Communication as Manipulation

We’ve all probably been there. Whether it’s a slick salesman, a persuasive preacher, or a clamoring charity, at least once in our lives, we’ve been convinced to take some action, think some thought, or otherwise exist in a space that is contrary to our base sense of self and order in the universe. When we have been convinced in this way, it is usually because the person doing the convincing is an expert manipulator of the communication process.

Let’s take the stereotype of the used car salesman (forgive the “man,” but it’s typically men who are stereotyped in this manner). A total junker is “a solid commuter car.” That ding you see in the bumper is … well, this is where he wanders off into a story (totally unrelated to the car at hand, but you don’t realize this) about the dangers of runaway shopping carts in the grocery store parking lot. 

Questions you ask receive words in answer, but those words may have absolutely no relation to the question you have asked.

Politicians

One class of people – politicians – have catapulted this into an art form. If you watched the debates in the last political cycle of the United States, you saw some of the most suave evasions on the planet. (No, I’m not talking about a certain Alaska governor’s interviews with a certain CBS anchor either.)

Political commentators are, if anything, even more skilled than the politicians themselves. They are able to take the same issue, but spin the language in such a way as to manipulate their given audience into seeing, hearing, and believing diametrically opposite positions over the same set of facts. Yes, it’s true that there are always two sides to any story and a perspective for each person involved in a discussion. That said, what I’m talking about are such bizarrely opposing understandings of reality that the cannot be reconciled in any way, shape, or form.

Master Manipulator

One of the masters of this form is the venerable Rush Limbaugh. And despite the fact that every time I hear his name I throw up a little in my mouth, I respect him. Not what he does, but rather his amazing skill with language and the ways he uses language to manipulate his audience into believing absolutely insane things.

Aside: I’ve long suspected that Limbaugh started his rise to fame as the conservative champion on a whim just to see if Americans were as sheep-like has he believed. Sadly, he seems to have been right … assuming that my suspicion has any iota of truth to it.

Over on Twitter today, Mark Schumann posted a link to a transcript of a recent Rush show. You can find it here.

If you have any serious interest in really digging into and understanding how communication works, how it can be used for good (or evil), you really need to read this. Trust me.

Yes, yes, take a bath after. But read it.

This isn’t just about taking in opinions different to those that you hold; it’s about communication.

Here’s the trick though. Don’t read it emotionally. If you are a rational person, you will find his diatribe offensive.

(Hint: He accuses President Obama of “Order[ing] the Killing of Three Black Muslim Kids”. Oh, and did I mention that he’s discussing the military operation that obtained the release of some American maritime sailors from Somali pirates?)

He’s trying to piss you off (if you’re not a hyper-conservative who’s still in shock that McCain didn’t win in November). Really. Don’t let him. 

Instead, read it for the way he’s using language to do to very important things:

1. Get increased attention by being the kind of inflammatory that makes the news. And for someone who does what he does, this translates directly into cold, hard cash.
2. Polarize the listeners. When the population of a country find themselves on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon, shouting across the expanse at one another, nothing can happen. No progress can be made. And of course, there’s no middle ground upon which to build a new set of understandings.

Look carefully at what he’s doing

• By saying that “President Obama” – the first Black person to hold that office, and someone who has family roots in the Muslim world 
• “Ordered” – an active verb that implies forethought and desire of a particular outcome
• “the Killing” – killing is a particularly harsh word. It starts with a plosive with the letter “k” and is very graphic in its orientation. “Murder” is a cleaner, less-harsh word by comparison.
• “of Three Black Muslim Kids” – More than one, so this is serious. Black like he is, so he must hate his own people, right? Kids are innocent and therefore should be treated with deference and certainly not be shot by highly-trained military specialists.

The whole message he’s giving with just that single turn of phrase – a phrase he repeats ad nauseum – is, in part, that the first Black President of the United States kills Black Muslims … and kids. 

The other interesting linguistic manipulation Rush engages is to pick up a thread from somewhere that is not referenced in the excerpted transcript on that link, and calls the Somali pirates “community organizers.” 

Those in this world who are of the more liberal bent – heck, middle-of-the-road folks talk about this too! – think of community organizers as those devoted folks who do things like get recycling programs into areas that don’t have them. They lead the PTA. They champion Neighborhood Watch programs and Safe Houses for kids. They aren’t gun-toting, wave-running desperate people, who have turned to theft on a massive scale as a way of dealing with the insanity of their circumstances.

Still, Rush keeps calling them “Somali community organizers.” (Though I have to admit that calling them pirates puts me in the same mindset as Pam Slim’s son, as she recounted on Twitter recently – can’t find it, so this is from memory. “Mom, do they say AARUGG?”

Community organizers are people we know. Sometimes, they’re even the people that we are. We can have sympathy for them. We empathize. They sound innocent. And since he’s also saying the President Obama ordered their killing, well then … you see where this is going.

The Point

Personally, I find Rush nauseating. But I also find him fascinating. He is a master of manipulation. He is proof positive of the ability of a single talented person to change the course of a nation. Don’t believe me? Go find the transcripts and/or recordings of his show back in the late 1990s. He helped to mobilize and polarize conservatives in such a way as to change the United States.

Any time someone uses communication to polarize – to divide, be suspicious. Be very suspicious. There’s something else going on. You may never quite know what it is, but being suspicious helps you avoid the polarization.

You see, when we are polarized like that, we quit listening to one another. And if we’re not listening, we’re not communicating. And if we’re not communicating, we don’t have any hope of ever moving forward.

And if we’re not moving forward, learning, exploring, growing, caring, loving … what are we doing here?