Our political language is rhetoric meant for making a political point in it’s own context for the advantage of the speaker’s political goals.
Thus political language isn’t consistent.
Thus people who aim for consistency in their political beliefs find themselves making odd conclusions that have nothing to do with anything other than allowing themselves to be consistent.
A man is for freedom ->
Political actors use freedom as rhetoric in their political messages ->
Consistent Man then, since he wants to be consistent, must agree with political message.
As everything becomes political this consistency principle erodes more of the man’s will as he seeks consistency.
Robert Cialdini listed consistency as 1 of the 6 core principles of persuasion. We like to be consistent and we like other people to be consistent. And people who are paid to know this stuff know how to use that against us.
A man must ignore everything smelling political or he must give himself to the political machine or he must decide what he deeply believes as to see upstream and downstream of the rhetoric.
He can be one of those three or become the political actor who has no need of such principles but needs the language to convince the crowd.
Don’t hate the player hate the game.
And if I’m not going to play the game is it worth deciding what I believe and withstanding the social stress of being an outsider? Surely the answer isn’t voting.
And if you are going to “do something about it” wouldn’t it be best to be the 4th kind of person and become the political actor playing the part for the best outcome?
No wonder politics is a blood sport.
The absolute nonsense of the daily dramas and the silliness of the daily news is enough make healthy people to stay away from it. Keeping up with and feeling stress by what other people are saying about the news is horrible time spent.
And there is no other politics. It has to be a blood sport. If you are playing and there isn’t any blood then what you are playing isn’t politics, it’s ceremonial democracy.
We have this funny idea where we think catching the other side in the wrong is the best thing that can happen to the country. All will see how that those people really are monsters and the people will rise up! When what you need is to do something your enemies hate but do it harder and faster than they can do it to you. If you are in charge, this holds and if you are wanting to be in charge you have to go even bigger.
It’s the side that has a consistency over rhetoric that is going to win. The crowd can’t resist the knowledge that there is someone who is doing something and no one has stopped him yet. The person who is doing the thing that others said couldn’t be done and no words will