Not to sound like an evil chessmaster or anything, but yeah. Studying rhetoric means learning to make a good argument… and it also means learning when a good argument isn’t what the situation calls for. Sometimes all you need is a good ol’ appeal to pathos. Sheer manipulation, baby.
You’ll notice that this is how they talk to each other, too. They’ll say “facts don’t care about your feelings,” but they’ll disregard science when it comes to climate change or vaccines or LGBTQ+ identities. The basic conservative rhetoric strategy is blindingly simple, and because we have to live in the same world as them, it’s useful to know how to speak their language.
Conservative Arguments go as follows:
Identify the In Group, as relevant to the topic. It can be as broad as “all of humanity” or as narrow as “white suburban moms in the Midwest.”
Identify perceived threat to the In Group. Notably, you can convince them of almost anything if you frame it as competitive (“if X wins, we lose!”) or dangerous (“your children will get hurt!”).
Make that perceived threat PERSONAL. They don’t care about people in the abstract, so bring in their family. Don’t say “what if,” frame it as a matter of When. (ex. If we’re talking healthcare, age inherently comes with disability. Disability is a scary Out Group word to them, but age is not. The frame would be “when you’re eighty and your knees need to be replaced, that shouldn’t have to be as expensive as buying a new car!”— inevitable, personal, and based on a comparison they understand). In a carrot and stick sense, this is the stick.
After laying out the worst case scenario, provide an optimistic alternative. This is something conservatives are very good at and leftists are presently very bad at. Conservatives use nostalgic language and imagery to paint a picture of an idyllic world where the In Group is safe and the Out Group is nowhere to be seen. This is the “make America great again” and 1950s visuals that erase anyone who doesn’t fit their whitewashed worldview. A leftist alternative might be an optimistic future where billionaires— our Out Group— are no longer fiscally possible and their wealth is with the people, where people can afford homes, and where a shift to sustainability has revitalized industry. It doesn’t need to be realistic. The 1950s tradwife wet dream certainly isn’t. It just needs to meet their desire for safety from the Perceived Threat mentioned earlier. This gives them something to fight for: the carrot.
Prescribe a course of action. Conservatives are good at mobilizing, it’s why they’re in power. Specifically, prescribe action other than just voting— ways to incorporate goals into a lifestyle. For the conservatives, this has looked like participation in evangelicalism, putting their kids in private or home schools, or refusing vaccines. Leftist alternatives might be asking people to engage in mutual aid and/or gift economies (by another name, this one is too lefty for most of them— try “helping your neighbors” or “paying it forward”), joining firefighters or medics instead of the military or police (“bad apples spoil the bunch and good apples don’t make it better!”), recording law enforcement officers (“to make sure everyone’s rights are protected from Them”) etc.
As they leave their echo chambers and participate in face to face community with other people, their In Group may be widened against their will (think of college students who go from right to left wing after meeting people from other backgrounds) and their mindset may open to more intellectually honest arguments.
Of course, it doesn’t work on everyone. Many people are too far down the conspiracy hole to engage with people they see as belonging to the Out Group in any peaceable way. This is part of why it’s the responsibility of people who they might perceive as members of their personal In Group (ie other white people, other cishets, other men, etc) to try to change their mind. Even a little.
At this point, it’s less like changing someone’s perspective with reasoned debate and more like redirecting a loaded gun. But that means it matters more than ever. If your discussion can be the difference between a parent encouraging their son to join ice or telling him to reconsider, if you can convince someone to record law enforcement when they see them harassing someone, if you can get some guy to think about becoming a firefighter instead of a cop, if you can get someone to donate directly to a food bank instead of to a church group, if you can redirect their anger and paranoia towards billionaires instead of immigrants— even one change can have a ripple effect.
So yes. Manipulate the conservatives. It’s one of our last rhetorical tools against them.
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