Typically my articles are more to throw some more logical perspectives that you perhaps have not thought of, and help get you off the fence. This one is to provide you with a way to check yourself, and make sure you are not falling for sneaky tricks that are often compelling, but don't actually offer any substance, meaning, or benefit.
Just so you know where I'm coming from, I have a background in psychology. A decent amount of my education was learning about case studies and things like mob mentality. This was typically taught in my classes with an implication of "These are bad things, we are teaching you this stuff so you know it's bad and you don't do it". There was a very small mention--practically under the professor's breath--of "dark psychology", which is using psychology for nefarious purposes instead of helping people with it. In my naiveté I just filed that away, thought it was not relevant to me.
After I started paying attention to the real world and politics, I realized something. This "dark psychology" is all around us, and particularly in politics. Apparently many people saw that "don't do that because it's scummy and wrong" and heard "do this to win".
What do they think of you?
First I will preface this by saying that, according to psychology, these dark psychology tactics only work on the uneducated and lower intelligence (and even smart people can be uneducated in something). This gives us two takeaways:
1. We can counter the effects of dark psychology with education.
2. The people using dark psychology tactics think you're an idiot.
I don't know about you, but the day I made these connections I got upset. I realized that most ads are making the assumption that you are an idiot, for one. I also realized that ads persist because they are effective, and therefore there is a sustainable pool of idiots in the world. I make a point of trying not to be stupid, so now ads actually have the opposite impact on my buying habits, but I digress.
When appealing to intelligent people, the psychology shows the best approach is brief, verifiable facts, without much fluff; specifications that let us make our own judgment. When was the last time you saw that in a political ad? That's not what they think of you.
So let's get to some of the tactics I see, particularly in politics.
Making you think they care
Somebody who wants to be a politician doesn't care. There will be people who rise out of the civilian population because they want to make a difference, but the person who wants to climb through the ranks of politics and establish themselves on the peak of the mountain of bodies does not care about you. What they care about is the power, the control, the status, the money. Political party organizations are the worst, because this is all they are. They're just trying to secure power for their platform. They don't want politicians that represent the people, they want politicians who represent them.
For them it's a mad scramble to the top, and they will do or say anything they can to get and keep that spot. They don't care about how damaging their actions will be for society, because they view themselves as above the consequences. They only care about what is going to get votes. This means it is up to us to do the thinking and the voting. It is up to us to care about the future, it is up to us to be the inhibitions for society.
Emotions
Next time you see a political ad or movement, I want you to pick it apart. What is being said? What is the actual substance of their words? You will find that most arguments on both sides are actually based in emotion, not truth (and truth trumps emotion!).
If they can make you mad, half of their job is done. It doesn't matter how true or false the content is, they want to work up an emotion in their favor. They could say white is black. The people making these political ads, they are not making these ads in a void. They are working with focus groups and learning what is getting reactions.
If a candidate has a particularly weak logical position, they are going to make up the difference in empty emotions. If reason is not on their side they want you to be irrational. They will try to bring in sob stories, warm fuzzies, and everything in between, to make you overlook the facts, or lack thereof.
Peer pressure
The oldest trick in the book. This many people can't be wrong, right? Everybody's doing it! Mob mentality. Majority rules. It works just as well now as it did 10,000 years ago. It's part of our social DNA. But peer pressure is much easier in the world of the internet. A small handful of crazy people without a life or responsibilities and a hundred alternate accounts will be as loud as several thousand sleep-deprived parents in the anonymous megaphone of the internet.
The abuse of psychology here is that you just need to create the illusion of everybody being on your side to bring in the people who are susceptible to peer pressure. There has never been a time in the history of the earth where it was so easy for one person to influence millions.
Now let's compare legacy media on the left and right to see who is the bigger abuser. The left has many, many major media outlets, but these are all essentially operating under a single entity and all of them parrot the same stories. This creates the illusion that their political swing aligns with the majority. If you look on the right, there are very few major outlets, and perhaps more small, independent outlets.
Marketing
There's a saying against judging a book by its cover. That saying doesn't stop us from doing it anyway. A good cover will sell a book. A good label will sell a political opinion, too, before voters even think of turning its pages.
This tactic plays on peer pressure as well to some extent, but the left is very good at picking labels that make you appear to be an outdated moron if you disagree with them, even if the opposite is true.
Let's look at some examples:
"Progressive" - this is "progress"! Surely, if something is "progress" it cannot be bad! Everything under this label is "progress"!
"Dreamers" - if you enforce immigration laws you are crushing their dreams! Dreams are the most important part!
"Affirmative Action" - We're not going to be lazy, we are going to ACT and do something! And affirming is good!
Even the party name, "Democrat" - this is a democracy, so if I am going to support freedom I must be a democrat!
These names are particularly effective for people who are not going to do their own thinking, and they care what other people think about them. They want to be seen as supporting "progress" and "dreams" and being "affirmative actors", and supporters of "democracy". That person sounds like the life of the party, right? The guy everybody wants in their circle.
Note that none of those labels actually tell you anything about what they are under the surface. Not one. I would love to see an honest-naming take on politics. You won't be so popular with the "Crazy" ideology, supporting the "illegal public education leeches", pushing "universal racism", and belonging to the "neo-communism" party. Nobody would buy into the truth, so they need an empty label to appeal to the unthinking masses.
Fearmongering
The left likes to move from selling one fear to the next. Once one falls out of vogue, they've got to come up with another one. "Global warming" eventually succumbed to "climate change", which is slowly losing traction. Before Trump was elected the left tried to rally all their followers with a call that all the queers were going to be corralled and hung or something silly like that, or that Trump was going to kill free speech, or execute his political enemies or other such nonsense. Again, they just want to work up your emotions and get you acting irrationally, because reason is against them.
The short game
The left focuses on the short game, the instant gratification, the here and now. This is because, like all illusions, time eventually destroys them. This means they need to hammer what they've got. Their enemy is the long game, which always wins.
As such, if they are trying to regain power, they want you to hurt now. They want you to focus on everything wrong now. They don't want you thinking about what the obviously best course of action is, they want you to say "I don't care that it will make things better in 5 years, I want things easy now", while ignoring the fact that the short game will make the future even worse.
Remember, these politicians don't care what happens to you, so it is up to you to think about the long game, and say no to the instant gratification if that's what it takes to make a better future.
Old fashioned lies
Repeat a lie enough and... it's still a lie. But it makes everybody think it's true. An oldie but still a baddie, the lie is a ridiculously prevalent weapon in the left's arsenal. They have it down to a science.
What many people don't realize with media outlets is that articles are never published without a thorough legal review. A lawyer (or at least somebody legally acquainted) picks through every word with a fine-toothed comb, changing anything that could possibly be held against them, but riding the line as close as possible.
Their disgusting goal is to get you to believe a lie without them actually telling it. They will make the lie between the lines, relying on the reader to fill in the gaps with an implied falsehood.
When I first decided I needed to be involved in my country--and therefore in politics--I determined I should sit down and find reliable news outlets who could give me both sides, unbiased. This took about 2 months of time at approximately 40 hours a week, and I came out of it realizing something priceless: There is no such thing as an unbiased news source. I started with so-called "fact checkers", only to find they were the worst of the bunch because they could lie with a bold face (good labeling, a "fact checker" can't tell a lie, right?).
This was just before the election between Hillary and Trump, and I wanted to make sure I was making a decision based on truth, and not just because of the culture I was raised in. The outlets on the left said Trump was a demon, the outlets on the right said he was a saint, but whenever I went to the primary source and watched a 1-hour video to get the single 5-second clip everybody was in arms about, the truth was actually far more mundane: Trump was human. But I also learned that he was the human I wanted as my president.
As a side effect that I have cherished ever since, I have become well-acquainted with how the media lies. I can usually look at an article on the left and right, without looking at the primary source, and say "that's a curious language choice, I'll bet they're spinning something there to make me jump to a conclusion", and 99% of the time I will be right. Conveniently, I have also been able to apply this newfound skill to everything from peer reviewed journal articles to grocery labels. Lies are everywhere.
Most people don't have 2 months of time to commit to gaining such a skill (arguably I didn't at the time either), but should you find you have the opportunity I would highly recommend it.
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