One of the basic things conservatives need to learn is the field of persuasion. In the political world, this is the ability to frame issues, responses, questions, seed appropriate responses, and move your audience, whatever that audience may be, toward your point of view.
For most of us in the political wars, persuasion is completely outside our experience, at right angles to any and everything we’ve ever done. Why? Mostly because conservatives operate at some level in what they believe to be a fact-based world. The problem with this is that the left doesn’t, so we have to go where they are playing.
And the left, which has been operating in the persuasion world (or dimension for you SciFi fans) for decades, has a long history of only using facts when it advantages them.
So, how do we take our game to their home field and kick their sorry backsides from here to Juneau and back? Answer: We MUST get smart in the world of persuasion.
There are a bunch of places to learn this. Scott Adams is one of the popularly accessible instructors. So is Donald Trump, who learned his world-class expertise sitting in Normal Vincent Peale’s church in NYC with his parents as a kid. Other than AOC, who has some mad persuasion skills (which is why the democrats selected her as a congressional candidate), Trump is one of the very best practitioners of this art in the political world today. There are multiple reading lists out there for the interested reader. I highly recommend any time poking through them.
Now that we operate in a world where facts are all but meaningless, what do we do? We start learning the tools of persuasion and how to use them.
One such tool is the power of “yes.”
How many political (or any other disputes) proceed on an entirely predictable path? Answer: Almost all of them. How do you win arguments in a world where facts no longer matter? Answer: By being unpredictable, not unlike the Sun Tsu Art of War admonition to avoid predictability.
When the political left proposes something, anything, everything outrageous, what is our kneejerk reaction as conservatives? Usually, to rise up with righteous anger yelling some version of “No! No! A thousand times no!” Sometimes we go so far as to call them communists, which doesn’t work anymore, 30+ years after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, mostly because it isn’t taught in school.
How predictable is that reaction? Completely, as it our standard response. And guess what, the left is prepared for it. Worse, they anticipate it, have planned for it, and have their next series of responses ready based on it. We’ve been doing this back and forth for a century with the end result being the current democrat infestation in institutions and politics nationwide.
Is there any other way to proceed? Certainly. One method would be to embrace the power of “yes”, the most powerful response in the persuasion world. In this world, “yes” doesn’t mean agreement. Rather, it means that you join the fight on their grounds, their battlefield, their field of play. Think of it as verbal jujitsu, using their body, strength, lean and momentum against them.
When you say “yes”, you unsettle the left, giving you an opening for some alternative approaches. And those approaches are generally some version of “yes, but…” or “yes, and…” You agree to their premise and use that agreement as a vehicle to take them to a place they never expected or wanted to travel to.
How would this work?
In the example of Meg Zalatel’s proposed Rat Line, where neighbors call in complaints about other neighbors’ failure to wear masks, a “yes” will lead directly to a Rat Line filled with obscenities aimed at the Assembly or perhaps a Rat Line that will do a daily release of names and contact information of people using it to the general public.
Another example would be BLM’s claim of systemic racism. In this they are right about the systemic but incorrect about where it is coming from. In the US today, the source of systemic racism is not angry white males. Rather it is the teachers’ unions who in lockstep with elected democrats have for decades denied a good education (the only way out of being downtrodden) to minorities (and everybody else).
In the case of climate change and a so-called carbon free energy future, a “yes” leads us directly to widespread adoption and use of GenIV nuclear reactors which are completely carbon—free and safe. This turns the greens into pro-nuke energy advocates, something those of us on the right would be perfectly happy with.
The strength of this response is to give the left the political rope they want and tie it around their scrawny little necks while taking them to places and conclusions they never anticipate, much less want.
The left already has won the persuasion war by pointing out a problem, whatever it is, and ginning up public outrage, so the media and the general public is looking where they want them to look. They have already set the persuasion foundation that we have a problem. We win the argument by agreeing with them that yes, there is a problem, and pulling them in directions for a solution they never anticipated much less want to go.
Think of this as verbal jujitsu rather than an agreement. Think of it in terms of Sun Tsu. They expect us to say no, which is predictable. Time to start saying yes, which is completely unpredictable, though when we do so, we MUST have an alternate direction they neither anticipate nor want to travel. But because they gave the push, broached the issue publicly, laid the persuasion foundation, they moved us a lot farther toward OUR solution than would otherwise be possible. Thank them for their help on our way toward our solution.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
