Monday, May 30, 2016

TRUMP, APPEALS TO ALPHA FEMALES?

COULD ALPHA FEMALES GET TRUMP ELECTED?

As several people pointed out in response to my last post, if --as the creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams, is suggesting--Donald Trump's appeal to Alpha males and the women who admire him aren't enough to get him elected. But what about Alpha Females? Perhaps we should consider this: In the New York Times of 1/30 under "Election 2016" we read, "RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina has a split political personality. Consider Debbie Holt."
"A staunch supporter of abortion rights, Ms. Holt, 56, who owns a barbecue restaurant in downtown Raleigh, makes clear where she stands on other fronts in the culture wars with signs in her storefront window: “Stop profiling Muslims,” says one. Another: “Go To The Bathroom Where You Feel Best.”
"Yet Ms. Holt is also an outspoken supporter of Mr. Trump. “He don’t take any stuff, just like me,” she drawled in between ringing up lunch-rush customers, using a more piquant word for stuff."
If she is an "Alpha Female" (definitions vary), are there a significant number out there? I can't find any research on the subject. Perhaps Scott Adams analysis is limited because it doesn't include them.

Sunday, May 29, 2016

TRUMP WILL BEAT HILLARY IN A LANDSLIDE




If you watched Bill Mahr, Thursday the 28th, you saw the comic strip creator of “Dilbert” explain why Donald Trump will be beat Hillary in a landslide, just as he predicted that Trump would win the GOP nomination.  He was so convincing that for many of us, after he was done, we probably thought that Hillary doesn’t have a change unless her campaign literally hires the creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams.

In terms of modern techniques of persuasion, Hillary is really lame.   Her campaign seems not to know: 1) Most people are basically irrational.  2) Knowing that people are irrational, Trump aims to appeal on an emotional level.  Adams adds: “People vote based on emotion. Period.”  3) By running on emotion, facts don’t matter.  So, Trump is reality free
4) If facts don’t matter, you can’t really be “wrong.”  If you understand persuasion, Trump is pitch-perfect most of the time. He ignores unnecessary rational thought and objective data and incessantly hammers on what matters (emotions).”  5. With fewer facts in play, it’s easier to bend reality.  Steve Jobs famously aimed to create “reality distortion fields” to meet his needs and achieve his ends. Trump employs similar techniques.  6.   To bend reality, Trump is a master of identity politics — and identity is the strongest persuader.  Identity politics are political arguments that focus upon the interest and perspectives of groups with which people identify.  Trump is well on his way to owning the identities of American, Alpha Males, and Women Who Like Alpha Males.  He panders to them.

All of this is somewhat complicated and if you go to the Washington Post article it will become much clearer.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2016/03/21/donald-trump-will-win-in-a-landslide-the-mind-behind-dilbert-explains-why/?tid=pm_entertainment_pop_b 

 I think the Clinton campaign should read https://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/teaching/articles/J-Communication-2007-1.pdf about framing and agending setting. 

 Finally they should view New York Times Magazine, Donald Trump Shares His Opponent-Branding Secrets
 “Little Marco,” “Crooked Hillary,” “”Low Energy Bush,” “Lyin Ted,” etc., have become household brands like slogans we all know such as “Just Do It,” “The Happiest Place On Earth,” etc.  How is this achieved?

Thursday, May 19, 2016

MY PARTIAL VISION OF UTOPIA

I love Libertarian Party presidential hopeful John McAfee’s vision of a country where a “gay married couple can defend their marijuana fields with fully automatic machine guns,” except for the machine gun bit, because my concept of the future excludes anyone –including the cops—from owning a firearm (violent people will be subdued by the police by spraying laughing gas on them).

My vision for the future is that Non-violent offenders from local jails and prisons would help the gays nurture their vast fields and learn how to cultivate exotic strains of weed that intensified sexual experience. The police who transported them there would be required to assist in husbanding the cannabis.

My concept for future America would include formerly homeless non-able bodied vets, inside good pubic housing, getting stoned, doing art, music and dancing with partners gay, straight, bisexual, or transsexual. All homeless in America who didn’t want to be on the streets would have public housing and could, if they desired, march to Washington, Sacramento and other state capitols to urinate on conservative/libertarian/neo-liberal politicians who opposed public housing for all.

With regards to Middle Eastern wars, they could continue as long as the sons and daughters of the congressional-military-industrial complex fought them.

Food, clothing, shelter, free education, through the Ph.D and MD, access to medical care, recreational facilities, good jobs, early childhood education, adequate parental leave to care for the young, pre-natal care, access to clean drinking water and air would be deemed the rights of all people, including the undocumented.
Politicians who voted to cut back on food stamps for children, before this program was instituted, would be forced to go to bed hungry at night 2 or 3 times weekly.

Talented Politicians who use rhetoric-- eloquence aimed at persuasion—to deny climate change, must eat coal dust and drink oil for one meal of the day of their choosing.

Anyone want to add something?

Monday, May 16, 2016

HOW CAN HILLARY BEAT TRUMP?

HOW CAN HILLARY BEAT TRUMP LIKE A DRUM?
Trump’s Asymmetric Warfare
 
Charles M. Blow MAY 16, 2016 NYT
"How do we “beat a bully?” There is no way to sufficiently sully a pig or mock a clown. There is no way to shame a man who lacks conscience or to embarrass an embarrassment.

"He has waffled or equivocated or backtracked on tax plans, releasing his tax returns, his proposed Muslim ban, and any number of issues," such as taxing or not taxing the middle class, the national debt, criminalizing women who have abortions, minimum wage, self-funding his campaign, sending troops in to defeat Isis, etc. .etc.

According to Politifact, Trump “makes things up” and lies most of the time. But Blow doesn’t really offer a solution to the problem. I’ll try.

Social Scientists point out that facts don’t matter as much as emotions. Unfortunately, leaders like Hitler and Trump have high emotional intelligence. University of Cambridge professor, Jochen Menges, identified the “awestruck effect,” in which he describes that Hitler was able to persuade German’s due to “his ability to strategically express emotions, and these emotions affected his followers to the point that they would stop thinking critically and just emote. Sound familiar?

Perhaps the best way Hillary can triumph over Trump is to appeal to emotions and forget statistics and facts. One of the techniques is “storytelling;" it isn’t a waste of time, it’s the way that people connect with their audiences, going back thousands of years. People react not to data, but how you make them feel. The use of anecdotal evidence to draw a conclusion is like using the NBA all-star teams to estimate the average height of Americans. But in the battle between emotion and reason, reason hasn’t a chance.

A classic instance was Ronald Reagan's story of a "welfare queen" who was abusing the system, who Reagan attempted to portray as indicative of the average welfare recipient. It turned out she didn't even exist when some reporters finally decided to look for her. It didn’t matter, it was a story told by a man trusted by millions just as Trump is. Hillary’s trust factor is very low. She has much to overcome. She and her advisors should read Hitler's Mein Kamph and carefully study TV advertising techniques.

Sure these comments are very cynical but Hillary's got to beat this most dangerous, deceptive man, Donald Trump, by hoisting him up on his own petard.