It's a tactic that's older than politics itself, but there's a reason that it's stuck around for thousands of years: It works. For the sake of brevity I'm going to keep this trimmed down to only the last year or two, because otherwise this thread would become an absolute nightmare of references dating all the way back to the Xia dynasty, and I'd rather it be a little more relative to the current discussion instead of harping on about anti-Mongolian propaganda from 1279 BCE.
Fear is one of the laziest, crudest, and lowest methods of persuasion known to man, so it doesn't take a tremendous amount of brain power to work out why it's found a comfortable, little home in politics. It's the perfect route for anyone trying to take advantage of you, and they'll never fail to veer a corner as hard as they can if you open up a pathway for them.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle and in any country have become exceedingly good at it too, and if you don't know what you're looking for then it's very likely that you've fallen for the trap a thousand times over and you've never even noticed it. The politics of fear are deep-rooted, insidious, and remarkably subtle at times. We've become a society driven on fear, because fear creates an instantaneous, knee-jerk reaction that people can exploit to get what they want out of you.
Think back to every political deal you were ever sold. We have to pass ObamaCare otherwise healthcare is doomed! We can't repeal ObamaCare, people would die! We have to make a deal with Iran or they'll get nuclear weapons! We can't vote for Trump, he'll start World War 3, crash the economy, kick out all the Mexicans, and put all the gays in concentration camps! We can't retaliate against Assad, that's the Deep State wanting to kick off another world war! Rosenstein is a Deep State plant! Sessions has been corrupted and he needs to go now!
She doesn't identify the bill, doesn't specify which GOP members are involved so that their constituents can contact them, she doesn't cite any sources, and she doesn't even tell you that the GOP already has a 42-seat majority in the House, so whatever this "petition" happens to be, it has a snowball's chance in Hell because discharge petitions require an absolute majority to pass. Cernovich has done this too, so has Posobiec, Paul Joseph Watson, Coulter, Hannity, Tucker and even VachelLindsay, who's a Twitter user that I otherwise hold in fairly high-regard. This is not a problem or tactic exclusive to the Democrats, they just use it more frequently and more overtly than Republicans tend to, but both sides do this.
And then we elected Donald Trump.
@BlastDoors41 had asked me about Trump's psychology in another thread a day or so ago, and it's left a lot of questions rolling around in my head ever since. This isn't exactly on the same train of thought, but I think that it's an incredibly important distinction between Trump and every other politician we've seen for a very long time, now. Trump does not use fear on the audience. He'll issue warnings, he'll assign blame, but he won't say, "Build this wall or people will die." He'll say, "___ is happening, and here's how we can fix it."
When his opponent moves to scare the audience, Trump moves to simultaneously reassure the audience that there is nothing to fear, and then makes certain that his opponent is afraid of him. He does not make the audience fear his opponent, he makes the opponent fear him. I have (almost) never seen a politician or even a political pundit offer a counter to fear-based persuasion before Donald Trump came into office, and I've certainly never seen a politician do it this consistently.
An individual that is educated and assured on the specifics of a topic to the point where they know they are not under any threat is entirely impervious to fear-based persuasion. Fear has long been the biggest weapon in the politicians' and media's pocket; they've been using it for a long time, and they're using it right now. However, we've been presented with an alternative strategy now, and with the advent of the information age and the internet especially, we've been given the largest opportunity to inoculate ourselves against fear, and it's so easy to do that it's almost laughable.
All you need to do is dismiss the opinions of the doomsayers, because they're not interested in your well-being and they're not interested in educating you, because then you'd no longer be useful to them. They only want you to be afraid so that they can manipulate you. If you take that away from them, then you've already torn their largest weapon right out of their hands.
Last edited:
