't going to get him where he wants to go. He's first going to have to understand the actual arguments. Along the way, he might realize that his opponents aren't who he thinks that they are.
9 comments:
But if you’re a liberal like me, it doesn’t even make sense. Obamacare isn’t a “thing” you can “have.” It’s an individual mandate to purchase health insurance
See, when I read things like this, I don't read them as expressing honest confusion. I read them as disingenuous. I imagine the writer knowing perfectly well what is meant, and pretending not to because that way he doesn't have to confront the argument.
Am I unreasonable? I genuinely can't tell.
I don't think you're being unreasonable. The Progressive-Democrats--the modern Liberals--have been holding themselves out for years as knowing better than us mere citizens. I've quoted their BFF Herb Croly several times, and today's Progressive-Democrats--National Democrats--have acted on their founder's positions.
It's entirely reasonable to hold these to their own sense of superiority. They know full well what they're doing, and they're doing it anyway. That's what makes them so fundamentally dishonest.
I've never taken the meme of the poster on the left in OP as a joke.
Eric Hines
Some of these people have views that we might think of as racist. It might seem "wrong" to be nice to people like this. But they think some of our views seem racist. It's important to understand that if we want them to be nice to us even when they think we are being racists, that we be nice to them even when we think they are being racists.
There. Fixed it for him.
In order to do effective marketing, you need to have the ability to put yourself in the mind and shoes of your prospects. All sides in politics are failing at this, big time.
On FB, I observe from the Left so much outright rage and contempt that the posts are unlikely to convince anybody....quite the contrary.
On the Right, I observe posts that are sourced from obscure-but-obviously-Right-leaning sources, whereas with a little extra trouble the data used could have been drawn from far more credible sources or combinations thereof.
"Be nice to the racists" isn't going to get him where he wants to go. He's first going to have to understand the actual arguments. Along the way, he might realize that his opponents aren't who he thinks that they are.
Example: If one hasn't voted for a white Democrat for years and years, why would one be expected to vote for a black/mixed race Democrat? Or for a white woman who is a Democrat?
Example: there were ~200 counties that Trump won that Obama won in 2012.
I think he is suggesting another option: sacrifice the idea of democracy.
We just had an election in the United States for the presidency, that featured rent-a-rioters. We had people being physically attacked for being in the area of a rally. We have "students" demanding the right to shut down speech they disagree with.
I do not think these people are at all interested in preserving our democracy. I think they are hell-bent on breaking our social compact.
Valerie
An exchange policy is sure something you can "have." It's the only kind of policy I can legally buy now, and it's garbage, and it's not as good as the kind of gold-plated policy Congress ensures that its own members get to have. You're right, the guy hasn't bothered to think this through. Maybe he honestly thinks the ACA is solely about an individual mandate, and somehow has missed all the provisions restricting what kind of policies are available. My impression is that many ACA supporters are so convinced all the restrictions are an unalloyed good that they can't even grapple with the idea that people who are being forced to buy the new policies think they stink.
The racists voted for the first black US President because he was black looking. Demoncrats no longer needed the white KKK to get political power.
Shorter version: "If we pour glitter over shit, we'd probably sell more of it. Let's try that."
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