So I’ve been holding off
writing about this, despite the urge to, because this blog is supposed to be (at
least tangentially) about psychology, not politics; but a few things changed my
mind.
-
Politics is
psychology practiced on a national scale, things like “spin” and “demographics”
are concepts created to manipulate people on a personal level towards an agenda
that is presented by somebody in a position to dictate to others. When politicians
say things like “Think of the children” they mean “I’m using your children as a
psychological weapon to con you into agreeing with me.”
o The
amount of misinformation I have seen regarding this has been frankly;
staggering. Seems everyone has forgotten how to fact-check and will blindly
parrot things people shovel in front of them in order to feel better about
themselves.
o In
fact it’s like everyone is in such a hurry to validate themselves they’ll
proudly tie their flag to Freddy Krugars’s Childcare Co. provided it posted
some dumb meme that makes them feel better about their life choices.
o People
seem to be clamouring for a simple solution to a complex problem: As a result
amoral psychopaths are making a killing by providing them these “simple
solutions” despite the fact these “solutions” are about as substantial as fart in
an opera house.
-
The “Us vs Them” attitude I am seeing. Sometimes
it’s Left vs Right, sometimes it’s Millennials vs Boomers, sometimes it’s even Communistsvs Fascists which is sadly indicative that those words have been overused to
the point they have lost all meaning. The point is people are keen to use the
old “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” rhetoric; Which is a politically
damning statement that alienates everyone who has even the slightest doubt
about your position and gears you up for inevitable bloody conflict, but so
long as it’s other people who suffer
in that conflict, people seem to be okay with this.
-
Every time you say “They just need to get on
with it” you’re betraying a level of geo-political ignorance that is as good as
stencilling “I AM AN IDIOT” backwards on your forehead so that it’s the right
way around when you look in the mirror.
So, where does that leave us?
Well; let’s address my bullet points
collectively, that seems to be the most sensible way of doing this without me succumbing
to the looming pressure to jam pencils into my eyes and head-butt the table.
“Spin” Misinformation
and Psychology.
In terms of Brexit, this is trying
to tell people what they want to hear, while avoiding anything as dangerous as
or complicated as a “solid fact” that might confuse your target audience. This
was seen in “Project Fear” that predicted the economic hardships that we are
currently enjoying, or the “350m a week on the NHS” bus which turned out to be
so much tripe. The sad truth is that humans tend to cleave to displayed
authority when faced with uncertainty, so when you walk in to a pub and say “Hey,
how about you cast a vote on an extremely complex international treaty that
effects almost every aspects of your day-to-day life and ensures the stability
of the global market within this continental land mass.” People will start to
look around for the person in the suit (or lab coat) to tell them which way
they should go, and sadly the phenomenon of “anchoring” and “confirmation bias”
means that even when presented with evidence that they made the wrong decision
they will stick with their choice as stubbornly as a man drinking a turd
milkshake after claiming it is chocolate. So we have a host of people all
claiming to be experts, giving you little snippets of the truth while hiding
the full picture so as to keep your interest, but not confuse you with anything
so difficult as a massive international agreement between a dozen powerful nations
and associated hangers on. I’d drop some truth bombs on you, but I’m not going to waste my time. If a person has made up their mind already they will stop
looking deeper into what their told and just accept any tripe shovelled to them,
and what’s more when things start to go bad, they’ll not take the responsibility
and blame it on the other side, personal responsibility for their idiot ignorance
complicates their internal narrative.
The rise of
tribalism.
During
economic hardship (such as the 2008 recession that we are currently enjoying the
fruits of) people tent to cling to what they have, and fear the outsider. To
use an extreme Godwinnian example, Germany went from a broken and failed nation
reeling from crushing debt and massive inflation following a global conflict
which they lost, to an industrial powerhouse that literally took on the world
over just a few short years by capitalising on this human behaviour. You point
at the “other” say they are trying to take what little you have and then watch
people rally and unify behind you to work hard to not only propel themselves
forwards, but destroy the “other” that they now perceive as a threat. During the current crisis we’ve seen a few
people get scapegoated for political point-scoring, the disabled, “benefit scroungers”
and of course Immigrants, despite the fact that almost all the immigrants from
the EU (approx. 80%) are highly qualified professionals that contribute massively
in tax revenue. If now you are thinking “Oh no, we meant those immigrants from
those shithole counties, y’know, the brown people,” then kindly go into the
bathroom and stencil the word “RACIST” backwards on your forehead.
In fact, I’m gonna expand on
this, as somebody who’s worked with first and second generation immigrants from
warzones and third-world nations I feel like I can actually shed some light on
this for people who haven’t. While a lot of people from “Shithole” counties do
need a lot of support upon entering the UK, they pay it back in spades when
they finally realize they can get a job where they get to keep the (taxed)
money they earn, not be beaten for failing to meet quotas, and they know that
when they get home there is a pretty good chance their families won’t have been
victims of a local genocide, that sort of thing can really make a good work
ethic when you’ve never had it before. What’s more, they hugely encourage their
children to succeed academically, and work hard towards a better future simply
because THEY never had that opportunity. On the whole immigration is a drop in the bucket of the UK’s budget and represents an “economic drain” in the same
way that a house fire might represent a “global catastrophe” it probably feels
that way if it’s negatively impacted you, but in reality it affects 99% of the
people of the nation not at all. But of course, that’s not the point, the point
is to get you to look at a scapegoat and unify behind your glorious leader and
make [nation] great again, or whatever.
So here is your take-home: If
somebody tells you that you have to be afraid of the “other” and you believe
them having had no extensive first-hand experience with that demographic, then
you are their patsy, and you’re falling for one of the oldest, and most well
employed political tricks in the book.
