Selling to the Choir

I recently got on a conservative mailing list. So I've been getting missives from the like of Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan. (For the wikipedia entries on these: Coulter. Buchanan.)

I like to think I have an open mind so I've actually been reading them.

Two things immediately leaped to mind.

The first was that if you dropped liberal bashing from the rhetoric there wasn't much there. Pat Buchanan's letter about watching Barach Obama was the closest to actually having content and that was some historical references. Basically, he was saying watch Obama because it's a bad idea to underestimate your opponent.

At first I discounted this. I admit it. I'm a content junkie. If I don't see any actual knowledge being exchanged I'll discount the post.

Then, I realized that the absence of content was, in and of itself, content of a different sort.

I realized this when I received an advertisement from Coulter about stock tips. She was selling a stock recommendation service.

Interesting.

These missives weren't intended to impart information. The role of preaching to the choir is to reassure the choir. The role of these missives is not to impart information-- even to the point of how to respond to liberal points of view. Coulter is a particularly good example of this since about every third sentence is a quick bash to the liberals. The bash is content free-- it tells you nothing. But it does serve to reinforce the reader's point of view that liberals are worthy to be bashed.

Okay. That's interesting. Creationist discussions have the same narrative tic when they drop little comments about how scientists are trying to hide the flaws in evolution. It drives scientists crazy because all of science is based on putting your ideas out there to be tested. The narrative tics are designed to avoid test. Coulter's tics are intended to the same effect. If you bash liberal ideas enough then, by association, they are presented as not worth investigation. Again, it's a means of avoiding the testing of ideas.

I'd been reading this sort of stuff for a week or so with an increasing familiarity. Where had I seen this sort of rhetoric before? I mean I twigged to the creationist connection immediately but it wasn't congruent. I mean, sure, both are guilty of attacking their opponents personally rather than engaging in true debate. But it wasn't quite right.

Then I got Coulter's letter about stock tips.

Of course. This is the sort of language used in quack medicine. Don't listen to those official doctors. This is the stuff they don't want you to know! isn't much different from Don't listen to those lying liberals! This is the truth they don't want you to know! In both cases the rhetoric works to prevent the listener/reader from actually engaging in discussing the content of the argument by dismissing any validity of the argument.

I get a lot of liberal rhetoric, too. Most of which gets dumped about as fast as the conservitive rhetoric. I'm an equal opportunity skeptic.

There is a difference-- at least in the liberal rhetoric I receive. There is a selection bias in whose email I'm interested in reading. In the liberal rhetoric from, say, the NRDC or Planned Parenthood, the subject matter involves action regarding a subject that I can investigate such as drilling in ANWR or legislation. So, liberal rhetoric is about what to do and conservative rhetoric is about what to feel and what to think.

And, of course, what to buy.

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Links of Interest
Online Hitmen
Girl, It's Time to Automate
Lilypad, California, 90120
Spain Grants Rights to Chimps
The Human Mirror
Vertebrate Gene Sharing
Missals from Iran
Really Farming the Sea