Advocacy has three pillars:
Reason: The facts involved with the advocacy are linked toward a call to action in a self-consistent, fallacy free, logical, common sense way. The advocate takes facts, frames them into context, linking them together in a way that compels others to act on, identify with, or simply be impacted by the advocacy. Rational.
Character: When we are acting as advocates our own character has a significant impact on the potential of the advocacy to be successful. Good advocacy being delivered by a buffoon or ass, for example, won't be given the credence the very same advocacy would be when delivered by somebody of respectable character. Credence.
Emotion: Advocacy often involves strong emotional components. In fact, good advocacy mandates emotional resonance as much as it does the other pillars. It is often a mistake to diminish emotional arguments when doing advocacy, and this is probably the most common mistake or confusion between advocacy and the more formal debate. Empathy.
Though we so often frame politics in terms of debate, really it's advocacy more than it is anything else. We are looking to find common ground and drive people toward consensus more than anything else.
So what does this have to do with personification vs vilification? Read on for some potent advocacy techniques you can use to impact others and punch through the Republican noise machine!
Please thank this Kossack, who prodded me into writing this. After some light discussion on Kosmail, it became obvious this diary dovetailed nicely. IMHO, worth a complimentary read.
As we near the election season the Republican noise machine is predictably kicking into high gear. From now, until it's basically over they will be engaging in some of the most ugly vilification there is and they will be doing it non stop using every wedge issue, false scandal, lie they can, appealing to the chumps in the hopes they can score enough votes to defeat President Obama.
What I find particularly frustrating is the sheer noise level. Facts don't appear to matter all that much to these people. They really don't care. Some of them can't care because they've given themselves up to blind zealotry on a number of basic issues: Pro-life, no new taxes, free markets, gay marriage... you all know the list. Many of them are racists, bigots and theocrats.
Let's start with a few absolutes. There are actually very few absolutes and progressives are on the right side of three very big, very important ones:
Racism, theocracy and bigotry are never OK. Never ever.
When we can frame things in terms of these three, we win period. We win because it's impossible to actually mount a credible defense for those three without revealing serious character or reasoning issues.
Most of the trouble we have as advocates is actually getting to use that framing properly. The moment we do, or others do, the right will vilify anyone and everyone, or they will shout it down or change the subject to something they know makes a lot of noise, such as abortion.
They do this because abortion is a strong subject that tends to break down whatever discussion was happening before it is invoked, which nicely side steps any losing issue for them.
GOP zealots almost never have strong facts on their side. A good, solid, effective advocate can communicate their cause with clarity, resonating on all three pillars. Since they are lacking facts, they are left with only two: Character and Emotion.
This is why they vilify and so often run against things and people. Without the facts, it's impossible to do good advocacy, leaving them with very noisy, negative advocacy. What they lack in advocacy quality they make up for in sheer advocacy volume or noise.
For abortion which is quite possibly the most frequent detractor, here is the formula:
Character. Their general approach is to put people on the defense so they can say stuff like, "SURELY YOU DON'T KILL BABIES" When ever advocacy contains a strong link to somebody of character that isn't aligned with their desired policy outcome they will attack that character just as easily as they attack your character, or anyone's character. When they are attacking, it's "BABY KILLER", when they are attacked, it's "AT LEAST I AM NOT A BABY KILLER", wash, rinse, repeat.
Reason. Their usual approach here is to frame opinion and beliefs as facts or truths hoping people don't think too hard. They use religion, famous people, anything they can to give that opinion and or belief credence. When people do actually think to ask some questions, or bring up real facts or logic, they fall back on "BABY KILLER!" Wash, rinse, repeat.
Emotion. This is their strongest suit. They are very good at presenting strong advocacy that calls for empathy. Anything seen as good or that people might identify with such as already born and viable babies, world leaders, famous people and others are linked to the fetus and even the mere act of sex, depending on the level of zealotry in play. The idea here is simple: Associate all things good with their preferred policy outcome. If they are presented with facts or hard choices, they will go back to the basics of vilification, invoke God quickly, followed with "BABY KILLER"
As you can see, just stating hard facts in a rational way won't work. They will get noisy, and if one of them sees another one raise the noise level, they all do it until the trouble, whatever it is or whoever it is, gets shouted down. It's painful enough to avoid, which suits them just fine because avoidance means no counter advocacy and general dominance in the sphere of discourse whatever it is.
Look for this pattern on other issues. It's very similar. If they don't use "BABY KILLER", they might go for "SOCIALIST" if they are more the free market types than they are pro-lifers, or they might just mix it up and use both!
Time for a real life example:
I have a small venue where I talk politics with others. They are a diverse crowd, but generally rational. I like them how they are. We get a new signup who is hard core libertarian free market fundamentalist, religious fundamentalist and pro-life fundamentalist. Just toxic. Seriously.
Within no time at all, what was a nice place to talk about politics with people I like became a free market, pro life hell hole! The number of posts was astonishing! Nobody could finish a single thread of discussion or thought without this person dominating it with toxic rhetoric filled with useless logic, vilification and strong emotional arguments, rarely supportable with solid facts and reason.
Non fucking stop. People were leaving the place, and that is part of the intent. It is a lot like the religious people who just can't resist a place where people gather to get the word out. These people don't want any discussion happening without "balance" to make it "fair" which means they are all about blathering out their message and not at all about actual dialogue.
With them, it's about the message period. The people don't matter. In fact, nothing else really does. It's just the message. Get it out there and keep it out there no matter what.
We see these people everywhere. They are on the radio, they are on the TV, they are on your mailing list, they are in your church, they are at the club, they are online, in your Facebook, blog, local paper, you name it. Their advocacy is ugly and there is a lot of it, because they know it works.
It works in two ways:
One way is to simply shut all other reasonable discussion down. That's to their advantage. They know the power of group dynamics and how a few strong voices can sway the crowd and they are all about making sure that doesn't happen.
This is what they did with all those damn town hall meetings over the ACA.
The other way is making damn sure nobody leaves the fold. If somebody in that fold starts to waver, they get reminded regularly about how they too will be vilified, and so they stay quiet, often unable to reach out and get some strength or common ground with others they might be aligned with more closely.
Here is how you stop them:
Personify things. I'll use abortion again as an example. They do it when they frame the fetus as a person. They want you to think of it as a person, and they want you to do that so you will simulate the issue in your own mind, which forces powerful emotion and empathy. The problem is the rest of their advocacy is really crappy, not based on facts and laced with vilification to compensate for that.
To deal with this matter, I decided to combine all three pillars of advocacy together to see if personification trumps vilification. Folks, it does, but it's not pretty, but it does.
For this case, I shopped around for an ugly abortion story with no good choices. A fellow Kossack linked one here where a mother and her daughter were excommunicated from the Catholic Church for getting the daughter an abortion. The daughter was 9, and she was raped by her father, who remained in the Church of all things.
This is an ugly, highly toxic story!
When I put it out there, the painful person went nuts shifting right into vilification and targeted basically everybody. Pissed off proper! The other pro-life minded people joined them and it very quickly became an ugly brawl! It all continued until I asked one simple question:
"What do you say to the little girl who doesn't want to continue?"
I kept asking it, staying calm, letting all the shit just roll off, asking for focus, asking, asking, and providing my own responses, framing it in various ways.
The most interesting thing happened! People really thought about it, because the question forced them to.
When we personify things, we invoke strong reason and emotion because personification is a very realistic simulation of some scenario. What we would do or say to an actual person is much different than what we might say we would do in response to some abstraction or hypothetical. Real people and events provide the context for this to happen.
I could find nobody that would actually admit to forcing the little girl to continue. Some of the most staunch pro-lifers I know said they didn't have it in them, and they did not have anything to say otherwise. It's really easy and compelling to say, "Ok sweetie, don't you worry, we will fix it." and that is the point!
At one point, the hard core person basically said they would force the girl to go to potential viability, then cut her open. They never once actually answered the question, "What do you say to her?" and that was the turning point! Others called them out as being a very ugly person and it all very quickly resolved to that person getting the boot and our politics community being so much better for it.
We are now back to just discussing things. We don't agree, and we've a lot of moderates, some real lefties and progressives and a couple of fairly staunch conservatives too. But we are talking and we are doing our advocacy and we've got some basic common ground on abortion.
The resolution was that abortion is always horrible, but not always the wrong thing to do. A couple won't admit it, but they aren't bringing it up so hard either because they will get asked, "so what would you say to her?" ending that fairly quickly. Everybody knows how ugly that was and everybody knows, whether or not they will say it, that abortion isn't always the wrong thing to do, period, and they know what happened to the zealot who self-marginalized too.
Personification can trump vilification. What you do is find a story that frames the issue in very personal terms and that is very difficult to argue with. You present that story using all three pillars of advocacy. Explore the emotional component, the rational one and the character one, including your own.
Obviously don't post something up you are less than solid on. It will go badly for you. On the other hand, if your character is solid, and the story is solid, this can be a very effective way to break down an absolute or two they claim, while at the same time breaking their vilification toy in a critical way.
When they vilify, call it out as such and simply redirect to the basic personal question you've identified and ask them to answer it, and do not waver from this. Ignore all else, keeping calm and just press in every way you know how. Either they will answer, or they will crack, or the group, if there is one, will start to press or crack. In the end, the real zealots can't do it. They break down with predictable results, self-marginalizing themselves even among their peers.
The right is very authoritarian. They like to dog pile on and they like it when somebody is making a lot of noise for the right reasons and will join right in making their own, signaling to everybody out there like them, "it's OK, we got your back" and that is their goal. It all is to quite literally shout down others until their bizarre policy preferences are seen as normal largely because nobody is really able to say much otherwise over the vilification and sheer volume.
Many of them are wanna be types and joiners though. They don't have what it takes to really go the distance, which is why personification works like it does. Once one steps over the line and actually shows the zealotry in a solid way, the others won't go there for fear of being marginalized, called out for real, having to account for their ugly ways and beliefs.
I'll close this with another realization.
We on the left, progressives in particular, need to be out there signaling to one another as well.
We have the facts.
We have the solid character.
We have the best overall alignment with the needs of our peers and the American people in general.
Because of these things, we have the very best advocacy too, and we have it because we are completely free to employ all three pillars of it! Go ahead and be emotional. Go ahead and be rational, dropping facts out there. Go ahead and show your character through personification! Use it to trump the vilification they always use to shout people like us down.
Good people rub off. Good people are damn tough to argue with, they are admired and respected. Get the stories, your own life experiences, things you can relate to and put them out there in ways that highlight why we have it right and dare those clowns to step up otherwise. A few will, and when they do, you will have them cold, marginalized, cooked because then everybody knows, and it's out in the open.
Daylight is our friend and their foe. Personification is an extremely potent way to put the spotlight on people and really make them think hard. So many things they have heard so many times become automatic and rigid. Personification can punch through that, forcing them to simulate the situation and consider what they themselves would have to say or do in order to be true to the garbage they want to force us all into.
I want to make something else perfectly clear:
This isn't about impacting them. People like this, who are more about the message than the people are damn near lost. It's going to take some personal life experience of their own to come to other realizations. So it's not about them in that way.
It is all about us and moving the conversation toward productive places by marginalizing the worst of the noise. Where we can be heard, we normally win, because our advocacy is potent and our motives just and true.
(block quote for emphasis only)