Beware language and the art of manipulation

Most of the news itself is not “fake,” but sometimes the way it is presented — intentionally or not — can lead to false conclusions to advance or preserve a narrative.

President Biden, in his recent address at the U.S. Air Force Base in Suffolk, England, stated and answered this question, “Y’know what the Joint Chiefs told us the greatest threat facing America was? Global warming.”  

There is no context provided for this statement. The term “greatest” implies “above all else.” Was this statement made when talking about Chinese or Russian military threats? How about terrorism, future pandemics, electricity grid vulnerability or cyber security? The statement projects validity because it is attributed to authority (the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and it provides a predicate for future actions on border security (climate migrants) and the elimination of fossil fuels as a national security imperative.

When new polling is released, politicians and advocacy groups on both sides use data to advance their arguments. As The Federalist explained in a 2015 report on manipulating voters, “When polls show a majority of folks favor a policy or candidate, it marginalizes those who disagree with the poll, peer-pressuring them into conformity by making them think their opinions are unpopular, invalid, or irrelevant.”

Citing “science” is the ultimate appeal to authority, and Democrats in particular like being branded as the “Party of Science.” In a 2019 survey, Pew Research found differences among partisans when it comes to science and public policy: “Most Democrats and independents who lean to the Democratic Party (73 percent) think scientists should take an active role in policy debates. In contrast, a majority of Republicans and Republican leaners (56 percent) say scientists should stay out of policy debates and instead focus on establishing sound scientific facts.” 

Settled science has been at the core of the Democrats’ climate change arguments. In 2009, a NASA report listed 18 scientific organizations agreeing: “Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.” In the report, scientific academies, U.S. government agencies and international bodies concurred. Injecting scientific consensus into an argument shuts down debate.    

Positing an issue from the position of scientific certainty is good politics, because it limits credible arguments to the contrary. Wildfires in California are attributed to global climate change even though there were considerably less fires in western Canada during the same period of time.  Both extreme hot and cold are considered to be effects of global warming. Climate czar John Kerry has set the climate doomsday clock at nine years. Science is relegated to simple soundbites and gross generalizations when it is co-opted by politicians.

Another example is the science of the COVID-19 pandemic, where two men of science espoused divergent views: Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Scott Atlas, the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in health care policy at the Hoover Institution, who was a special adviser on the virus to former President Trump. Some in the media labeled Fauci “America’s Voice of Reason in 2020.” He advocated for closing the economy and schools. Dr. Atlas was branded as a “controversial former Trump adviser.” His views were more in line with the Great Barrington Declaration recommending “focused protection” of those most vulnerable, such as seniors and those with pre-existing conditions.

Legacy media largely reported the science-according-to-Fauci, dismissing any science that challenged the mantle of consensus he claimed. Many media outlets also failed to report inconsistencies in Fauci’s positions over time. Mask-wearing, for many Democrats, became their version of the Trump MAGA cap, sending the signal that they support “science.” In February, Pew found that “Democrats are more likely than Republicans to rate the performance of public health officials positively (79 percent v. 44 percent).” In May, Democrats stopped Republican efforts to rescind the mask mandate on the House floor. Science has become a weapon in America’s culture war.

President John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”  Obviously, Adams wrote this prior to “spin doctors” who creatively use facts to lead us to false conclusions or simply make up “facts” and redefine language to recast reality. The Biden administration has done a masterful job of recasting reality in both its COVID-19 relief and infrastructure bills.

Language drives the political divide. Over the past few years, a “woke lexicon” has been developed and presented as the settled debate. Practitioners assume that everyone accepts that the United States is systemically racist and needs to be fundamentally changed. The woke account defines groups as “oppressors” and “oppressed,” and applies these characteristics to individuals within these groups. It combines disparate events under a single narrative to support the “defunding of police” and other social-justice policy initiatives. And, from the mantle of certainty, it declares anyone who challenges these beliefs to be heretic.

A quote often attributed to Thomas Jefferson implores, “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” Rising generations need to be taught to recognize the language of manipulation and to form arguments to confront this manipulation, if they are to remain free. 

Dennis M. Powell is founder and president of Massey Powell in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., which provides strategic communications services to organizations. He has been involved in more than 300 political campaigns doing strategy, messaging, polling and fundraising. Follow him on Twitter @dennismpe.