Many people operate primarily on the emotional level. That’s a polite way of saying they’re stupid. Idiots. Like a child who’d rather have 4 shiny pennies than one tiny dime.
If we’re not going to round them up (which, give me the infinity gauntlet and…) then we need to appeal to their idiot emotions. Find something they consider in-group, and frame whatever reasonable policy they’re opposing so their benefits are foregrounded.
This is a game you won’t win long term. Authoritarians and idiots go together like peanut butter and jelly. And there are so many idiots. You’ll never outdo a fascist demagogue talking to idiots. They don’t give two shits about lying to the idiots to get their way. And the idiots will never question the lies because they are fucking stupid. And this is the quintessential tension: The people smart enough to engage the fascists have so much better shit to do with their lives than accumulating political power by lying to idiots. So essentially politics becomes keeping the fascists out instead of whatever else it should be.
Many people operate primarily on the emotional level. That’s a polite way of saying they’re stupid. Idiots. Like a child who’d rather have 4 shiny pennies than one tiny dime.
If we’re not going to round them up (which, give me the infinity gauntlet and…) then we need to appeal to their idiot emotions. Find something they consider in-group, and frame whatever reasonable policy they’re opposing so their benefits are foregrounded.
This is a game you won’t win long term. Authoritarians and idiots go together like peanut butter and jelly. And there are so many idiots. You’ll never outdo a fascist demagogue talking to idiots. They don’t give two shits about lying to the idiots to get their way. And the idiots will never question the lies because they are fucking stupid. And this is the quintessential tension: The people smart enough to engage the fascists have so much better shit to do with their lives than accumulating political power by lying to idiots. So essentially politics becomes keeping the fascists out instead of whatever else it should be.