[FRIAM] Great Communicator or NLP unto TDS

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Wow! I don't think I've seen such an aggressive post from Steve before! Well done! Of course, being contrarian, I'll have to take Dave's side on this one. >8^D

What do we mean by "narrative" and "persuasion" if *not* confidence building? I thought that I tried to make this assertion in the "truth, reality, & narrative" post: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/truth-reality-amp-narrative-tc7600012.html But re-reading it shows that if that was my intention, I'm an idiot and failed utterly. 

The only purpose, EVER, to story telling is to *trick* the audience into believing something they wouldn't ordinarily believe ... to *pull* them along with your rhetoric. This is why we're so susceptible to con-men like Trump (and Scott Adams). It's also why Neil deGrasse Tyson is so popular! ... and why actual engineers deliver such horrible presentations ... and why every engineer *hates* the marketing department.

Of course, it's plausible to distinguish between communication and story-telling. I do it all the time when I tell people how much I hate poetry. Poetry is anti-communication, but great story-telling. It relies heavily on the audience to collapse the poetic ambiguity down onto their own preferred meaning. And this is exactly what Trump does. Trump is a 1st class poet, never saying anything with any concreteness, which is why people call him a mobster and con-man. Allowing the audience to collapse whatever nonsense he said to their own meaning. This is poetry.

So, where we stand on Trump as a Great Communicator hinges on whether we think poetry is communication or not! Ha! QED! >8^D


On 1/11/21 7:03 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> Scott Adams might have been speaking ironically?  I don't have his original text.
> 
> "an effective persuader in a world where facts don't matter" does not "a great communicator" make...  it makes something rather different...
> 
> <TR;dbttR>
> 
> Being able to read a room (or individual), identify their greed and fear triggers,  and then play them deftly... that is a manipulative con man, not a communicator.  One who can play 74M people and incite a violent attack by many thousands of them on the seat of our government (insurrection) might have cult-leader qualities, but I'd not call them a "great communicator", I'd call it something else entirely.  
> 
> It isn't clear that what our "glorious leader" has done with the rest of the world leaders over the last 4 years qualifies as "great communication" either, though maybe he did effectively communicate *his* lack of respect for former allies and *his* authoritarian envy for the "success" of the likes of Putin, Erdoğan, Bolsonaro, Duterte, bin Salman, maybe even Kim Jong Un?
> 
> To be clear, I don't think much about how many of Trump's followers are "deplorables" because I think of most of them as simply deluded and in his thrall, naturally the deplorable among them are merely the "ragged edged poison tip" of his spear.
> 
> I'd be interested to hear what you believe Trump has been communicating to his supporters, his non-supporters, our (former) allies around the world, and our (former) all this time?   And is what he's been communicating been honest in fact and in heart?
> 
>> DaveW did not claim Trump was a great communicator — he did (attempt to) cite Scott Adams' book, /Win Bigly,/ where Adams, who considers himself a great communicator, argued that Trump was the same and that was why he was going to win the election against Hillary — which he did.
>>
>> Steve adds: /"I believe it is duplicitous and divisive to claim he is "a great communicator"  That implies both depth and breadth, that he is listening to a broad swath of the country and he is speaking to a broad swath."/
>>
>> Adams argues, and I completely agree, that this is exactly what Trump did in 2016, does today, and will continue to do in the future. A broad enough swath to win in 2016 and attract 40 million votes in 2020.
>>
>> I said in 2016 (when I was also predicting Trump's win) that it was a huge mistake for Democrats and the Media then, to focus on the 1-10 percent of Trump supporters who were certifiably wacko and card carrying members of the "Basket of Deplorables," and pretending the 90-99% did not exist and did not have legitimate and perhaps even reasonable reasons for supporting someone — for policy and philosophical reasons — that they found to be despicable as a person.
>>
>> In this post, I believe SteveS is perpetuating that mistake.
>>
>> While ranting, may I remark that the social media and tech platforms essentially removed themselves from rule 230 protection (when it gets to the courts) by banning Trump and Parler. Modifying 230 is a bipartisan objective, but it will be real interesting to watch the rhetorical contortions the Dems will have to perform when considering actual legislation.
>>
>> davew
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 10, 2021, at 10:57 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
>> > I didn't take the bait on Friday's vFriam when DaveW (as I remember)
>> > claimed that Donald J Trump was "a great communicator".   (same as
>> > Reagan was credited by his fans and perhaps more reluctantly his
>> > detractors?)
>> > 
>> > I suppose Trump is very effective at one mode of transmission of his
>> > ugliest sentiments, which I find to be at best a very degenerate form of
>> > CO mmunication.
>> > 
>> > Whatever skills he has for "reading a crowd" and reflecting back that
>> > which serves his purposes feels more like Neurolinguistic Programming
>> > (NLP) than "communication".
>> > 
>> > I believe it is duplicitous and divisive to claim he is "a great
>> > communicator"  That implies both depth and breadth, that he is listening
>> > to a broad swath of the country and he is speaking to a broad swath.  
>> > Perhaps by a twist of interpretation, you *can* claim that he has his
>> > finger on the pulse of those he whips into a seditious and
>> > insurrectional frenzy as well as those he cannot so instead whips into
>> > what has been called "Trump Derangement Syndrome" (TDS).  His apparent
>> > ability to instigate TDS in virtually everyone (type A or type B) is
>> > somewhat unique...  though authoritarian figures around the world have
>> > done it for millennia? 
>> > 
>> > One (DaveW?) could also argue his sublime ability to give clear
>> > direction/orders to his underlings (e.g. Michael Cohen, et al) without
>> > ever actually saying anything indictable.  This is the stuff of Crime
>> > bosses, right?   Very effective communicators within a very narrow (and
>> > useful to them) context.
>> > 
>> > DaveW's assertion on Friday provided me the perspective and motivation
>> > to look a little deeper into the question of just what makes Trump's
>> > style of communication so dangerous.  The previous post with the
>> > Politico article about Sedition vs Insurrection came to me from that
>> > unconsciously I think.

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