The Art of the Nudge & The Rock Star Presidency

Reality is what you perceive it to be. That much is obvious. We were bred this way by nature, and it is thanks to this ability to react to our individually perceived reality that we are where we are as a species, for better or worse. That we are social animals is no surprise, either. We pick teams, pledge allegiances to like-minded groups, mimic the behavior of other people, and fall for mental shortcuts that inform our decisions (many times to our own detriment).

That social networks exploit these bad habits of ours is also exceedingly clear by now. But what about Governments? They don't necessarily need armies of patriotic trolls hawking dissident Facebook users to shape the collective discourse. Forget for now about the fact that Facebook is literally teaching the authoritarian governments of institutionally weak countries how to harness the evil powers of the network to sharpen their manipulation skills and their grip on society.  All Governments need to do is simply shape the conversation. Subtly. Or as Richard Thaler euphemistically calls, nudge it.

How? Simple. Once you have in your power the most important megaphone, use it to your benefit. Manipulate... err... Nudge the conversation. Nail your message once, and again, and again, and again. Until everyone is talking about what you want them to be talking about.

From the University of Michigan. Data since 1999. See that spike? That's the inception of Donald Trump's administration.

Also. Cling to insignificant victories and overstate them to plant the seed in people's minds that what you're accomplishing is actually a bigger deal that what it really is. This allows you to dominate the part of the brains of the populace that rely on salience to identify an issue. Want to supercharge the effect? Be the master of hyperbole. Say extremely outrageous things, which in essence marginally shifts the national discourse to your side of the issue, forcing counterparts to entertain an idea that, before your expounding it, was deemed so beyond the pale that it did not even merit discussing it. Added bonus: This tactic actually makes your counterparts work for you, by having them repeat your idea (in order to refute it), in effect making it even more salient -- in essence normalizing it. 

After that, let the availability bias work its magic, and voila. It is now perfectly ok to have openly Nazis, White Supremacists, and Holocaust Deniers running for (sometimes national) public office, as well as denying American citizens their passports. It's all ok now. The new normal.

So far, these measures limit themselves to molding the collective discourse. The next step, however, is the most crucial one. Once an idea is somewhat uniformly assimilated (be it that immigrants are all criminals, or that climate change is a hoax, or that Google is biased against conservatives) and accepted as truth by a big-enough portion of the populace, the jump from passive acceptance to active execution can be achieved by the brilliant merging of entertainment with political activism.

What do I mean? I am speaking about the RockStar-ification of the presidency; about harnessing the energy of the faux-activist-rock-concert attendant and channeling it to into real tangible action for your cause. This is beyond Nudging. Remember how attending a Rage Against the Machine concert made you feel invincible? Part of an illusory political movement capable of conquering the world? For those 2 hours, you entered an alternative reality; one in which screaming "fuck you I won't do what you tell me!" was to literally dance to the tune of the Shaman de la Rocha. Then, the rock concert was over... and poof! The carriage turned into pumpkin again. You were again the same cubicle-dwelling, nine-to-fiver boring, uninteresting dude. The illusion was over. You walked back to your 1993 Honda Civic, and the next day your job awaited you.

Not so these days with president RockStar. You can now attend his concert-rallies, and while you scream "fuck you CNN!", "lock her up!", "build that wall!" you not only dance to the tune of the Shaman-In-Chief, but are also literally part of a political movement. 

When the concert-rally is over, the carriage does not turn into a pumpkin. You can actually do something about what the Shaman told you. Fuck CNN indeed. Go vote. Build that wall. But you still walk back to your 2008 Honda Civic,

And the next day? Your (still crappy) job awaits you.