Originally published at: Lincoln Project co-founder accused of online sexual harassment from 21 men, including 14-year-old | Boing Boing
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It might in fact have been against the law.
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Right wing wacko TGOP’ers are going to eat that up, STAT! Disturbing on any level, whoa…
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One more reason I’m glad I never gave a dime to the Lincoln Project. Just because Stalin is happy to help you fight the Axis doesn’t mean he’s a great guy.
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It’s interesting to note that their statement is laden with intense, emotional words. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — they of all people know how to relate to people who predominantly respond to emotional messaging/triggering. The Dems would do well to take notes, and acknowledge that perhaps they need to communicate a bit more in this way, when targeting “moderates.”
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Wait… was he named after Tom Cruise’s character from Days of Thunder?
Well, it’s better than Dick Trickle, I guess.
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Oh jesus christ because we’re not already awash in enough emotional abuse?
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Color me shocked that they didn’t try to down play or excuse his behavior.
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TLP’s core competencies are public relations and preserving their own interests. I’m not surprised they jumped on this and disavowed him so quickly.
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Donald Jr. was already crowing about it.
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OTOH, Lend-leasing stuff to the Soviets did help to keep them in the war.
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The Lincoln project are just a different kind of right wing wacko than the trumpist right wing wacko.
They are still republicans playing the no-true-Scotsman fallacy very hard.
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Are you a conservative of the sort I was speaking about?
The fact is, emotion has been used all throughout history by leaders. Democrats used to know how to do it effectively. They seem to have utterly lost the ability over the same general course of time that the GOP learned to weaponize it. I don’t personally think that this has been useful. Emotion is part of the human experience, and failing to appeal to it IMHO leaves a significant set of tools unused.
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I’m not convinced it’s the Democrats who changed.
When Obama openly wept for the students of Sandy Hook Elementary the Republicans viciously mocked him and insisted he was either faking his tears or acting like some kind of pussy. It’s not that the emotion wasn’t on display, it’s that the other side had completely rejected the concept of human sympathy.
If Joseph Welch delivered his famous “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” line today I don’t think it would have prompted so much as a blink from Joseph McCarthy’s spiritual successors.
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I’m not talking about weeping at a moment of genuine sadness and loss. I’m talking about the calculated use of emotion to rally large groups of masses behind political causes.
“We decide to go to the moon! Not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard!”
“The only thing to fear is fear itself.”
Look at FDR, Churchill, the list goes on and on. They were extremely smart, but never decided that leaning on rationality alone was the way to effectively lead. I do see a change over time, and a stark one at that.
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I had the same thought.
Can’t mention Dick Trickle without the gif:
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But that kind of “emotional appeal” was all about working together to create something great, which also doesn’t work in the current political climate because of how Republicans have become increasingly partisan. Republicans at this point instinctively reject the idea of bi-partisan work towards a common goal, so those kind of grand speeches don’t go anywhere.
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You mean like the terrorism and consoling authoritarian head-pats that have successfully controlled the GOP? Yeah… I’ll pass on leaning into that more.
And yes, I’m some one who is easily manipulated by triggering emotions associated with trauma. Anyone with PTSD is. Again… no thanks. We don’t need more people making poorly informed reactionary decisions. We don’t really need more numbing defenses and apathy either, which are about the only way to overcome that kind of manipulation in the short term.
Treating moderates like sheep to be terrorized into compliance and then consoled by platitudes is only going to create more reactionaries.
There’s no point in “winning” if what you’re trying to save dies in the fight.
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I could dig up plenty of speeches that emotionally appeal to Americans in times of great divide, in an effort to unify. I’m hardly making this up.
I said “use emotion,” not “emotionally terrorize.” I will leave it on that note.
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