It is election season in America. That time of year when
people start putting up posts and blogs about how candidates are horrible,
evil, terrible, corrupt, and will ruin this country if, God forbid, they get
elected. And that is just from the people I like and respect - don't get me
started on what the politically over-invested are posting.
My position? I make most of my living training people how to
build consensus and resolve conflict. So what may seem like political opinions
to you are, to me, examples of how to do exactly the opposite of everything I
teach. Let's break down what is happening linguistically in most of these
posts:
The
"doctor" technique: As in the old joke, "What do the call
the person who graduated last in medical school? Doctor." The technique
goes something like this: take any candidate. Find the stupidest person in
their party. Find the stupidest thing the stupidest person says. Then link the
candidate to it: "This candidate's party believes in (insert quoted
stupidity here)! How horrible!"
"Hate"
speech: Take a position. Any position. Then find whomever might not agree
with it 100%, and make the candidate "hate" them. Everywhere I look,
candidates apparently hate growth, hate women, hate small business, hate
progress, hate freedom of choice ... or whatever. So, for example, whenever I
wolf down a pizza I apparently "hate" fresh food.
Liar! Liar!: Someone
backed something and then the legislation never passed? He lied! Someone laid
out an economic plan and then the economy changed? They lied! Someone crossed
party lines to build a bipartisan consensus on something? She lied! Try
confronting your spouse with "You LIED!" the next time he or she is
running a few minutes late sometime, and then let me know me how well it works.
(By the way, in case you are keeping track, the search phrases
"Obama lies" and "Romney lies" actually have almost
identical counts on Google - 155 million each, give or take.)
Did you know that
so-and-so voted for (whatever)?: They say if you like laws or
sausages, don't watch either being made. Any elected official who does their
job and votes to keep the budget running, the government functioning, etcetera
will vote regularly for huge bills with zillions of obscure things in them.
Here, you take the stupidest ones and say your opponent voted for them. The
classic example of this is "(S)he voted to raise taxes 87 times."
Bracketing: Do I
want peace? Well, duh, yes. Do I think people should learn and speak English?
Golly, my English teacher always thought so. Should we save the environment? Give
me a break, of course we should. Am I in favor of family values? Last time I
looked, I haven't seen anyone against them. What you are seeing here is a
technique where people ask stupid questions with only one answer, and when you
give the one answer, you are supposedly on their side.
When I see any of these techniques in play, especially in
politics, I automatically shut down to whatever is being said. Both at a
personal level, because I wasn't taught to talk about others this way, and at a
political level, because I wish we wouldn't keep voting for polarized gridlock
government every year. Meanwhile, I am looking forward to the second week in
November, when it will hopefully be safe to go back on Facebook again.
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