Fear is a very effective motivator.
Apparently all it took to persuade many people in Florida to vote for Trump was to threaten them with Socialism.
Specifically, their Facebook feeds were flooded with the message "Your city on socialism, your hospital on socialism, your grocery store on socialism and your politician on socialism " accompanied by dismal photos of what is currently happening under the Trump administration. (Warzel, 2020)
You really have to admire people who are able to get others to worry about a future that may not happen in the middle of a pandemic that has killed over 350,000 Americans to date - using actual photos of the devastation that pandemic has wrought.
But that gets us back to the irrational fear some seem to have about a word they can't properly define.
(See this blog for more about that... http://pjlehrer.blogspot.com/2019/10/what-is-socialism.html )
It's too late to try to explain to people what socialism actually means. Instead we should be focusing on the programs that the phrase refers to. People may fear the word socialism, but they probably fear losing their healthcare more.
What if the Democrats had countered with the message - "They want to take away your healthcare."
My guess is that would have been even scarier than worrying about running out of toilet paper. And even more motivating.
Warzel, C. (2020, November 29) What Facebook Fed the Baby Boomers. nytimes.com. retrieved January 5, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/opinion/facebook-disinformation-boomers.html
No comments:
Post a Comment