9 Responses to “Newsweek on the power of fear in politics”

1. 1 dave on December 19th, 2007 7:51 am

   Unless of course we’re talking about Al Gore, then it’s ok I guess

2. 2 Jill Miller Zimon on December 19th, 2007 8:07 am

   Concerns about global warming existed long before Gore was even born Dave. There’s no smiley face there.

3. 3 Mark McNally on December 19th, 2007 9:45 am

   Jill,

   “Concerns about global warming existed long before Gore was even born Dave.”

   And we have always been at war with Eurasia.

   In 1975 Time and Newsweek were selling fear over global cooling and the next ice age.

   Nice Orwellian mind trick attempt though.

4. 4 Jill Miller Zimon on December 19th, 2007 9:51 am

   Get real and in present time, gentlemen, instead of focusing on a blame game. Loving the even if arguments, even if every single solitary word you type and make appear anywhere points to all these lovely points you’re making, the fact is that right now, we have an administration and presidential candidates who use fear to try and get what they want.

   Btw, you don’t seem notice how I haven’t said that it’s only one person or one party that uses fear.

   But then you’re too busy trying to figure out where to point your finger.

5. 5 dave on December 19th, 2007 10:09 am

   Jill, fear is a real and visceral human emotion. It is also an extremely healthy emotion if it’s directed toward something that is real.

   And therein lies the debate.

   Jill, if you’re arguing against overhyping objects of fear, I’m with you.

   But if you’re arguing against the use of fear itself. Well, that’s not only very quixotic of you, it’s also unrealistic and unhealthy.

   I guess it depends on what you mean by proliferate.

6. 6 Jill Miller Zimon on December 19th, 2007 10:14 am

   Dave, fear is an emotion that exists.

   It is the creation and use of fear, based on anxieties that do not exist in reality, that I oppose. Our thoughts overlap but they are not in sync.

   I am arguing against the use of and overhyping of fear as a motivator to get people to vote a particular way – no matter who uses it, people or issues.

   You know I have quixotic tendencies, Dave – I have no problem with that part of me.

   We owe it to ourselves to find better ways. Fear is dulled and numbed and useless if everything scares you. It loses all relevance.

7. 7 Mark McNally on December 19th, 2007 10:54 am

   Jill,

   I busted you on your obsfuscation about how long people have been pushing the global warming hysteria, and you response was perfectly Clintonian.

   Did you bite your lip when writing “blame game”.

8. 8 Keith on December 19th, 2007 12:06 pm

   Jill why do you even bother trying to engage cretins?

   As for the Newsweek article, basically what it tells me is something I figured out long ago: the human race isn’t nearly as evolved as it likes to pretend it is. We are still ruled by our primal emotions. However, one thing can help overrule irrational primal reactions: education and awareness. This is where too many Americans and conservatives in general, come up short. When you have a real awareness of science, sociology and cultures, then one can override the primal fear response and make mature and intelligent decisions about the challenges the human race faces.

   I had to read through pages of typical Newsweek psychodreck to get to the nut of the issue, at least politically:

   “The key to emotional language is its simplicity and clarity,” says Republican pollster Frank Luntz. “It has to be immediately believable and authentic. If it requires you to think, it’s less powerful; if it requires you to explain, it’s less powerful.”

   compare with:

   “All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be. But if, as in propaganda for sticking out a war, the aim is to influence a whole people, we must avoid excessive intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be extended in this direction.

   The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more effective it will be. And this is the best proof of the soundness or unsoundness of a propaganda campaign, and not success pleasing a few scholars or young aesthetes.

   The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. The fact that our bright boys do not understand this merely shows how mentally lazy and conceited they are.

   Once understood how necessary it is for propaganda in be adjusted to the broad mass, the following rule results:

   It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided, like scientific instruction, for instance.

   The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out.”

   Go ahead and take a wild guess as to who wrote the above paragraphs. Demagogues of the right have learned well from their master and that is why, unfortunately, high minded appeals based on science about global climate change can easily be overridden by simply shouted denials based on fear of change. It works pretty well almost every time. Unfortunately the left has not learned this lesson, or, having learned it, cannot bring themselves to stoop to this level of reptilian brain appeal. The more the left tries the more ‘elitist’ it sounds to the masses (whose ‘dumbing down’ is strangely blamed on leftist educators!). Like it or not, the right knows how to move a mob and these tactics are having the desired result on the American populace.

9. 9 Jill Miller Zimon on December 19th, 2007 12:57 pm

   Mark – do you have any idea how tied you are to labels? Wow. I don’t know what you’re talking about thank God. I came up with blame game all by myself, thanks.

   sheesh

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