I think there's another reason people don't talk in the language of their opponents, beyond just feeling queasy about "sounding republican" as Dr Newport says. There's also something of a fear of contagion: it feels like talking "like a lib" or "like a chud" makes you vulnerable to catching lib or chud from those who are already riddled with lib or chud. In fact, this is a rational fear: to talk like your opponent you have to think like your opponent, even temporarily, and that is quite an epistemic risk. What if you like those thoughts better? In other words, there's no important distinction between thought and speech in this respect: it's really dangerous to try to think in one style and talk in another, because habits of thought and habits of speech are not independent of their content. Far safer to stay within the guardrails offered to you by the people who are politically like you.
This was a good argument in 2022 but I wonder if it still holds when you are looking at British politicians from across the political spectrum now trying to out-trump each other and will use populist language regardless of their own politics. See immigration, criminal justice etc. They are using the language of the populist right while practically supporting bog-standard liberal policies. I don't think the result is convincing anyone. The problem with signalling to your voters that you are one type of politician is that, eventually, they want you to put your money where your mouth is. For example Labour has been trying to speak the populist language on immigration while adopting liberal immigration policies and the result 10-15 years later is that we have a Parliament wasting all its time and resources on the Rwanda bill and Tory MPs falling over each trying to save something deep inside they know is rediculous.
The underground is a thing of wonder but it is on the subject of Cheems that I want to write. My first observation is that one of the most cheemish things is the use of the word cheems - or swole. My second is that cheems is probably the only thing saving us at present, because the absence of cheems would attach itself to and become the servant of a dominant ideology that is: (a) mental; (b) antagonistic to majority culture. Until we go sane (something like common sense/Victorian values) we are better avoiding Swole. Btw I think we went completely mad in relation to covid which the linked Jeremy Driver thought needed far more swole - like in NZ or Australia or in the very uncheems China.
Sorry, can't find a way to contact you directly or comment on you essay "Natalism for Progressives". It's off topic, but just wanted to get your opinion on my essay "The happiness hypothesis" which dives into the issue of falling birth rates. Will you forgive me? ;))))
In defence of the unconvincing, this is most of us much of the time, because persuasion is hard. It's hard when somebody is uninterested in what you have to say, and very hard when somebody is emotionally attached to a point of view. And the causes of emotional attachment in politics are legion.
Worth noting that the Sinn Féin case is quite different from the general point you made due to Sinn Féin's deliberate astroturfing of social media discourse: the phenomenon of "shinnerbots" is real and an explicit part of the party's comms strategy. (There used to be a link on their website to sign up to shinnerbot training, although obviously they didn't use that term; I can no longer find it unfortunately.) [EDIT: found it! https://www.sinnfein.ie/sfos] John, who got the email you linked, likely signed up to be a shinnerbot; this is more akin to parties telling canvassers to tone down a certain issue on the doorsteps than it is to, say, Labour emailing their members about how to react to the Queen's death on social media.
(Otherwise agreed with this very good post, said a lot that I have been trying to say for a long time.)
I think there's another reason people don't talk in the language of their opponents, beyond just feeling queasy about "sounding republican" as Dr Newport says. There's also something of a fear of contagion: it feels like talking "like a lib" or "like a chud" makes you vulnerable to catching lib or chud from those who are already riddled with lib or chud. In fact, this is a rational fear: to talk like your opponent you have to think like your opponent, even temporarily, and that is quite an epistemic risk. What if you like those thoughts better? In other words, there's no important distinction between thought and speech in this respect: it's really dangerous to try to think in one style and talk in another, because habits of thought and habits of speech are not independent of their content. Far safer to stay within the guardrails offered to you by the people who are politically like you.
Yeah. I agree that so many people seem to be actively working against their own aims.
This was a good argument in 2022 but I wonder if it still holds when you are looking at British politicians from across the political spectrum now trying to out-trump each other and will use populist language regardless of their own politics. See immigration, criminal justice etc. They are using the language of the populist right while practically supporting bog-standard liberal policies. I don't think the result is convincing anyone. The problem with signalling to your voters that you are one type of politician is that, eventually, they want you to put your money where your mouth is. For example Labour has been trying to speak the populist language on immigration while adopting liberal immigration policies and the result 10-15 years later is that we have a Parliament wasting all its time and resources on the Rwanda bill and Tory MPs falling over each trying to save something deep inside they know is rediculous.
On Cheems
The underground is a thing of wonder but it is on the subject of Cheems that I want to write. My first observation is that one of the most cheemish things is the use of the word cheems - or swole. My second is that cheems is probably the only thing saving us at present, because the absence of cheems would attach itself to and become the servant of a dominant ideology that is: (a) mental; (b) antagonistic to majority culture. Until we go sane (something like common sense/Victorian values) we are better avoiding Swole. Btw I think we went completely mad in relation to covid which the linked Jeremy Driver thought needed far more swole - like in NZ or Australia or in the very uncheems China.
Sorry, can't find a way to contact you directly or comment on you essay "Natalism for Progressives". It's off topic, but just wanted to get your opinion on my essay "The happiness hypothesis" which dives into the issue of falling birth rates. Will you forgive me? ;))))
In defence of the unconvincing, this is most of us much of the time, because persuasion is hard. It's hard when somebody is uninterested in what you have to say, and very hard when somebody is emotionally attached to a point of view. And the causes of emotional attachment in politics are legion.
Worth noting that the Sinn Féin case is quite different from the general point you made due to Sinn Féin's deliberate astroturfing of social media discourse: the phenomenon of "shinnerbots" is real and an explicit part of the party's comms strategy. (There used to be a link on their website to sign up to shinnerbot training, although obviously they didn't use that term; I can no longer find it unfortunately.) [EDIT: found it! https://www.sinnfein.ie/sfos] John, who got the email you linked, likely signed up to be a shinnerbot; this is more akin to parties telling canvassers to tone down a certain issue on the doorsteps than it is to, say, Labour emailing their members about how to react to the Queen's death on social media.
(Otherwise agreed with this very good post, said a lot that I have been trying to say for a long time.)