Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Issue 550 Politics and Words March 18, 2015

 As I am sure you have noticed, politicians use certain lingo to get their point across.  What's more is that lingo is used to manipulate (for good or for bad) into making people think in a certain way.  So let us discuss.

Lingo of politics:  First and foremost, the lingo revolves around gaining power.  In this case it is moving the people who listen emotionally and sometimes physically into action.  President Obama is masterful at making people move as he being a former community organizer knows just the right messages and words to make people follow his lead.  So when he had the campaign slogan "hope and change" or when he said during his campaign for Obama care (the affordable care act) that you can keep your doctor and your insurance, it moved people.  People believed it because it was repeated a number of times, and used almost like a chant on occasion.  The news media ate it up which further enhanced the Presidents message.  As to whether what a politician says is one hundred percent truthful or not doesn't really matter, for power is all about making people move willingly or unwillingly. As such when you want to turn people away from something like the estate tax, the tax on inheritance over a certain value, you call it the death tax.  Why this subtle manipulation of words?  Simple, its word play as normally you would not care about a tax that only affects a group of people outside of yourself.  But when you say death tax it invokes a totally different mindset for those who do not know how the tax works.  Key point though is that if the wordplay is bad, then people ignore it.  Hence why inheritance tax is not used over death tax.  

Conclusion:  Words are tools to politicians.   I will say that all politicians use wordplay and thus manipulate their message to accommodate their audience.  So it is up to us to do two things, educate ourselves on what goes on, and to find out if the politician is sincere.  If we can do those two things then we will be safe from politics and politicians efforts to manipulate us.

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