[POLITICS] Hitting Bush in his base

[jducoeur]

Y'know, sometimes I think that the Democrats are way too nice for their own good. I mean, think about if someone in the Bible Belt hit Bush with the sort of nasty tactics that the Republicans have been tending towards. You point out that Bush is a skilled and masterful liar, plus

• He has fomented wars deliberately, and done so in a way that's almost guaranteed to start more.


• He is blighting the environment.


• He has quite carefully and intentionally tweaked the economy of this country so that the poorest are left to starve.


• He has caused the needless deaths of thousands through his blunderings in other countries.

You don't have to call him the beast of the Apocalypse. Just present those facts in that order, and plenty of people (most of them Bush's core supporters) will see the conclusion. Some of them would be offended, of course (so this really couldn't come from anyone anywhere near the Kerry campaign), but it would set the conspiracy theorists and hardcore fundamentalists a-buzzing, introducing doubt among his surest supporters...

Comments

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

You point out that Bush is a skilled and masterful liar

Is he really that good? (:-)

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. He may not seem that way to a relatively intelligent, informed audience, who can see through it. But that's not who he's targeting (such people being lost to him anyway). His techniques work *extremely* well on the Average Voter.

[jducoeur]

Just so. Most people don't respond nearly as much to consistent argumentation as to *confidence*. And at least in a prepared-speech environment, Bush follows Reagan's example quite well: if you tell the Big Lie often enough and confidently enough, most people will internalize it pretty effectively.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

One of the strongest Bush supporters I know is on John's family email list. He won't even listen to criticism of the President. I believe that pointing out facts to most of these folks is as useless as trying to convince any other True Believer that his religion won't stand up to critical analysis. However, one must make the attempt.

The thing that is currently annoying me is the raft of Kerry-bashing disinformation emails, which are chronicled (and dissected as mostly false) at Snopes.com -- look in the "new" page list and you'll see a lot. Someone is creating these intentionally as part of the campaign. Dirty tactics.

We'll be getting a Kerry lawn sign next week.

Lawn Signs

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

Where *do* you get lawn signs from? I've got enough road frontage, I could set up a Burma Shave sequence!
-- Dagonell

Re: Lawn Signs

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Kinko's?

Re: Lawn Signs

[sjo.livejournal.com]

http://www.kerrygear.com/

Re: Lawn Signs

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Either buy them online or get them for free from a local Kerry office, which is what we're doing.

[tangerinpenguin.livejournal.com]

Re: Kerry-bashing disinformation, it will be interesting to see what (if anything) comes of the WaPo article with the military records for the lead basher where his own citation documentation agrees with Kerry (and his shipmates), contradicting what he's now claiming.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I believe jducoeur is going for the "Fire with fire" approach. The Bush supporters believe in the advertising-model of truth -- say it enough times, and it becomes true in the minds of the listener, even if it is blatantly false. So, we say "liar!" as many times as we can, just to balance out.

Of course, there might be problems with the optimistic view -- that if you say X ten times and I say NOT X ten times, then whichever one is actually true will eventually win out. And we're dealing with organizations (most obviously, organized religion) that are very good at making people believe things that cannot be proven, and disbelieve things that can, strictly because they say so. So we're fighting an uphill battle, sure -- but as you say, one must make the attempt.

[jducoeur]

So, we say "liar!" as many times as we can, just to balance out.

Yaas. I remain firmly of the opinion that this is the only really effective tactic against Bush. His strength is the force of belief -- the folks who believe in him tend to do so with near-religious conviction.

Hence, the only sensible approach is to introduce Doubt. The thing about blind faith is that it's brittle: rock-solid up to a point, but it usually shatters rather than bends. Making it shatter is *not* easy, but Doubt tends to be cumulative. So I keep at this particular concept, approaching it from a variety of directions.

The suggestion above is slightly facetious, but only slightly. If he is cynical enough to use religion as a political tool (which he most certainly is), then it's only fair to use it against him.

And frankly, it's almost frighteningly easy to make a solid case that Bush *is* the Beast of Revelations. I'd bet that I could come up with a ten-page screed proving it beyond a shadow of a doubt if I really cared to do so, but it's far more effective to hint at it, and let the true believers take the ball and run with it. There'd be a certain ironic justice in turning his most fanatical core against him...

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

The problem is that the folks of near-religious conviction do not examine those convictions.

... and another thing: I've been musing recently about the sources of information in the USA these days. Really conservative folks listen to conservative radio, TV, etc. Anything that is different is labeled a nutcase fringie commie freak and is dismissed immediately. The liberals do the same. There are very few people who seek out 1: sources to validate the feel-good information they've recieved and 2: other opinions. I am just as bad as the rest of us in this regard.

I don't know if it's apathy, fervor, or information overload, and I don't know how to solve it. But whatever it is, is the death of democracy.

[jducoeur]

It's essentially a religious war. And yes, that's a very scary prospect.

I try to keep myself fairly open, but yes, I'm sure that I filter my inputs pretty heavily as well. It's the interesting consequence of the information society: it is *very* easy to filter your information consumption to support your own worldview.

I often refer to Massachusetts as a Reality Warp, simply to remind myself that the cozy consensus that is so easy to find here is wildly at odds with the view in most of the country...

[jducoeur]

I believe that pointing out facts to most of these folks is as useless as trying to convince any other True Believer that his religion won't stand up to critical analysis.

True, but note that what I'm proposing here isn't critical analysis. It's intentionally playing one religion off against another. It would only work for a fairly small subset (at best), but this election looks like it's going to be all about the small subsets...

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Just present those facts in that order...

One problem is that those aren't facts. That Bush has "blighted the environment" is an opinion, presumably derived from a list of his administrative actions. If you simply claim that this is the case, others will likely not accept it without proof or support. And if you present htem with the same list of actions two problems arise -

1)They will generally twig to whom you are referring too quickly, and their brains shut down in resistance.

2)They may come to a different conclusion. One man's Blight is another man's Economic Necessity.