Several political strategies, that require an absence of integrity, have been perfected by Donald Trump during his successful campaign to return to the U.S. Presidency. They are important, not because they are commendable, but because they have been successful, and will therefore be copied in the future by other unethical politicians. I thought it was important to highlight some of these strategies in the hope that we, the general public, and the media, will recognize them when they are used against us, which they most certainly will be, probably with increasing frequency.
One of the standing jokes asked about politicians is, “How can you tell when a politician is lying? The answer is, “When he/she opens their mouth”. Donald Trump has turned this joke into a successful strategy, and we have fallen for it.
My decision to write a blog on this topic was prompted by the reporting of the tragic terrorist attack in New Orleans on Christmas day. The news reports were, as usual, full of speculation since, initially, there was a lack of concrete information – the news machine has a voracious appetite and has to be fed continuously regardless of whether that food contains anything of value. Such events also mean that anyone who thinks they are important, or the media considers important, must weigh in with their comments, regardless of whether they have anything useful to contribute. Donald Trump made such a public statement that immigrant criminals are far more dangerous than domestic ones – I assume that was based on the perpetrators foreign-sounding name. As we all subsequently found out, the perpetrator was a U.S. citizen, born in the U.S. and an army veteran.
I have seen nothing that remonstrates, or even mentions, Trump’s self-serving, uninformed, lie. He completely got away with a reprehensible comment for which the media would have crucified anyone else. We, all of us, have become so used to Trump’s lies that they have become the norm, and therefore not worth worrying about – in the media’s case these lies are not worth pursuing because they don’t fulfill the base media requisite of sensationalism – they have become the norm.
Political strategy number one seems to be that if you lie often enough, and consistently enough, about any topic, a large part of the population, unfortunately maybe the majority, believe it to be true, however outrageous and invalidated it is by facts; the election Trump says was stolen from him is a perfect example, but he has used the same strategy in many other of his campaign statements, and will probably continue to do throughout his coming presidency. It works quite well, and will therefore undoubtably be used in the future by an increasing number of other unethical politicians, all to the confusion and detriment of the electorate and the U.S. population in general. The strategy is not new, it has been used by autocrats and dictators throughout history, but Trump is one of the first to use it successfully in a democratic nation.
Political strategy number two is to inflate the size of any problem you think will get the electorate’s attention and therefore give you an advantage over your opponent. This includes completely making up a problem that doesn’t actually exist at all, if it suits your purpose. Having instilled the size of that problem in the minds of the electorate by using political strategy number one, when you get into office you can revert to something close to the truth about that size and claim you have solved the issue, without actually having to do anything. Carefully orchestrated, you will receive great kudos because no-one will think to investigate whether the problem was originally as you said it was, or whether it existed at all. If you lose the election, there is no downside, because nobody will bother to remember what you said.
Political strategy number three is to always be as outrageous as you can be in your oratory. First, that ensures that the media will put you on the front page all the time because it fulfills their primary requirement of sensationalism. Two, it numbs the public attention into submission and inattention so you can actually get-away-with murder – perhaps literally.
I’m sure there are many more strategies that autocrats and dictators use to bamboozle their fellow country-men and country-women, and that Trump will happily endorse and use, but these are three that I wanted to highlight today.
I will finish with a concept I have long believed, which is, “the last thing most politicians want is an educated and informed electorate”. This endemic wish of these politicians is based on the fear that such an electorate might start telling them what to do and, worse, hold them accountable for their actions. Keep them bamboozled and, preferably “down-on-the-farm”. Trump is giving a masterclass in how to achieve that goal.
Time to wake up America!
