The Rhetoric Game: A Guide to Messaging and Debate
Part 1: The Focus of Rhetoric
Politics is not governance. Politics is the art of acquiring the power to govern. It is the battle fought before governance can take place.
There are things we want our society to be: We want people to have homes, clean air, food on their plate, and more. Government pools society’s resources and expends those resources to provide services and security that allow us to have those things. That’s governance.
Government, however, is just an idea—people in government do those things. (Or they don’t, particularly when they’re Republicans.) We need to get people into government who might deliver the society we want, and motivate them to do it. That’s politics.
The purpose of effective rhetoric in a political context is to amass political capital for leverage to obtain the consent and support of the governed. Political capital can be thought of as a currency exchanged with the public in order to govern on their behalf. It is public support, trust, and the public will to act. Ideally, it acts as a pressure generated via public will that reaches a critical mass that effectuates policy change/implementation.
You can think of politics as a game played in order to win the right to govern. In that game, political capital is the currency, the points used to win that game and spent in that game to do things. Therefore, when we message or debate that must be our primary focus: amassing political capital and taking it from the opposition. If we don’t, we lose power instead of gaining it, and can’t make our goals real.
“Your focus determines your reality”
—Qui-Gon Jinn, “Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace”
Much of our losses over the past decade can be traced back to a failure to message to the public and command the public focus. The right wing is always communicating to the public to gain power; when we don’t, the right seizes the opportunity to frame the public consciousness on their terms and thus shift the “Overton window” of acceptable ideas in their direction.
In order to start winning again, shift the Overton window back, and rebuild political capital that will translate to the kind of policy and governance we want; we have to learn how to focus the public consciousness via the public discourse—via effective rhetoric that punches through the noise.
Rhetoric is not about who is right; it's about who is convincing.
Always consider the audience. Whom are you trying to convince?
When focusing on convincing people, we don’t need to spend much time on other liberals, progressives, or leftists who already generally agree with us. There isn’t much untapped potential in getting people who already want to agree with us to agree with us. We are already more or less maxed out on how much juice we can squeeze out of that low hanging fruit. (Juice in this analogy being political capital.)
Our target audience, where there is the most untapped political capital, consists of people who are not already strongly engaged in politics or do not necessarily agree with us. These people may identify as moderates, independents, libertarians, conservatives, or as politically unengaged.
We should not waste too much energy or time on trying to convince the far right or MAGA. Because of how oppositional these ideologies are to our positions and how much effort we would sink into trying to shift them, that is energy that could be better used to influence the aforementioned other groups (who are more amenable).
We should also beware of audience capture: If we strategically make concessions to an oppositional audience (with the intent of building rapport and appearing “reasonable”), we can end up only making concessions and failing to shift the audience to our side at all. In our struggle for power, we must fight for what we want, not what they want.
Leading people to the right conclusions
The bottom line is that we should talk to these groups differently—certainly differently than how we talk to our own peers. We want to meet the audience where they are, then guide them where we want them to be. When we think about how to talk to these groups, the most important part is to consider how they think and what motivates them. Understand their world view (more on that in a bit) as this is the lens through which all political information is filtered into their mind. It’s like polarizing lenses on sunglasses that will block out light that enters in at certain angles; in order to get through, you need to figure out the angle needed to frame your rhetoric to them.
Your audience isn’t always the person you’re debating; it may be other people paying attention to your debate. In this sense, we are using our interlocutor to make an example to the audience spectating. This is the meta-conversation happening—the conversation beyond the conversation. On the surface, we are talking to the debate opponent; but in reality we are communicating to the spectators. The debate functions as a performance for those spectators.
Persuasion: How to shape other people’s brains
The brain is an association network. That structure forms a lens through which the individual perceives the world.
In order to be persuasive, we must understand how people engage with ideas. The human mind is an association machine. The brain connects concepts that then form a network of associations. If a person always listens to a certain song while driving, hearing that song may remind them of a time they were driving because there is a neural connection formed between those two things in their brain. When someone walks into a room and forgets what they were looking for, it is recommended that they retrace their steps. This is because there’s a short term connection made between what that person was doing before entering the room and what they were looking for. Seeing what they were looking at and remembering what they were doing when they thought to go into the other room may re-fire that neural pathway in their brain connecting those two ideas and thus reminding them.
Again, the brain is an association machine. It's like a network of individual ideas and experiences connected together; forming a scaffold superstructure. This superstructure (that is the overall network formed in the mind) forms one’s world view. It's how a person senses or understands the larger, big picture, top-down model of the reality they exist in. When they have new experiences or information, their mind will try to figure out how it fits into the network model that they’ve already formed in their mind. If it doesn’t, their mind may reject the new information outright to avoid the unpleasant awareness of conflict to their model of reality; a process known as ‘cognitive dissonance’. If it can figure out how to integrate the new info, the mind will re-wire parts of the network which already have connections in order to make new ones.
Your world view is part of your identity
Each person’s worldview forms the model of the reality they exist in and how they fit into that world. This makes it extremely hard to change. Attempts to do so can feel like a personal attack that they become defensive over.
This is why, when debating someone, they may be resistant to change their mind even when offered compelling arguments.
Changing someone from having a conservative worldview to a liberal one, for example, is not simply “winning” on one or two topics. (Most likely you will end up at an impasse.) It requires getting them to recognize enough new facts to introduce enough cognitive dissonance with their existing worldview to erode its foundations.
The brain being an association network, those associations can act like scaffolding that reinforces and upholds the larger overall superstructure. Just because we win one debate or on one specific point does not mean the other person’s overall worldview has changed. The overall superstructure is connected throughout multiple regions of their mind and those other connections will keep the superstructure standing.
Changing the entire worldview of someone is a long process of knocking out and replacing multiple pillars in their mind until enough has been rewritten that the overall structure is transformed.
The good thing is that we don’t necessarily need to change everyone’s worldview right now. It’s a long-term project. We can start now, but don’t expect immediate results.
In the meantime, we can focus on particular topics to change minds on—as long as we frame ideas in ways that make sense from their worldview. In that way, we begin changing individual pillars in their network one at a time, so that the new information can more readily integrate into their existing models of reality.
We must meet the audience where they are (from their worldview) and then guide them to ideas that can shift them on individual points that they can tolerate slotting in. When you talk to others with opposing views, talk through their worldview lens—this makes the speaker seem authentic, credible, and on their team.
Common patterns in different worldviews
While every individual is unique and often complex, there are some common patterns within ideological groups.
For people who consider themselves liberal, we talk in terms of freedoms because that is what resonates with liberals. When we talk to leftists, we might talk in terms of equality because that is what resonates with leftists.
Here are some approaches you might try for people based on their values:
People who identify as moderates: Some people have a desire to not rock the boat too much, to mediate conflict, to find common ground. They want us all to get along and work together to resolve conflict. They tend to not have super hard, committed ideological positions. When you talk to them, you’ll want to emphasize how our ideas will be pragmatic, will reduce conflict, will give everyone a seat at the table, and show you’re willing to compromise and be open-minded.
People who identify as centrist: Some people subscribe to the middle ground model. They believe that the truth lies somewhere in the middle, so if two prominent factions in society have deeply held beliefs about a given topic, then they must each have at least some validity to their position. You can appeal to them by framing ourselves as being open-minded and willing to give credit where it’s due. You may be able to contrast your position with those on either side of ours, then present your position as the center between those extremes.
People who identify as independent: Some people pride themselves on not being beholden to any one faction or they humble themselves in being agnostic because they don’t know enough. This is a broad category because it’s kind of a catch-all. So identifying what kind of independent they are can be tricky. But generally we can appeal to them by demonstrating that we ourselves are open-minded and unbiased. We can do this by pointing out where we are willing to disagree with our own side and think differently. This gives the speaker credibility in their eyes. To people who value independence, commitment to any given political group is highly suspect so we want to defuse the concern that we are only coming from a place of partisan bias.
Politically unengaged: these are people who really don’t follow politics and don’t have deeply held views on politics. Partisanship can be scary to them so we want to avoid sounding too partisan. We also want to approach them as a friend who has interesting ideas they may not have heard before - in a casual, low stakes, non-combative way. We also may need to connect our political positions with the personal stakes involved. How might these things affect them or people they care about? We have to give them a reason to care and give them information because by default they don’t know much about these topics, don’t know why they should care, don’t know why it’s a big deal, since they most-likley try to avoid it because they see how nasty politics can be. As with any discussion, political or otherwise, it’s important to be kind and understanding, even when discussing something as uncomfortable as politics.
People who identify as libertarian: Some people see their world via a fairly simple, black and white, but consistent, model of fairness and logic. Whether we agree with them or not is irrelevant. This is how they see themselves and how we need to relate to them to influence them. At the core of such an ideology is the ‘Non-Aggression Principle’ which is essentially that just law and governance is defined by the least amount of interference and force/coercion necessary. People like this may see government as a necessary evil that has a monopoly on force. That monopoly on force is required to enforce fair rules but to a libertarian this is a necessary evil and therefore should be limited to the minimal amount necessary. We want to focus our messaging to them in terms of letting people live and let live, in terms of fairness, in terms of checks and balances, in reducing power concentration, and want to emphasize logical consistency.
People who identify as conservative: People who espouse conservative values often find comfort in knowing what the rules are; in familiarity. The law of unintended consequences weighs heavily on their mind. Familiarity and tradition offer comfort. They are used to it. They know how to exist within it. Their identity feels secure within the familiar. When discussing politics with someone like this, it could be useful to shift the focus onto how the right/MAGA are radical and doing too much radical change too soon. We can leverage classical symbology and slogans of Americana. For example, a phrase like ‘Liberty and Justice’ for all embodies our ideals but is framed as a slogan that has a long history in American cultural identity. Appealing to the Constitution can also be successful. We can talk about how it would be good for families since they see the family unit as the fundamental unit that society is built out of. So something like a child tax credit might appeal to them because it is pro-family.
Remember, always consider the audience - whether that be the person in front of you or the audience listening. Who your audience is determines how you package your rhetoric - with the purpose of effective communication being to build political capital/support.
For more information
For those of you who may be viewing this blog information in the context of your strained family relationships or friendships. This article might be of help
Conversation Gets A Bit Rocky? Switch To A ‘Meta’-Conversation
Here is an explainer of cognitive dissonance for those unfamiliar with this phenomenon.
Cognitive Dissonance: Your Response to Conflicting Beliefs
A single conversation likely won’t change their identity, however over time, by avoiding an adversarial dynamic, one can build trust towards mutual understanding.
How to Actually Change Someone’s Mind