1. A talk I gave for Cato on the Three Languages of Politics. Why don’t I modulate more (i.e., vary my tone of voice)? I sound more boring than I am.
The BBC is another example. Natural conservatives feel the need to highlight the Beeb’s historic role as a national institution, creating shared experiences, enriching our culture and providing a reasoned, shared platform in contrast to the brashness of US cable TV. Progressives like to think of the BBC as an island for the oppressed in a sea of commercial TV ruthlessly seeking profit. The classical liberals? They cannot abide that the BBC is funded by a compulsory licence fee, particularly given changing tastes and technologies.
He argues that Brexit produces divisions within the tribes. One can argue that the 2016 election did the same thing in the U.S. For conservatives, the divisions are obvious. Progressives are divided about what to do about white working-class voters–should progressives write them off as racist and sexist or try to win them over? As for conservatives and libertarians, the inability to coalesce around an alternative to Obamacare exposed the divisions between and within those tribes.
Mr. Kling said “Why don’t I modulate more (i.e., vary my tone of voice)? I sound more boring than I am.”
Mr. Kling’s ideas are often provocative. Naturally enough, he anticipates overwrought reactions by the provoked. To soothe them, he adopts a style that is measured, reasonable, and clear. This is characteristic of both his writing and speaking, and I don’t find it boring.
Or maybe this explanation is just pseudo-psychology. Maybe Mr. Kling simply needs to better train the workings of his mouth, throat, and diaphragm. Too much dancing, not enough singing?
Not optimal, but about 99.9% of other speakers I wish would ask “why am I wasting everyone’s time with twaddle but tricking them with technique?” My guess is you are an INTP/J who spends far more energy on the ideas than the persuasion technique. I wonder what kinds of fans you should cultivate. This might be your optimum persuasion. Some people who I suspect are like this adopt a kind of gimmick personae, almost a set of go-to intentional ticks that they craft into habit. See Jim Grant, Robert Shiller, Warren Buffett, Peter Thiel, etc. Do you just need more practice? Professors get lots of practice.
Also, you will hate it, but that’s not the point, and there are better examples, but none at top of mind. Go watch a Mike Cernovich video from 2 years ago and watch one from this week.
Also, watch a Jack Posobiec video. It seems to me like he is copying vlogger technique and Mike Cernovich stylings. I think you might have difficulty being inauthentic. This is another reason it’s fun to watch Scott Adams. His technique is horrible.
Hi Andrew’. I would like to respectfully request that you put all your responses into one comment and refrain from repeatedly replying to yourself. It interrupts the comment thread here, makes it harder to follow, and really undermines the value of the Recent Comments section on the right tab when it knocks a lot of names down the list and buries them behind a bunch of copies of your name. I really don’t mean any offense or criticism here; I’m just asking for a courtesy which would be appreciated by at least one of your fellow readers. Thanks.
Sure. And I respectfully request Arnold fix this.
Basically every other comments has an edit function.
But thanks for taking the time to reply to one of my comments. I’m honored and humbled.
I once thought the same thing, but then I realized it’s Andrew”s special brand. So I now have great misgivings about you asking him to give it up.
Onto the content, I don’t watch many talks like this, so take that for what it’s worth.
Sort of on the technique topic, Trump is a good contrast to yourself. I would not say he is trying to close minds of his side, but he knows what he is doing. Adams refers to “Pacing-and-Leading.” Trump is trying to get NATO to pull their weight. He knows the language he has to use, he’s just focused on using it, not explaining it.
I love the “dog whistle” accusation. This is persuasion. This is why I’m still siding with Conservatives even though they are winning elections. They still come in a distant second in the rhetorical wars. The only way you can disprove the dog whistle accusation is to be even MORE sneaky with your dog whistles. “Ha, now you deny it, so you are a closet racist!” The accusation is not the truth, which you are suggesting in your talk. Trump is NOT talking to white nationalists. He’s talking to marginal centrists trying to appeal to the C-B axis part of their brain to get them to do what he thinks will help the United States. Liberals can’t even recognize anymore that there are things that might help the USA, so they can’t even fathom this could be anything other than a dog whistle, unless it is utterly explicit “racism.”
Voice coaches who teach actors, television personalities, and professional speakers how to influence their audiences often recommend coupling ones statements with controlled, dramatic physicality. The muscular motions and cardiovascular activity helps the speaker’s brain to makes word expression and the intended emphasis and significance “congruent”. Same applies to most singers. And it has major impact positive impact on the audience too. Your voice is part of your body, and one can gesture with it while gesticulating with one’s hands. With practice it becomes an automatic and instinctive reflex.
I suppose an extreme caricature of this would be Jim Cramer’s Mad Money performances. But going even 5% in that direction is beneficial for most people. If you pay attention you’ll notice actors with good presence and charisma doing this on the night shows, even when seated. But usually this is why seated interviews are often more boring, even holding a normally-good-when-standing speaker constant. Trial lawyers with good jury skills need to stand and move as much as the judge will allow, and charismatic politicians usually need to do the same. It’s not just non-verbal supplementary show for the audience, it’s for the speaker’s voice to modulate just right as well.
Progressives are divided about what to do about white working-class voters–should progressives write them off as racist and sexist or try to win them over?
As a progressive that seems a little simplistic here for a political writer you should extend your search especially since the 2012 was a good baseline as most of Romney was very successful in business. (Of course the double hot take here is Romney got a higher percentage of votes against a stronger candidate…It was just Romney did not get the right votes here.)
1) What was the primary difference of Trump and Romney businesses? Easy, Romney literally did a lot of outsourcing in ventures versus Real Estate deals. Trump was the first candidate in decades that seriously talked about bringing back manufacturing jobs and communities. (And Obama 2012 had the benefit of the auto bailout to protect the WWC Ohio which was an aspect HRC should have been prepared for. We also forget the commodity price drops from 2012 has hurt a lot of Red States.)
2) Comparing Romney and Trump positions on Immigration? Not that much different if you read the positions but Trump made WWC believe how serious he making Immigration the key position of the race versus Romney made it a secondary position.
3) Looking at the European elections and especially the French election, it appears the best way to beat nationalism candidates is a Young center candidate, Macron, who understands business and economics better than the nationalism candidate, Le Pen. (She was completely out of her element talking about the Euro.) This is tough against Trump who does have marketing genius with business experience (mixed bag here and he seems saved by marketing genius)….So the perfect Democrat to run is Mark Zuckenberg!
So economically progressives a bit stuck against Trump who continues to promise these jobs that most progressive (not Sanders) know full well are not coming back.
Extra bonus points if you think about if Sanders would have won in which it is likely he gets less popular votes but protects the WWC in PA, MI, and WI.
Who hasn’t coalesced? It is Singapore.
By the way, the merit-based immigration that I proposed and predicted right here for you guys is the first step in not building the wall. You are welcome.
“As for conservatives and libertarians, the inability to coalesce around an alternative to Obamacare exposed the divisions between and within those tribes.”
Which conservatives do you have in mind? Collins, Murkowski, and the other moderates are not usually considered conservatives (nor libertarians). It appeared to me that both conservatives and libertarians were willing to do straight repeal without replacement, Medicaid reform, Cruz amendment, and various combinations of these. Also, it’s not so much that moderates favored other alternatives as much as they were unwilling to take ownership and bear political responsibility for any substantive change and thus defaulted to maintaining the Obamacare status quo.
Precisely. The pro-Obamacare caucus effectively has a majority in the Senate. For once, Republican leadership is getting too much flack for something beyond their control: that the ‘moderates’ in their own party have effectively sabotaged any meaningful reform efforts before those efforts could even begin.
#1) Interesting talk. There was a question about how progressives might frame the debt issue. I think progressives try to blame government debt on taxes being too low, i.e., that the privileged wealthy do not pay their “fair share”. Admittedly, the oppressor-oppressed axis is not a very good match for describing situations where the alleged oppressors give benefits to the alleged oppressed, which is why trying to force this axis onto discussions about debt and welfare leads to all sorts of awkward language like “paying for tax cuts”, not being able to “afford” tax cuts, and “burdening” welfare recipients with cuts in benefits. Essentially, applying the oppressor-oppressed axis to debt/welfare requires pretending that taxes don’t pay for benefits and instead treating tax cuts (or not raising taxes) as a “benefit” that is “paid for” by spending cuts (or not increasing spending).
Another question is how progressive would frame the death penalty / capital punishment / punishments newly deemed “cruel and unusual” issue.
This is one of those times when progressives tend to spill over into another axis in their political language use, and one starts to hear them say things like, “This is a cruel, barbaric, and uncivilized practice.”
Actually, it’s not a stretch to argue that (like Marx) progressives view most of the wealth of ‘the rich’ is obtained unfairly off the backs the workers, and reject that market processes are largely fair and voluntary exchanges, then a much higher tax rate fits just fine into the axis: think of it as requiring a thief to pay greater restitution to those from whom he steals.
The same justification from the left was put forth for why the Germans were morally obligated to bail out Greece: the Germans (capitalists) had been exploiting the Greeks by profiting from cheap Greek labor. The notion that the Greeks benefitted in turn from the exchange by getting jobs from German companies just did not occur to them. It’s not a voluntary exchange when you believe markets are inherently coercive and exploitative.