Yesterday I caught a TV ad directly attacking the EPA as a job killer with outrageous, frightening imagery. It shows a corral with people peering through a fence like prisoners, and cuts to a frightened-looking middle-aged guy, white-collar type climbing onto the back of a Brahma bull. The gate opens and the bull charges out into the ring with the man frantically trying to hang on. The camera cuts to a line of anxious looking people who are apparently next to ride the bull. As the man goes flying, there's a quick close up of a middle-aged woman who's going to be the next victim. There's a flash shot of a rodeo clown grinning maniacally as a rider goes flying. Victim after victim follows. Meanwhile, a narrator intones the message - from the coal industry of course.
Leap over the squiggle for more.
Here's the video in question:
Here's a transcript of the narration from the 30 second video:
Today, too many Americans are just trying to hang onto their jobs. So why is the EPA in a rush to push regulations that would saddle Americans with higher energy costs and throw even more of us out of work? The EPA needs to slow down; tell Congress to make sure they do.
Visit America’s Power dot org to learn what you can do.
(in small print across the screen towards the end)
Paid for by American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity
learn more at americaspower.org copyright ACCCE 2011
How They're Reprogramming Your Brain
This is a textbook example of an attack ad designed to short circuit honest debate. In 30 seconds of confusing imagery, viewers are bombarded with a scary scene, anxious people with slow-mo shots of their faces showing fear, at least one really frightening anonymous rodeo clown, and a lot of motion while the announcer drones through the message. The video ends with the "Clean Coal - AmericasPower.org" animated logo of a power cord plugging into a lump of coal.
Here's how it works. 30 seconds is not enough time for a reasoned debate of course - nor would we expect one. The words by themselves are not that outrageous - one-sided half-truths at best - but okay. What really makes this so outrageous is the imagery with the words.
It's an effective technique - get people to make unthinking associations with something to shape the way they think about that thing. They can be positive or negative associations. Images that invoke a strong emotional response go right to the lizard part of our brain - and we're all hard-wired to respond to things like people displaying fear or a threat message like gaping jaws. This emotional response greatly strengthens the memories that get made. (Bob Harris detailed how he used this as a learning technique to become a Jeopardy Grand Champion in The Prisoner of Trebekistan.)
It also means that the focus of those memories - in this case the EPA - invokes that emotional response every time the EPA comes up in the person's thoughts after seeing this ad enough times, or the same message elsewhere.(Here, here, here, here, and so on.) Repetition of a coordinated message is how the Right Wing Echo Machine is able to make people hate the EPA or any other target without quite understanding why they do. It makes them almost impossible to fight with facts and reason - because people are wired so that emotion trumps reason most of the time.
How To Take Back Control of Your Brain
Just because conservatives disparage evolution doesn't mean they won't make use of it to further their ends. Using emotion to create strong memories and trigger unthinking reactions used to be an advantage to our distant ancestors, when stopping to think about how to respond to a threat was an unaffordable luxury. Those who didn't make the right decision within a fraction of a second didn't survive to pass on their genes. (Don't get eaten. Don't fall off cliff. Don't sit and watch thundering herd coming at you.) An immediate threat calls for an immediate response.
But civilization depends on the ability to evaluate and handle threats over the long term as well, the Long Now. Instinctive responses can't cope with that. We have to learn how to resist the unthinking responses or use them to our advantage. The ad above triggered an immediate emotional response in me: BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BULLSHIT! But - only because I'd learned enough to disregard the superficial threat to perceive the real one.
The reason humans as a species take a long time to mature is because our ancestors effectively made a bet a long time ago that the ability to learn over an extended period and pass that knowledge on to our young was an evolutionary strategy for survival. Education, learning, experience - the ability to do more than react to our emotions has helped us prevail as predators and survive as prey. We disregard this at our peril.
BUT... we didn't abandon emotional responses either. Even long-term strategies need moment to moment reinforcement by emotional responses. Learning to reward long term thinking by making people feel good about it is what we have to do if we are going to survive. We're facing a crisis as a species because certain of our members have become fixated on immediate gratification and are masters at manipulating our emotions for their immediate gain. They've piled up vast amounts of money doing so, too. Think they're on to something?
If we can't find a way to tap into the strength of emotional responses the way "Clean" Coal is doing with that ad, all the facts and reason in the world aren't going to be enough to counter the fear and anger being raised against our own best interests for private profit. What we need is informed passion.
Can you feel it? Since you're here reading this, odds are you can. But... can we make it contagious? We'd better learn how while there's still time.
10:00 AM PT: Update: Paul Krugman has a blog post today which goes right to the lying black heart of Big Coal's propaganda here.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/...
Here's a partial quote:
"It’s important to be clear about what this means. It does not necessarily say that we should end the use of coal-generated electricity. What it says, instead, is that consumers are paying much too low a price for coal-generated electricity, because the price they pay does not take account of the very large external costs associated with generation. If consumers did have to pay the full cost, they would use much less electricity from coal — maybe none, but that would depend on the alternatives."
4:16 PM PT: Hat Tip to oschwar for remembering an old SNL skit that demonstrates just how "clean" coal really works.
http://www.channels.com/...
Sun Oct 02, 2011 at 7:40 AM PT: Sunday Morning Update - just caught another ad from the group. This one takes a higher road. It shows people much like those in the video above, in a boxing ring getting knocked down. Then they pick themselves up and keep going. The narration is all about how America can take a punch - so to speak - and recover; and Clean Coal is part of the answer. A Big part... This one's all about generating positive feelings about coal - the other side of the same coin.