Political Manipulation 101: Hide Your Real Motivations
On a scale of 1–10, where one is “A Trivial Issue” and 10 is “House on Fire” how would you rate the importance of climate change?
Whatever your views on climate change, whether you tend to agree with this sign or not, you hopefully agree that interest groups on both sides of the climate change debate need to argue honestly. Hopefully, you aren’t too surprised if both sides aren’t being honest. In fact, misrepresentation is rampant. I’ll say a few words about climate change to illustrate the point. Then, I’ll talk about how to defend yourself against this sort of foolishness in all discussions of public policy and science.
The Motivation Behind Climate Change Denial:
This is just a short opinion piece so I’ll come right out and say it — climate change deniers are lying to defend free markets and small government. They don’t care what science shows about the impacts of climate change. They don’t care what facts, logic, or expert analysis indicate the reasonable policy responses might be. They care about knocking down climate science with carefully chosen data. If you investigate any source of climate change denial, no matter how polished and scientific it seems, you can expect to find one of two things:
A think tank funded by the American Petroleum Institute — just the name suggests they have a goal other than sharing accurate information, about anything that makes fossil fuels look dangerous.
A libertarian think tank — the word ‘libertarian’ tells you they have no interest in promoting any analysis or any data that make government regulation look reasonable.
This phenomenon is not new and not isolated to climate change. No matter what the social or environmental issue, if the stakes are high, someone is misrepresenting their motives while pretending to share the facts.
Hidden Motives and Gun Control:
Assume you have suddenly taken a keen interest in gun control. Where will you go to find some reliable information on gun laws, gun control proposals, and gun violence? You can read about a ban on “assault rifles” but you might not know how to evaluate the arguments you read. You might find politicians and talking heads on the television news programs making various wild claims about gun violence, gun confiscation, and “weapons of war.”
Politicians have an agenda. That agenda may or may not be grounded in logic or research. (Somehow that truth seems self-evident when you look at the OTHER end of the political spectrum).
Each side will tell us the other side has nefarious motivations. Conservatives care more about guns than about public safety. Liberals care more about control than freedom. Both sides will tempt you to ignore inconvenient details. For example, liberals supposedly want to ban all guns. The Second Amendment makes this impossible, even absurd. Conservatives supposedly worship guns. In truth, they tend to have real concerns about new gun laws that add to the other laws we have. Maybe more enforcement and tougher sentences are what the nation needs.
Just look for politicians and their spokespeople to ignore those facts. They’ll tell you liberals hate the Second Amendment. A Democrat or two will definitely say that “weapons of war” must be banned. Both are committing at least one sin each: Conservatives are lying about that Second Amendment thing to scare their base and smear the Democrats. This is much easier and more satisfying than trying to demolish a gun control argument. Democrats are lying when they suggest conservatives don’t care about gun violence. Both sides are perhaps, let us say, less than honest in their attacks on the other side. Perhaps, they truly believe what they say and perhaps they are just saying anything that will weaken the other side and cost them votes.
Keep these things in mind as election season rolls along.
