One of the secrets of the Left’s power is its ability to seize the momentum by defining the crisis.
In this video, I briefly discuss the challenges of defining the crisis. Take any presidential debate. The things that the moderates will ask about are those areas where the Left succeeded in defining a crisis.
These crises use political terms “homelessness”, “climate change” or “gun violence” that inaccurately define the crisis. When the actual crisis is a population of mentally ill vagrants roaming on the loose, criminals or simply the weather.
To defeat the Left, conservatives have to accurately define the crisis. And then use that to impose a solution.
Arguing with the Left about the details of the crisis, which conservatives are often prone to do, is defeatist. It fights the battle on the Left’s territory and sets the stage for an eventual defeat which has happened over and over again. The way to win is to begin by clearly defining the crisis, robbing the Left of the ability to impose a solution to a crisis that it manufactured.
9 out of 10 times the actual crisis has been caused, enabled or worsened by the Left. When we define the crisis correctly, we also make it clear that the Left’s policies are the cause of our misery.
The Left’s solutions are always about taking power for their own purposes, correctly defining the crisis allows conservatives to lay out a solution that takes power from the Left and leads to a more common-sense traditional society.
Excellent analysis of crises, creating or exploiting crises being one of the left’s main roads to power.
Homelessness for example, the left solution is to spend a lot of money making the problem worse, increasing the number of homeless. One tends to forget how bad it is when one gets away from the SF Bay Area, I was reminded tonight, taking a night walk around the block with temperature in the 30s, some crazy homeless derelict was sitting in the freezing cold on the pavement with his back leaning against a neighbor’s car. He mumbled something unintelligible, he didn’t look like he was stealing the car, just some crazy drug damaged homeless guy trying to get through the freezing cold night, so I just kept silent and kept walking.
We are going to have to work very hard to do what Mr. Greenfield suggests, because we have all become infected with the language of the left. “Homelessness” is not the issue, but “crazy people.”
the human mind has a tendency to store and play back, to use mental shortcuts, and the Left uses repetition and branding to impose its political branding on us through terms like ‘homelessness’
Thanks Daniel that’s the way the brain works, due to the efficiency of checking algorithms. Namely, storing memories and playing them back, when checking against the current sensory input finds an approximate match.
I love it, I get to tie together all these algorithmic concepts, checking algorithms, approximation algorithms, probabilistic algorithms.
There is a term in psychology for what you describe, but I have forgotten it. The word describes the “short cut” and easier way of mentally handling information that has enough familiarity to require no higher and harder thought processes. Roughly, it is automatic, easy thinking versus harder analytical thinking.
I always enjoy your posts because your thoughts expressed in words have the mark of someone who spends a lot of time in the higher, harder process, and your gratitude is beautiful.
Tell me EXACTLY how the leftist solution to homelessness – giving them housing – will create more homeless.
where’s all that housing? billions have been spent and the problem is worse than ever
a whole lot of money is being spent on ‘temporary housing’ and on plans to seize property even as the vagrant population increases
it’s not about ‘housing’ them, but about using them to grab more money and power
it’s the Left’s perpetual endgame
Your whole “argument” is based on a made up definition of leftist. Neo-Liberal, capitalist Dems aren’t leftists. Leftists want to do things like establish worker control over the means of production. We both know you already know that.
Billions of dollars have been spent on creating new housing to be used for real estate speculation. A small fraction of that could have been used to create the housing need to permanently end homelessness. The problem is caused by a misallocation of resources.
You get an E for effort. Try addressing the root problem: Hearts and minds, beliefs and values. “Lefties” gravitate to insanity because they lack the beliefs and values that underpin good common sense. They do not know Liberty, what it is, how it works, and—especially—the duties, obligations, and responsibilities of it. Like most—they cry about rights, but they do not get the demands of Liberty upon them. They do not properly define harm and threat because they lack good values.
Address the root crisis by learning, preach, and teaching Liberty (e.g. Natural Law and Natural Rights). Focus on the important part of that which is our duties and responsibility in Liberty and not the “rights” part of that. Additionally, focus on promoting the other matter which has created the core crisis which is the loss and lack of good values found in Christ and being IN Him at the Cross, wherein is our connection to change and walk out our Liberty more and most successfully.
If you ignore this crisis then you are not a person who offers a solution, but a continuation of the problem.
Finally—try reading some Lysander Spooner writings, essays, and pamphlets. In them, you will begin to “get” the starting gates of true and real Liberty. No form of government is without tyranny. Learn why. Open your mind.
The Constitution was written for a more sophisticated crowd.
It was written the land owning class of the newly founded US. They still practiced bleeding, didn’t know about germ theory and thought the universe – at best – was the Milky Way galaxy. Rightists aren’t more sophisticated than that but the human race is.
you have a smartphone, so you must be much wiser than Moses, Socrates and Newton, right?
I mean sure you are misrepresented my argument. Hell, you are lying by falsely equating knowledge with wisdom. Your paycheck depends on you pushing this nonsense so I don’t know why I would expect any better from you.