When a politician starts speaking, you should already have your guard up.
Get ready to become a filter, because there’s a big difference between what a politician says, and what he or she actually means.
Terms you can tune out to. They don't mean much when politicians say them anymore.
Fortunately, a lot of politicians have put themselves in a lot of compromising situations. This gives us a chance to observe those critical moments right before they actually admit to their misdeeds. It is in these moments where we can see the mind of a professional liar break down.
When one of the world’s greatest liars starts going down, we get to see what desperate attempts they make to try to stay afloat. Those desperate acts are the ones that show us the inner workings of mass manipulation And when we see those moments, we can remember and point out when others use them.
The following are five terms that politicians have used when they’re going down in flames. Check them out, and see if you can tell when politicians try to use the same tactics in the future.
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5) Redirection and Deferment:
We’ll start out with a popular example from about a decade ago. President Bill Clinton’s position was compromised after he put intern Monica Lewinsky in a compromising position. It doesn’t matter what your personal opinion is about the situation, the fact that Clinton lied isn’t up for debate.
Clinton said he didn’t have any kind of sexual relations with the intern, but later admitted he did. This gives us an opportunity to see Slick Willy’s tactics of untruth.
This video takes place after Clinton cracked under the pressure, but there are still some key strategies we can get out of it.
Notice how he immediately tries to redirect the conversation at the beginning. That’s a very successful way politicians get out of what they don’t want to talk about. It didn’t work in this instance, but it has in many others.
His answers also give us some information. If a politician is being asked a serious question, and can’t give a “yes” or “no” answer, there’s a problem. If someone’s making sure not to answer a question, it’s probably because they don’t like the answer they would give.
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4) Unprovoked confirmation that a statement is true:
Recently, John McCain has been put in a situation that has forced him to defend “robocalls” he’s decided to make. These are automated calls into people’s homes that campaign for McCain.
A video of him defending these calls gives us some insight into how politicians will sometimes start defending an accusation that was never made.
McCain starts defending how true the robocall is, when that was never an issue. By doing this, he not only redirects whatever accusation was going to be made, but he also gets off without having to lie about anything (even though what he’s doing is suspect).
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3) Make it personal:
Richard Nixon’s most popular phrase of all time is probably, “I am not a crook.” The problem was, that statement wasn’t exactly true. He was involved in the Watergate scandal.
While his ship was sinking, he was able to give us a statement, which we can now look back on and see as a not-always-effective tactic to cool down the heat.
He makes the accusations more personal by using “I am” and “I’ve earned” statements. These are an effective way to confront everyone who is thinking bad thoughts about you. It makes people think they are attacking you, because they don’t like you.
If they think you did something wrong, call them out on it, and they’ll usually back down. That is, unless they have a lot of recorded evidence to back themselves up.
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2) Realistic, but not necessarily real, links:
One of the best ways to get Americans to fight who you want them to fight, is to link your enemies to people Americans already don’t like.
Dick Cheney gave a good example of this when he was trying to link Iraq to the attacks on Sept. 11. Cheney made statements suggesting that Iraq was somehow involved, and not only was this later proved wrong, but Cheney also backtracked on the statements himself.
Even though he backtracked, this was still a factor in getting support for the Iraq War from the public. This tactic can be very dangerous, because it can lead to a constant war where we keep attacking people who our leaders tell us are linked to people we’ve already fought.
The 7-step Kevin Bacon rule proves that this can eventually kill us all, since we’re all linked in someway. Thank you, Kevin Bacon, for proving the eventual apocalypse.
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1) Fear:
Fear is what politicians use most to control us. People will do almost anything to not feel fear, and that’s why politicians keep feeding it to us. It’s the most effective way to get what they want.
This last one is a little bit of a compilation of politicians, but they’re all from basically the same administration.
We need to realize that there’s always going to be something to be afraid of, but it’s not a reason to allow others to control what we do.
We have to keep our guard up when politicians are talking about scary stuff, because it usually means they want something. It’s the equivalent to a child being really nice to their parents all of the sudden.
They’re only doing it to get what they want, and they’ll do it again when they need something else.
-William Kammer
Realistic Lies 