When they go low, we go lower?
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This all reminds me of the Star Trek episode, “Mirror, Mirror.”
SPOCK: It was far easier for you as civilised men to behave like barbarians, than it was for them as barbarians to behave like civilised men.
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Well I’m going to do Trump one better! I’m going to criticize him using only gibberish and pulling mocking faces when talking about him! That should be even more effective in baful plee whoop Trump mugg nuggle puk hoo. Ha ha ha! Nyyah!
Pfft, miggle fee!
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Lasting peace is the work of education (says Maria Montessori). Every day I see 4, 5 and 6 year olds earnestly straining the limits of their abilities and willpower in order to act as positive role models and teachers for their 3 year old classmates. If they can do it, so can adults.
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butchagotta be LOUUUUD!
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Here’s someone else that’s good at reducing complex arguments to simple statements. But she still sounds smart when she does it. Can we use her as a model instead?
https://twitter.com/senwarren
Not that I can actually do that. She’s smarter than me, knows more about it than me, and genuinely cares more about people in general than I do. But if we’re going to use role models for how we act, lets use an actual role model.
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That’s one way of reading it. Another is to say that ordinary people are swayed less by flowery intellect and more by gut instinct and emotion. Something Trump’s campaign was very, very good at exploiting.
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Think of it as writing newspaper articles for Deltas.
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I find that the uneducated children have to learn things the hard way. These days I’m focused on working with the other grownups in resisting and getting through the next four years.
In a previous career I was a writer and producer for TV news. One of the first things new people in the newsroom learn is that you have to write for an 8th grade reading comprehension level. That was as dumbed-down as I was willing to go with adults, so I’m afraid I’m done.
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Nuance is for Sanders supporters living under a President Hillary Clinton. There is absolutely no nuance in how I feel about Trump. He is a dangerous fucking idiot who needs to get his ass booted from the White House like yesterday, and I will say as much. Highfalutin bow tie and horn rims language won’t suffice.
Also, when people say Trump used third-grade language, they are referring to Flesch-Kincaid or a similar readability metric, which takes into account the number of syllables per word and words per sentence. So, short punchy sound bites have lower grade levels. They also tend to be very memorable, and have a feeling of approachability regardless of factual correctness. Sound bites are what got him elected, so what’s so wrong with speaking in sound bites of our own?
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The problem is that this election showed that the way liberals were apparently showing their supposed elitism was speaking in coherent, complete sentences that conveyed nuanced arguments. The Subgenius saying, “Act like a dumbshit and they’ll treat you like an equal,” turned out to be incredibly relevant to Trump’s success. Surveys of Trump supporters bear this out.
And, in Trump’s case, the ability to project whatever you want onto him, because he’s got so few consistent, coherent positions. He appealed to tribalism, he told people he’d bring in jobs, and he avoided anything resembling an actual policy argument - much less a nuanced one - that might raise doubts about his ability to deliver. “Appealing to gut instinct and emotion” is the most charitable way of describing that.
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Hmmm, How ‘bouts a good ol’ fashioned pissing match?
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Here, let me try:
“Dodd-Frank is a disaster … We’re going to be doing a big number on Dodd-Frank.”
Was that quite tzchrumpisch?
Er … sorry … that actually is him.
He’s ordered a review into the legislation designed to protect us from a repeat 2008 financial crash. The idea being to repeal it.
WTFF.
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I don’t know. The article definitely falls prey to the clickbait strategy of “dress up old advice is a counterintuitive/controvesial way” but I think this article had some pretty good nuggets:
Have headlines
Repeat them often
Express them frankly
Don be afraid to add subjective judgement to them
The headlines don’t have to be where the story ends, but make the headlines punchy and make them count. Tell and re-tell your best points to make sure the narrative becomes undeniable and unforgettable, like a fable. Save the ten dollar words and complex sentence structures for the article. If anyone wants to read past the headline, great, but if not, make sure they leave with a crystal clear impression. Don’t try to stick to objectivity. Have an agenda, have a point of view. You seem tricky when you don’t express it explicitly, because everyone knows you have one anyway.
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Lotta people say he bangs his daughter, everybody’s saying. Am I right? Everybody! He bangs his daughter. The guy bangs his daughter. In the White House! That’s why she’s moving in. Right? His wife? Where’s she? Oh, New York. Why’s that? Because he bangs his daughter. Doesn’t need the wife. Wife doesn’t want to hear that, banging his daughter. Right? Disgusting.
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Using Trumpspeak? Like this?
The people that respond to shit like that aren’t people you can win over. You can only outnumber them.
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I don’t think there is just “one weird trick” that will turn people away from the minority president. So I don’t think this approach is inherently wrong, its just insufficient on its own.
Another approach to keep in mind is moral reframing. Which is basically to understand what draws the focus of the conservative mind, and then frame your arguments in those terms.
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I have a very close family member very skilled in mental health diagnosis, and she says T is mentally ill.
What do you think?
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