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Image from L.E. Mormile — Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump, and Marjorie Taylor Greene
Have you ever known someone that tries to subtly (or not so subtly) control your behavior? I have a friend who has a habit of using the phrase "Feel free to..." whenever he wants you to do something. It’s become a running joke: "Feel free to hand me that drink." The joke, of course, is that there is little actual freedom involved in this statement. It’s more command than request.
We are very good at deciphering when others are trying to control us. We’re hyper-aware of any attempts to manipulate or coerce, even if it’s not malicious. That’s why I get so annoyed when my girlfriend asks me, "Do you want to put the milk back in the fridge?" Do YOU want me to put the milk back in the fridge?!
Despite how much we hate when people do this to us, we all use various tactics to try and get other people to do what we want. Maybe we don’t want to come off as bossy, but we would really prefer that you stop doing whatever it is that you’re doing. So, we come up with creative ways to disguise our true intent. Instead of saying what we mean, we dance around it, hoping that our "requests" feel less nagging. Perhaps we’ll even convince the other person it was their idea in the first place: Maybe I do want the milk in the fridge...
One area where this is nearly impossible is sales. No matter how much the salesman tries to be our friend, we all know that they have another motive. If we didn’t have this B.S. detector, we would get swindled all the time. We’d own a lot more steak knives, timeshares, and girl scout cookies. And yet, despite this, we can still be duped. With a little charisma and the right words, the detector stops working.
Words are a powerful tool to manipulate others—just ask former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. Nearly 30 years ago, Gingrich compiled a list of words that Republicans should use to describe themselves and their policies (opportunity, courage, pristine, principled, caring, common sense, peace) and a list of contrasting words to describe their Democratic opponents (decay, sick, radical, traitor). It was part of a larger plan that Gingrich enacted to help bring Republicans into power in the mid-nineties. When asked about the plan, a spokesperson for Gingrich said "...Republicans need to use vivid language to describe the values of people we oppose politically." Vivid language is one thing. Calling your opponents "traitors" is another.
Gingrich knew that politics wasn’t really about whose policies made more sense pragmatically, but whose ideas make more sense emotionally. People make decisions, especially political decisions, with their gut. If you want to win their vote, you better make them feel something. Each word on Gingrich’s list was chosen specifically for this purpose. Evoke a visceral reaction in voters and you’re one step closer to controlling their vote. If that sounds harsh, consider that part of his plan was titled "Language, a Key Mechanism of Control." Nothing subtle about that. He also used words with universal appeal that particularly resonate with liberals (i.e., caring, peaceful) to capture the hearts of Left-leaning moderates and undecideds. His plan worked. In the 1994 election, conservatives won control of both houses of congress for the first time in 40 years.
More and more, conservatives started to sound like Gingrich. Turn on Fox News today and you’ll still hear pundits doing their best impersonation. If you took a shot every time Tucker Carlson used one of Newt’s "contrasting words," or a modern equivalent (snowflake, woke, the squad), you wouldn’t make it to the first commercial break.
At the core of Gingrich’s strategy to pull on our heartstrings was to highlight how he and fellow conservatives were different from their opponents morally, rather than politically. It wasn’t a choice between Republican and Democrat, it was order vs. chaos, right vs. wrong, us vs. them. He made potentially complicated choices feel simple. Once it became clear that he shared voters’ moral concerns (who could be pro "12-year-olds having babies?") he gained their trust. Convince voters that you understand them morally, and you’ve all but won them politically.
Image from L.E Mormile
Once we see our morals in a candidate, and we feel it in our gut, we turn a blind eye to offenses that, if committed by the "other side," we’d never stop screaming about. Like when conservative Governor Ron DeSantis used the government to tell private businesses how they could operate during COVID and freedom-loving Republicans looked the other way. Or when liberals refused to extend the principles of "My body, my choice" to members of the military, nurses, or police who refused COVID vaccinations. Hypocrisy is humans’ default setting, yet we’re all certain it’s everyone else’s flaw.
Politicians are all salesmen. And Gingrich was a great salesman. He had the ability to make many voters feel like he was "serving them, not selling them,"—like he was the exception. The takeaway isn’t "Look how evil Newt Gingrich is" or "Look how gullible they are." It’s that we all get swept up in flowery language and promises: Hope and Change. Make America Great Again! This truck gets 40 miles per gallon and can change its own oil. If you don’t think you’ve been emotionally manipulated by your favorite politician, think again.
When the dust settles and the votes are in, the winner won’t be the most selfless or dedicated public servant. It’ll be the one who convinced you it was your idea to put the milk away. Because no matter which words politicians use, they’re all pretty much saying the same thing: "Feel free to vote for me."
