I’m going to start with some words of wisdom from Frank Luntz:
You say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and then again and again and again and again, and about the time that you’re absolutely sick of saying it is about the time that your target audience has heard it for the first time.
Or, perhaps the immortal words of the White Stripes are more to your liking: “Well, I’ve said it once before, and it bears repeating.”
Trump makes a lot of noise. That noise is designed to distract from some embarrassing truths about the guy:
- He lies to his base all the time. He lied about immigration — he likes visa programs for him and his rich friends. He lied about bringing down the price of groceries — now he says it would be “very hard” which means it won’t happen.
- Trump has lost the juice: he’s old and weak. He lets Elon Musk call the shots while he’s out golfing at Mar-a-Lago. No wonder everyone is calling Elon “President Musk.”
- Trump’s brain is shot. He thinks the short-term visas he gets so he can underpay his immigrant cleaners at Mar-a-Lago are the same as the long-term ones they give to tech workers in Silicon Valley, probably because President Musk told him so.
Is this simplistic? God, I hope so, and if it isn’t, we need to dumb it down further. Whenever some reporter shoves a microphone in front of a Democrat and asks about Trump’s latest stupid remarks, calling them “stupid” and pointing out that they’re either a lie, a sign of weakness, or a sign of him losing the plot is, as far as I’m concerned, the way to go.
Unite. Fight. Win.
Pete Downunder
Agreed. Slightly off topic but Mrs Downunder and I have been visiting the left coast for the last 10 days and the infrastructure has really deteriorated since I lived here. Pot holes in the roads, etc. Also horror stories from friends about health care. Good luck everyone.
Jeffro
All I know is trump’s yard signs this past year were written in Caveman Grammar and it must really help with that level of
moronsvoters.TRUMP LOW TAXES/KAMALA HIGH TAXES
TRUMP LOW CRIME/KAMALA HIGH CRIME
and so on.
They made me laugh but now I’m done laughing so yeah, repeat Repeat REPEAT
Parfigliano
Advice like this and you will never be a big dollar Dem party consultant.
Raoul Paste
Repetition works. “ You voted for this”
WaterGirl
Bravo!
CCL
“He lied to you“
Baud
Good here.
The corollary is for the rest of us to not treat Trump like an all-powerful god whenever he threatens to do something bad, notwithstanding the fact that he will accomplish many bad things over the next four years.
matt
also Elon’s not calling his own shots – Chaya Raichik is calling his shots often enough, like with the Wikipedia thing.
MagdaInBlack
It’s not simplistic to call something what it is. He is stupid, he is a liar and his brain is shot. The end.
And elon is a dipshit.
Tim Walz had it right.
MinuteMan
@Pete Downunder:
The Golden State has not (someday?) recovered from Prop 13 and the GQP.
RepubAnon
“Drooling Donald lies again” might be a good start to any response.
Nukular Biskits
@Raoul Paste:
THIS!
Pete Downunder
@MinuteMan: Prop 13 was a long time ago. I recall it really killed public education.
Omnes Omnibus
@CCL: I think this is the one. “He lied to you.” Make it personal, but don’t call them dumb (I know, I know).
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: I like it too.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Hmmm… I may need to rethink my position.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: Normally, good practice. But when it comes to lying, my judgment can be trusted.
Nukular Biskits
@Omnes Omnibus:
Instead of
why not
MinuteMan
@MagdaInBlack:
The MuskRat and Mangolini are the man-made noxious artificial Parasites that escaped the laboratory: we’re in a Parasitic Plutocratic Pandemic.
MinuteMan
@Nukular Biskits: Trump and the Republican Party lied to you.
Getting rid of Trump is necessary but far from sufficient.
Nukular Biskits
@MinuteMan:
Agreed.
would be more accurate but I wonder if the message would be stronger by tying it directly to Trump himself.
Poe Larity.
Doddering Don
Can’t wait to use Trumpflation.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nukular Biskits: Agree.
TBone
Maybe some scratch and sniff diaper NFTs would catch on. Smellovision.
zhena gogolia
I repeat it all the time, but I’m preaching to the choir.
TBone
m.j.
The TV Show. A governmental production.
Starfish (she/her)
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, I think reframing it as “he lied to us” places Trump voters closer to us and helps build a relationship with them (that we need to win their votes.)
MagdaInBlack
He lied to you. Trump lied to you. That m-fkr lied to you.
This is not hard stuff.
Kristine
@Jeffro: I saw those in my neighborhood as well. IIRC, the guy who set them out is retired, so I hope he enjoys the threat to SS and Medicare.
Nukular Biskits
@zhena gogolia:
Which brings up a serious question: Where and when do you repeat “Trump lied to you“?
I guess a partial answer would be whenever a Trump voter expresses some level of frustration or dismay over something Trump and his Republican cronies do or do not do. But, again, where?
As I have mentioned elsewhere here at BJ, doing so at work is probably not a good idea but that depends on your work environment, I guess. At the grocery store? At church?
Part of the problem here is that many (most?) Trump supporters/MAGAs have drunk the Kookaid (intentional misspelling there) that innocuously pointing out the truth to them (“Trump lied to you”) could possibly be interpreted as an attack on them personally.
So … time and place are important here.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nukular Biskits: That’s also where the “Trump lied to us” phrasing might be more effective.
Nukular Biskits
@Starfish (she/her):
That’s a good point. By showing disenchanted Trump voters that we’re ALL in the same boat, it could build bridges.
But … we (non-Trump voters) never believed the lies anyway.
ETA: What @Omnes Omnibus said.
Omnes Omnibus
We may elide that point. He lied to all of us. We don’t need to get into the who believed the lies issue in public.
Sure Lurkalot
“He lied to the American people to get elected.” And in your head, you can add “to stay out of jail, to enrich himself and his fellow plutocrats, to suck up to Putin….”
oldgold
Repetition is good, but it will not work unless repeatedly heard.
What is our mechanism for making our repetitive message heard? MAGA has Fox, X, Am Radio and Sinclair blasting away 24-7. We have?
.
.
kindness
@TBone: Do you remember John Water’s ‘Polyester’ in Odorama? When you bought your ticket for the movie they gave you a 8×11 card with scratch and sniff squares. Most of the times the smell would match the screen but John Waters is eccentric and on occasion would throw a curveball smell past you. Those curveball smells were always on the horrendous side of things.
Kristine
Even folks who you think wouldn’t miss things, miss things.
I handle the monthly newsletter for my writers group. For the last year or so, it has contained a notice (large graphic and text with links) about one of our newer features. I purposely set the notice in between the new releases and specials so that folks would see it.
We recently ran a reader survey, and one of comments was (not quoting) I didn’t know you offered (feature).
So, yeah, repeat until you’re bloody sick of repeating it, then keep repeating it.
Nukular Biskits
One other thing to consider when repeating “Trump lied to us”: This is only opening the door, so there needs to be some serious consideration as to how to reinforce this simple message depending on the response.
And I can guaran-damn-tee you a lot of Trump voters, rather than admit yes, indeed, Trump lied to us, will respond with the cliche’ “all politicians lie”. To me, this is nothing more than a defense of all things Trump., but we still need to be ready to counter it.
JoyceH
@Nukular Biskits: Us is ambiguous. It can mean “me and my folk”, which could be interpreted as “Democrats” and of course lying to Democrats is perfectly kosher in Trumpland. I once read a sci-fi series that had two versions of first person plural – one meant “we but not you” and the other meant “we along with you” – and I thought how handy that would be.
Nukular Biskits
@Omnes Omnibus:
Agreed. But I have to admit my inner redneck still wants to say something along the lines of, “But I wasn’t stupid enough to believe the lies like the dumbfucks who voted for him did!”
That might be counter-productive, though. ;>)
opiejeanne
@Pete Downunder: Prop 13 didn’t kill public education, but it did make every school administrator and PTA president an expert on what counted as a classroom, including covered walkways, covered outdoor eating areas, school office, the janitor’s closet, auditorium, library, basically every enclosed and/or roofed over space.
What has really been hurting public education is charter schools, since the first one opened its doors to avoid (white) kids being bused away from their neighborhood schools. That first one billed itself as a basic, no-frills education elementary school. Charter schools in California are now an entirely different animal, based on lining the pockets of private companies rather than white kids avoiding children who might not be white and having to ride a bus for X hours for racial balance.
Omnes Omnibus
@oldgold: Talk to people.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nukular Biskits:
Always remember the goal of the interaction. The win is getting them to agree with what you said. You aren’t trying to win a debate or prove your undoubted superiority.
CCL
@Nukular Biskits: I use it as a quick response (I am personally not good at longer, argumentative, rejoinders. I get too flustered.). Also, I like your “name the villain-shit head” substitution for “He.
ETA: “Simple and short” is easy to repeat.
Nukular Biskits
@JoyceH:
Excellent point but, given the context, I think the “we along with you” version of “us” would/should be understood.
Nukular Biskits
@Omnes Omnibus:
Where’s the fun in that? LOL
Omnes Omnibus
@Nukular Biskits: Just enter the conversation with your sense of superiority in place but well masked. I go through life that way.
Lobo
The eight most terrifying words and one in the English language, “I’m a billionaire and I’m here to help you(myself).”
JoyceH
@Nukular Biskits: “Trump lied to us all. Trump lied to YOU.”
azlib
Trump lies all the time. More importantly he does not care about policy. Paul Krugman says it well as to what is really going on here:
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/maga-is-already-eating-its-own-pass
No surprise Trump would come done on the side of Musk and H-1B Visas. WHat he does is all about the money.
Another Scott
(Just thinking out loud here…)
The way human brains really, really internalize and learn things is much more than repetition. It’s hearing things repeated, saying things repeatedly, writing things repeatedly, reading things repeatedly, and singing things repeatedly.
“… elemno pee…”
Just hearing something repeated over and over again doesn’t make it stick. How many times have we heard radio call letters for radio and TV stations that we (almost) never listen to or watch anymore? After a while, it just becomes some background memory that we can’t get rid of but don’t use anymore. We have to use many parts of our brains to really internalize concepts.
Beyonce’s Freedom is great for individual inspiration, but it (AFAIK) doesn’t get people to vote or think about collective political action.
We need an updated Schoolhouse Rock-like things to reinforce what we stand for, what we’re working for, how to get there, and the importance of working together to do so.
How? Beats me.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Melancholy Jaques
@Nukular Biskits:
Suggest one small addition:
“Trump lied to you, again.”
TBone
@kindness: I DO remember that gimmick although I never felt the need to see or smell it. Marketing!
Nukular Biskits
Okay. Coffee’s gone. Time to get off my lazy ass and finish putting up the outside Christmas decorations.
I really do like this topic, though, and I hope that this discussion goes far beyond us Jackals. In fact, I took the liberty of name-dropping MM2 and linking to this post on my Bluesky account:
https://bsky.app/profile/nukularbiskits.bsky.social/post/3lehk36nkss2q
Ruviana
@JoyceH: There’s a Mayan language that does that exact thing. Like you run into someone you know and say we but not you are going out to dinner tonight for example. It doesn’t have the connotation of rudeness that English has so people don’t take offense. I always thought it seemed like a useful thing to have.
Citizen Alan
The MAGA response to “Trump lied to you” will be some variation of “fake news” and “I don’t care.” They are a fucking cult. And a cult leader can change what he says on a daily basis and have the cult members just follow along merrily. As long as he hurts the people he hates more than he hurts them, they won’t care about the fact that he’s a lying piece of shit.
TBone
@Citizen Alan: as #26 was meant to illustrate.
Hands over ears, nyah nyah nyah I can’t hear you is how my IRL conversations with magats have gone.
DougL
@oldgold:
Your comment at #36 is imho the whole problem. Dem messaging (whether it be good or bad) is the tree falling in an empty forest. No one hears it. We have zero vehicles for pushing a Dem PARTISAN message. At best we hear messaging around our issues with a lot of it framed around Dems not doing enough. No wonder Dems are demoralized and looking for harm reduction.
Ruckus
@Nukular Biskits:
At this point in time he’s their guy. The people that voted for him either think (such as it is) that he’s great, and he is the exact opposite of great, or that they really think that money is the greatest thing on the planet.
I think that as humanity has grown (in size!) there will always be people that want to go backwards in time to a simple life. And the only reason it was simple was that no one talked about how bad it was, because what it was is what you can make it and things like what we are doing here are relatively new. Sure we’ve been doing this for around 20 years now – in the concept of time that’s not much. (And this is not the first time I’ve made a comment along these lines) Humanity is humanity. It can be great, it can suck at the same time. Some want better for everyone, some care only about themselves, some have no clue whatsoever. Some worship money above all else, some worship something/something and some refuse to worship. Humanity is humanity. The old saying – It takes all kinds – was true centuries ago and is every bit as true today. Many of us are olds and what are we showing the young about living, about life? Some will show how easy it is to screw it up, some will show how hard it is to be anywhere near right and some will scratch their heads and show nothing at all. All we can be is who we are. We can change what we do, be better – or worse. Do the best you can and hope that everyone else does the same. Think about your neighbors, your friends – and yes your enemies. And how to make it better – and not just for you.
AM in NC
@MinuteMan: Yes, we MUST include Republicans, and I’d change it to “Trump and the Republicans lied to US“. it puts us on the same team, in opposition to the GOP/Trump
ETA: And I see that Starfish got there first
Omnes Omnibus
@DougL: It’s something we have to work around. Having the right message helps with that.
Old School
@Another Scott:
The Obamas helped make this. I’ve no clue how many kids watched.
Another Scott
@Old School: Neat.
We don’t have Netflix, but thanks for the pointer.
Best wishes,
Scott.
cmorenc
@Ruckus:
The time MAGAs want to go back to (even though many of them aren’t old enough to have lived in it themselves) is a hazy notion of mid-1950s America, still flush in the prosperity and afterglow of having won WW2, living in an imagined place kind of like “Happy Days”, before the civil rights and militant women and girly-men and their poliical allies began upsetting the natural order of American society.
Gloria DryGarden
I wonder if sometimes a (hidden) sense of superiority doesn’t cause problems. Many examples come to mind.
bbleh
Also too, LAUGH at it, and by implication — but NOT explicitly! — at the people who believe it. Not “omg are you stupid” but “omg who [ie not the listener, who is smarrrrt] would be dumb enough to fall for THAT?” And then move on to something worthwhile.
Deny attention, deny any admiration, even for the atavistic technique. Just shake your head at the overt stupidity and move on. Like you would a child who is misbehaving to get attention. In fact, come to think of it…
Sherparick
@MinuteMan: this is the correct response.