Political Absurdism

In a roundabout way, I broached the topic of political nihilism in a previous post. In this one we’ll consider another road, one that I’ll tentatively call political absurdism (referring broadly to the absurdist creation of personal meanings in the face of the apparent absence of universal meaning).

In describing his first Senate campaign in 1984, Al Gore wrote in The Assault on Reason of his political consultant’s suggestion when his opponent was narrowing Gore's lead: “If you run this ad at this many ‘points’ [a measure of the size of the advertising buy], and if Ashe responds as we anticipate, and then we purchase this many points to air our response to his response, the net result after three weeks will be an increase of 8.5 percent in your lead in the polls.”

I authorized the plan and was astonished when three weeks later my lead had increased by exactly 8.5 percent. Though pleased, of course, for my own campaign, I had a sense of foreboding for what this revealed about our democracy. Clearly, at least to some degree, the “consent of the governed” was becoming a commodity to be purchased by the highest bidder.

The former Vice President, good and decent man than he is, lamented the “trend in U.S. politics towards ignoring facts and analysis when making policy decisions.” Long known (and, sadly, often ridiculed) for being a strong proponent of the Internet, Gore believes this medium offers the antidote: a free and fair marketplace of ideas where reason can dominate in separating the good from the bad. I would respectfully suggest that the reality is exactly the opposite. Ironically, the more ways we find to involve The People in the political process, the less effective our democratic system becomes. People are easily swayed by frames and frequently come under the control of others. At the risk of sounding condescending, I'll suggest that they becoming unwitting pawns in a chess game they don't fully comprehend.

The reason is that politics on a mass scale becomes an exercise in manipulation. Instead of simply presenting facts and analysis, politickers often seek to take advantage of the vagaries of human psychology using what an old professor of mine called “cognitive tricks.” The way an issue or proposal is framed or the way a problem is defined can have enormous influence in shaping perceptions. The effects that the precise wording of a poll question or the order of candidates’ names on a ballot can have in shaping opinions or affecting a candidate’s vote share are well-known. Chalking this up merely to laziness—or worse, stupidity—on the part of the public seems too easy.

In the 1910s and ‘20s, a nephew of Sigmund Freud named Edward Bernays pioneered the use of psychology to shape public opinion for marketing purposes. Bernays viewed groups of men as dangerously irrational and so he advocated using his techniques to control them. In a famous book called Propaganda, Bernays explained the role of popular manipulation in a democracy:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

In a world where external factors color individual perception—or acknowledgement—of facts, the notion of a democratic or republican system as one in which individual political preferences are pooled and sorted out rationally in a political marketplace of ideas seems quaint. The public becomes merely another political tool to be harnessed and wielded against one’s foes. The impartial observer finds himself in a system devoid of any overriding truth. The "truth" is whatever one can convince a large enough slice of the population to believe (contrast this with the notion of using rational argumentation to bring opponents--through reason alone--to discover that which is already, and independently, true). Popular support can be generated and opinions manufactured to support virtually any political position, subject to the limits of inertia. If you're not convinced, go back and consider the role of astroturfing in manufacturing public opinion.

This situation is not quite like the political nihilism I described in the other post as "purposelessly drifting through the political landscape." In this quasi-absurdist conception of the political process, certain luminaries with ideological direction and policy purpose seek to actively reshape that political landscape to conform to their own personal truths. These opinionmakers need not be elites like public officials or media figures. They can be ordinary members of the public, driven to press their case and gifted with a knack for manipulation or persuasion. The result of accepting the absence of something akin to absolute truth is the ascension of what Orwell called doublethink. This is the reason that virtually no one is entirely consistent in his political beliefs (the starkest examples, of course, involve things like praising Medicare while decrying "government-run health care").

What's the moral here? That if you have a policy direction in which you wish to go, your objective must simply be to win. Though we'd like to believe that involves a high-minded approach, it likely requires the fine art of manipulation that's often referred to euphemistically using phrases like "message crafting" and "issue framing." One must change the perceptions of others, yes, using methods that might best be described as tricks or gimmicks. Consent does, as Mr. Gore discovered so long ago, become a commodity--or, rather, the consent-generating psychological tactics that media consultants use to build support for campaigns become the commodity. Is this the best way to view the political and policymaking process? I don't know. But I hope to follow up on this post soon using a current real-world example to flesh out some of these notions.