I’m sorry but I think most people are missing Moore’s point. It isn’t about speaking smarter vs dumber, or college vs 8th grade, or how smart or ignorant his audience is. That whole line of argument is defined by a single axis of facts and logic, spanning from simpler to more complex.
Trump and his supporters aren’t on that axis at all, and that is why they will never be convinced by a logical argument. The two sides are whooshing past each other, thinking the other side is amazingly clueless.
Trump is speaking, and his audience is reacting, to a completely orthogonal axis of communication: emotion and instinct, not facts and rigor. Its effectiveness is based on biology and brain function, and works much better than cognitive arguments. He is speaking to the animalistic limbic system, not the gray matter.
It has become clear from modern brain science that people, even smart people that are convinced they base their positions on logic, actually make up their minds about an issue instinctively and quickly, and then their cognitive functions kick in to justify that position.
Your gut instinct can be changed, but it takes lots of learning and study and repetition over time, to move cognitive conclusions down a level to where they start to become a “gut feeling”. Academic and thoughtful people tend to be fairly good at that. But even then, the conclusions don’t descend deep enough to override the hard-wired instincts such as fear, love, tribalism, loyalty, etc. These are deeply hardwired to varying degrees in all animals, even those that don’t “think”. Intellectual thinkers, when they have time to analyze before reacting, have learned to override their animal brains with learning and experience. But when there is no time to think, or when a stimulus is strong enough, even they react based on animal instincts not logic.
Some people are very good at bypassing a person’s ability to think, and to trigger their instinctive reactions. Hypnotists do this very well, and so do cult-leaders. Neuro-linguistic programming, Pavlovian conditioning, peer pressure, love-bombing, are all different techniques that can be used to bypass people’s ability to think logically, even very smart people, and get them to react emotionally. There is science that proves it, and it works even if a person knows it is happening. It is the way the brain works.
For example, if someone is exposed to an idea or an experience when they are angry or fearful and their brain is awash in adrenaline, they will remember it for a MUCH longer time than if they are exposed to the same idea when they are calm and thoughtful. It’s as if the chemicals soften the brain and make it receptive to an intruding idea, and then when the chemicals subside, the brain hardens around the memory. It’s biology.
Trump uses mind-manipulation techniques in his speech patterns. He gets people angry, then points to a scapegoat. He confuses you with conflicting words and language, and when your conscious mind is distracted by trying to make sense of the nonsense, he throws a dart into your subconscious, and it solidifies there when the the emotions subside.
Trump may not even knowingly be doing this, he might just have a talent for it, but he is doing it. Fox news does it too. If you can stand it, try watching some Fox News programs, and watch for the language they use to get you angry about an event, and then at the peak of your emotion, they toss in derisive remarks about Obama, or liberals, or some other bogeyman of the day. They don’t go by the same playbook as other stations. They don’t even try to be objective or even-handed. They try to get you to think what they want you to think. And the techniques have primed their viewer’s brains to be susceptible to Trump.
So I believe what Moore was saying is that if you are trying to reach these people through facts and logic you are lost. That isn’t where the battle is being fought, and it isn’t going to win where the battle is being fought.
