Yes, But What Message are People Receiving?

You read a lot in political media about "messaging." This has to do with the notions and ideas that you, the political actor, want to implant in the minds of the voters. As I understand, messaging has a lot to do with riling up your supporters and demoralizing your opponent's supporters.

But what message are the voters actually receiving? For instance here is a piece about a poll  of millennial women aged 18-35. A full 54 percent of them did not identify as "feminists:" this in a group of which only 19 percent identified as Republican. What is going on? Well,

Leah, a 22-year old independent, told Edwards, “I feel like the movement has been largely taken over by far-left wing activists that make it nearly impossible for me to identify with.” 

Or this:

A 25-year-old Republican named Stephanie, whom Edwards spoke to, even went so far as to say, “I don't think women in the modern western world are oppressed.” Stephanie continued, “I think modern feminists try to create a boogeyman out of what they call the patriarchy and hunt it down, but it's not necessary.... Men and women have different strengths and weaknesses. Acknowledging that is not sexist.”

In a way, it is shocking that young women can actually believe this, since the whole culture is mobilized to convince them of their victimization. How did they escape the indoctrination? Perhaps it is because the left also operates a counter-narrative of female empowerment. So which is it? Oppression or empowerment? Is a Good Little Girl supposed to feel like a victim or as a powerful free agent?

Perhaps political actors should think more about the message that is inadvertently transmitted by your supporters. In this piece about "Nice Ladies Leaving the Democratic Party" people just don't like the totalitarian mindset of lefties that abuse you as soon as you disagree with them. So, for many women,

The Democratic Party no longer fits their personalities, their values, or their self-image as loving, caring, tolerant human beings. The coup de grace is when they realize they are not free in their liberal social circles to utter one word of doubt or criticism of the party line. If they do, they find themselves attacked and ostracized.

This refers to a significant issue. Politics, civil war by other means, is a male thing. It is an application of what I call the male Culture of Insult. You attack you opponents and punish people for disagreeing. But the female Culture of Complaint does not deal in direct insult, but in indirection, using my classic line "I can't believe she said that." In the Culture of Insult you don't directly attack people that violate the party line. You tell you friend that you can't believe that she said that.

Here's another way that men and women differ. Women expect to be allowed to participate and "share." Period. Men believe that they have to prove themselves before they are taken seriously. When I was on non-profit boards years ago, I would always assume that it would take me a year to be taken seriously and listened to. But I had a female friend that was insulted that she was not listened to the moment she joined a board and wanted to "share."

So I would say that a lot of the day-to-day activism tactics of the left really turns women off. And I would suspect that the bully-boy tactics of the street arm of the Democratic Party, AntiFa, really upsets the average woman. There is nothing that terrifies a woman so much as a gang in the streets. Of course. For woman, going back to hunter-gatherer days, a band of men means trouble.

That's the reason why nobody knows nothing, not in the election of November 8, 2016, not in the election of November 6, 2018. Because nobody really knows the message that the voters are receiving and processing. And that is especially true in an age like ours, where people know that certain opinions are acceptable and other opinions are not to be endured by the ruling class. People are social animals and are acutely aware of what is permitted to deplorables. But they also develop notions of what life would be like in a better world where people like themselves got to say and do what they thought and felt.

And the problem with enforcing correct opinion is that you never know what people really think until they go into the voting booth and pull the lever. That is why, years ago, certain wise men proposed the notion that Congress should write no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. No mention there of impermissible "hate speech."

Rule One for a wise ruling class is that you want to know what the people are thinking and saying, even Alex Jones of InfoWars. Otherwise the day may come when you get blindsided by an assembly of the people petitioning for a redress of grievances that you had forced underground.

And then it may be too late.