Happy Monday to all you wonderful FR readers! As usual, Monday’s post comes to us from Stephen Hall. Thank you, as always, Stephen.
If you have ever paid attention to politics in the news, then you have been subjected to some tear-jerking image or story, and most likely a cornucopia of tragic imagery.
We have images of Elian Gonzalez being taken at gunpoint by a guy in full military garb, Kathryn Steinle dying in her father’s arms after being shot by an illegal immigrant, the picture of a young toddler drowned on the shores of Europe with the “refugees”, illegal immigrant children held in temporary detention centers, and most recently a young boy abandoned by an illegal alien using the boy for cover who was rescued by border patrol agents.
There are many, many more images and stories. There is an endless supply of tragic stories.
We are told over and over again by the propagators of those stories that the images are so powerful because the image tell the story, that people are persuaded by an image of tragedy more than just dry facts and figures.
It is issue advocacy advertising disguised as news stories. The old adage is that “if it bleeds, it leads”, meaning that the more tragic the story and the image the more the story sells. However, it is not really the story that they are selling, but their political perspective and spin upon the story by which they are trying to influence the public through their advocacy.
People on the other side of the issue are always struggling to provide context and explanation of how that image is not representative. Trying to employ reason and statistics against the emotional narrative of an image attached to a personal story.
Take the Kate Steinle story for instance. The illegal immigrant claimed that he had just found the gun, picked it up then accidentally dropped it and it discharged, thus her death was nothing more than a tragic accident and not the intentional killing that it seemed to be implied.
On the other side of the issue, people didn’t much care if it was an accident or not because he should not have been there in the first place having been deported multiple times. The legal standard, of course, required more than a political spin, and there was not enough evidence to prove the prosecution’s contention that it was not an accident as he claimed.
Or look at the Elian Gonzalez case, where the child’s mother had brought him to this country to escape communism, but had tragically died. While the child was in America with relatives, his father was still in Cuba and was demanding the return of his son.
While most suspected that the demand was under the orders of the Cuban government, legally the custody of the child would naturally revert back to the father. However, the family did not want to subject that child to the hardships of communism, and refused to turn him over to authorities to be sent back to Cuba.
Thus we are left with an image of soldiers taking the child into custody by force from his family, but in order to deliver the child to his custodial parent under a communist dictatorship.
The other image of the drowned child was held up as a cry for compassion to those who struggled across the sea seeking to escape the poverty and conflict of Africa and the Middle East. He became a symbol for those who want open borders of the need for compassion to throw open the gates and let as many people as possible into Europe.
To those already opposed to this borderless Europe the responsibility for the child’s death was squarely on those open border advocates, stating that the child would never have drowned if they weren’t encouraging people to make such a dangerous journey by promising them free public assistance.
It is nothing new, when President Reagan came into office, for the span of about a decade the media became awash in stories of the homeless problem in America. After Clinton was elected all of those homeless people must have suddenly moved into shiny new apartment complexes because the news stories covering it seemed to disappear overnight.
An aspiring cynic such as myself could look at virtually each and every one of these images and realize that the unfortunate occurrence which is being played to try to push an agenda could be used as an argument both for and against whichever side of the policy you wish to advocate.
The interesting question nobody seems to bother to ask, and which is so easily answered, is, “Do these images actually persuade people in the way that the advocates pushing these images imagine that they do?” Do they work? We hear all of the time that they move the public’s opinion.
Honestly, I’ve never seen it happen. I have never seen anyone’s opinion changed by so shocking or horrible image. People interpret a story or an image to fit the perspective on the issues that they already held before viewing the image or hearing the story.
It is said that there are two sides to every story. In my experience, there are often a lot more sides to any story than that.
Take the boy abandoned by the human traffickers after they are no longer useful to help them get across the border found and rescued by ICE agents. Is it a potential tragedy brought on because of our increasing enforcement of immigration laws, or is it a story showing how important it is to enforce those laws to try to prevent such tragedies.
Both views are plausible. And because all of these stories have a plausible connection to both sides of the relevant issue, no one is persuaded away from that viewpoint which they held before hearing of such unfortunate events.
A mass shooting occurs, and both the gun grabbers and the gun rights crowds are immediately out there explaining just how this mass shooting proves that their side is correct. Because, simply put, it reinforces the views that they already held before the event, it seems in line with their perception of the world to which they had already reasoned.
Thus is generated a lot of noise, and nothing changes. Nothing changes because emotional reactions and emotional arguments do not persuade. So then it breaks down into citations of statistics and facts hurled back and forth which really have no different effect than the images and stories, they are sound-bytes designed to again illicit emotional reactions.
Stop and think for a minute.
If no one is persuaded by emotionally driven instances of tragedy, then why do people keep filling the airwaves with such stories in an attempt to persuade?
It is possible that the advocates are so convinced in the magical power of their own voices, their own words, that they really think they can shift the issue in their direction just by showing their opposition that tragedy is the result of the status quo.
In other words, “Bad things happen, therefore I’m right and you should listen to me.”
I am not persuaded that the people on the other side of the aisle are such delusional narcissistic fools as to believe that they are so persuasive, nor that they are so blind that they cannot actually see the ineffectual nature of the aggrandizement of the unfortunate.
So then, why do it?
Tragedy is used as an emotional shield to avoid any real discussion of the issues, because once emotions are invoked, reason is put on hold. The real effect of such emotionally hyped event driven stories and images is not to persuade at all, but to steel the resolve of both sides of every issue.
The unfortunate occurrence stories act to divide people, to push them further and further apart because it reinforces the notion that the other side just doesn’t care about these unfortunate occurrences or they would join you on your side. And both sides end up thinking the same thing, that the other side simply does not have the same emotional reaction.
It is not a divide and conquer strategy, just simply a strategy of division. It is certainly profitable if you are making your money off of the conflict, if you are the one selling the stories.
I was told by my law professors that the definition of a small town was where one lawyer would starve to death, but two lawyers can make a comfortable living. There is money to be made in conflict.
