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Aug. 7th, 2016 11:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionSpeaking of terms of art, is there a special one for deliberate projection in the political sphere? That "I know you are but what am I" thing that Fox News always does? Trump's doing it now by painting Clinton as unhinged - and of course was doing it before when calling her crooked. I suppose the point is to suggest either equivalent guilt (they're all the same anyway) or that suggesting such things is just what political campaigns do regardless of the facts. And for true believers it creates the same "how dare they" feeling that I have, the sense that Big Lie-level projection is occurring, perhaps aided by how we all remember the unfairness of the I'm Rubber technique from childhood.
So it performs different work on the 3 groups:
1. Supporters: fury that the other side had, to their minds, used the very tactic you're using.
2. Undecided: confusion about who's guilty of what, leading to condemning both parties or neither.
3. Opponents' supporters: fury that you're using this tactic.
Doesn't tend to turn a negative story into a positive, but it can wipe the slate clean again. It can only really work when your base is disaffected from mainstream, fact-based media, your opponent's sufficiently high-info that you have no shot at them, and the undecided don't delve much into details. I.e. only for the present conservative movement, but for them it can work over and over and over. And is a big part of how big lies have gradually become self-sabotagingly huge ones.
So it performs different work on the 3 groups:
1. Supporters: fury that the other side had, to their minds, used the very tactic you're using.
2. Undecided: confusion about who's guilty of what, leading to condemning both parties or neither.
3. Opponents' supporters: fury that you're using this tactic.
Doesn't tend to turn a negative story into a positive, but it can wipe the slate clean again. It can only really work when your base is disaffected from mainstream, fact-based media, your opponent's sufficiently high-info that you have no shot at them, and the undecided don't delve much into details. I.e. only for the present conservative movement, but for them it can work over and over and over. And is a big part of how big lies have gradually become self-sabotagingly huge ones.
