politics is pursuit or use of power, influence, or authority. ever-presence of competition requires support of others, so politics depends on suasion.it's akin to selling, so it operates in the metaphorical "marketplace of ideas"—though it also makes opportunistic use of any factor perceived to give advantage over opponents: charm or charisma, esteem or notoriety, physical attractiveness, wealth, personal history....
politics also draws concepts and images from the information environment, including games and sports, since it is also akin to play. thus, in the political "arena," we hear "home run," "curve ball," "slam dunk," "full-court press," "fast break," "media blitz," and "verbal jujitsu"—the last two unusual in that they came from war and from enemies, one imported to sports slang first, the other as a sport in itself.
such words and phrases appear in media comment and in political rhetoric, but greater significance lies in application of the concepts to strategy. recall what wellington said about waterloo being won on the playing fields of eton. the difference between sport, politics, and war is mainly a matter of degree. once the name of the game is known, the rules are known without further discussion or conspiracy. "king of the hill" is the bigger game: entirely improvisational, a player need only observe his friends to know whom to attack and how.
ultimately, though, it comes back to selling—or, rather, marketing. images, rhetoric, and strategy are used to gain public support, whether for election, legislation, or policy. business long ago learned advertising and public relations can motivate buying behavior. it didn't take long for politicians to begin to imitate industry—monkey see, monkey do.
marketing is a kind of education or indoctrination. the techniques of advertising and pr train the audience, which learns mainly by association and repeated exposure. aristotle's essay on rhetoric has a chapter titled "fear and trust," which advises a speaker to associate an opponent's ideas with something feared by the audience, and to win their trust for himself, his party, and his ideas as the solution to those fears.
hitler's "big lie" technique worked not because of the size or outrageousness of the lie but because of repetition. because today's young folk have heard it so often during their lives, many fully expect to get no social security at retirement, so they tend to be receptive to schemes that claim to let them keep the money. their support may well turn their fears into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
memory makes no distinction between true and false. intellect and intuition can know the difference, but both can be fooled—by false data, logical fallacies, and pleasant or unpleasant associations—so they need training to get and keep in shape. in addition, reason gets clouded by feelings, so the ability to remain objective and make valid inferences depends on ability to suspend emotion.
marketing techniques exploit both strengths and weaknesses of memory—its ability to learn and its inability to discriminate—and suppress critical thinking by using emotional associations such as attractive actors and models, children and childhood, home, family, country, and symbols related to them, which evoke love, fear, greed, trust, and so forth. trained voices and body language help produce the desired response.
the great danger of gaining support by conditioning the audience is that it may produce mass phobia. a person can develop intense fear of something quite harmless by hearing it repeatedly associated with something threatening.
unfortunately, many politicians have done just that to their opponents—probably even before aristotle. in my lifetime, political careers have been made and broken by red-baiting, gay-baiting, and terrorist-baiting.
when i listen to talk shows or watch "washington journal" on c-span, almost every day i hear at least one caller whose words are filled with denial, rationalization, and projection, and whose voice is tense with anxiety about a UN-led conspiracy to take away US sovereignty thru world government and gun control or to destroy innocent life or to undermine the institution of marriage.
and now i've seen pics of brit tourists in nyc forced to kneel in handcuffs and heard reports of a brazilian running for a train in london and getting shot 8 times. when a cop kills an innocent man that way, it's a victory for terrorists.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.well, yeah, but maybe he shd've added greed, ignorance, aggression, poverty, disease, disaster, accident, ego....
—FDR, march 4,1933
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