Democrats cling to imagology
The left’s answer to everything seems to be better messaging:
“Democrats spending millions to learn how to speak to ‘American Men’ and win back the working class,” the Independent reported today, with party leaders holed up “in luxury hotel rooms on a strategy codenamed SAM, or ‘Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan.'”
Yeah, that’ll work.
It’s all about style and nothing about substance. See this:
This is all about perception, not reality … Study the “syntax” of the opposition so you can try to sound like them. Watch the “tone” you use to speak. Always be aware of your “messaging.” These people have learned precisely nothing from the rise of Donald Trump. The lesson in Trump’s rise, distilled to its essence, is “be authentic.” No “messaging” massaging can be remotely helpful if you’re obviously an inauthentic liar.
Although “be authentic” is indeed part of the lesson that should have been learned, the substance of the message is very important as well. If the left was authentic it would turn even more people off.
You may not recall the meaning of the “imagology” reference in the title of this post. It refers to an idea of Milan Kundera’s that I first wrote about twenty years ago in this post. The following passage is from Kundera’s 1990 work Immortality:
For example, communists used to believe that in the course of capitalist development the proletariat would gradually grow poorer and poorer, but when it finally became clear that all over Europe workers were driving to work in their own cars, [the communists] felt like shouting that reality was deceiving them. Reality was stronger than ideology. And it is in this sense that imagology surpassed it: imagology is stronger than reality, which has anyway long ceased to be what it was for my grandmother, who lived in a Moravian village and still knew everything through her own experience: how bread is baked, how a house is built, how a pig is slaughtered and the meat smoked, what quilts are made of, what the priest and the schoolteacher think about the world; she met the whole village every day and knew how many murders were committed in the country over the last ten years; she had, so to speak, personal control over reality, and nobody could fool her by maintaining that Moravian agriculture was thriving when people at home had nothing to eat. My Paris neighbor spends his time an an office, where he sits for eight hours facing an office colleague, then he sits in his car and drives home, turns on the TV, and when the announcer informs him that in the latest public opinion poll the majority of Frenchmen voted their country the safest in Europe (I recently read such a report), he is overjoyed and opens a bottle of champagne without ever learning that three thefts and two murders were committed on his street that very day.
Public opinion polls are the critical instrument of imagology’s power, because they enable imagology to live in absolute harmony with the people. The imagologue bombards people with questions: how is the French economy prospering? is there racism in France? is racism good or bad? who is the greatest writer of all time? is Hungary in Europe or in Polynesia? which world politician is the sexiest? And since for contemporary man reality is a continent visited less and less often and, besides, justifiably disliked, the findings of polls have become a kind of higher reality, or to put it differently: they have become the truth. Public opinion polls are a parliament in permanent session, whose function it is to create truth, the most democratic truth that has ever existed. Because it will never be at variance with the parliament of truth, the power of imagologues will always live in truth, and although I know that everything human is mortal, I cannot imagine anything that would break its power.
But reality sometimes asserts itself and becomes stronger than imagology. It’s a constant war between the two these days.
This has been the Democrats strength and now becoming their weakness. Note how for decades they always are in complete synchronization. Everyone uses the same talking points and even the same key words and phrases. It worked well for them, until Trump, by his bluster and direct attacks, showed how vacuous they are. Now they can’t think of a different approach. They are becoming objects of ridicule which they richly deserve. Grilled any burgers lately Chuck Schumer???
Imagogy to the nth, and of course it was known all along, yet accountability has not come, may never, even: https://nypost.com/2025/05/28/us-news/nellie-ohr-perjured-herself-in-trump-russia-probe-testimony-bombshell-fbi-records-show/
Once objective reality is rejected, only the message of choosing “truth over facts” remains…
Good luck projecting the “image” with no real program to offer behind it. Harris tried that last year, to the tune of over $1 billion. It failed.
Perhaps the Democrat proselytizers can use an AI to train up.
We are now 10 years into the Trump Era and Democrats still don’t or refuse to recognize it. And yes it is the Trump Era, he is easily the most important US politician since not only Obama but perhaps Reagan or even FDR.
I have a long rant about my reaction and perceptions about this but I’ll try to distill it here: 1) A huge number of people, certainly his opponents and even many of his supporters get distracted by his brash, confrontational manner which is unusual or even unique for someone that high up in politics. But 2) his rise was based on ISSUES. Particularly his bedrock issues of trade and immigration which are both really economic issues and which continue to define his Presidency even into the second term.
Trump won in 2016 by taking the positions on these issues that were held for decades by the *industrial* (not public employee!!!) labor unions that had been the backbone of the *Democrat* coalition for decades. They opposed illegal immigration because it was cheap labor bringing down American wages. And they were skeptical of so-called “free trade” because they saw too many good American jobs going abroad. In doing so he has disrupted both parties but especially the Democrats. “Imagology” has zip dot squat to do with it. Democrats still don’t know what hit them, Ruy Teixeira being the exception that proves the rule.
@Philip Sells: Perhaps the Democrat proselytizers can use an AI to train up.
Well, Chat is always eager to help. Here are its conclusions:
____________________________________
What Would Be Required?
* A team of data scientists + campaign strategists + anthropologists working together.
* A willingness to hear hard truths: AI might confirm that some current messaging deeply alienates men, even if it polls well with base voters.
* A commitment to listen without lecturing—not just repackaging the same message with a deeper voiceover.
Guiding Principle: Speak With, Not At
The phrase in the headline—“Speaking With American Men”—isn’t trivial. AI could help Dems learn how to enter conversations already happening, rather than issuing talking points from on high.
That means:
* Less moralizing, more respect.
* Less ideology, more lived experience.
* Less about who’s to blame, more about what’s possible.
____________________________________
Wheww! For a minute I was worried that Democrats could use AI to talk to American men! 🙂
The Dems disproportionately consist of people who believe what they read and think they can speak reality into being. These people are found on the Right too but they don’t make up the bulk of the org chart.
Re: Dems talkin’ to country guys / “Stand with Hillary” (2016)
Oh, hooray, hoorah, I found it again! I thought it had been scrubbed from the web forever with extreme prejudice.
_________________________
And now it’s 2016 and this time
I’m a-thinkin’, guys,
It’s time to put your boots on
And smash this [glass] ceiling!
— “STAND WITH HILLARY Music Video”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJJoJWY1VFM
_________________________
Guy in a cowboy hat, drivin’ tractors, playin’ guitar with friends in front of an American flag in the basement, havin’ home-cooked meals with family, and by god he’s voting for Hillary and you should too.
Comedy gold.
Yet it’s actually well-made and strangely appealing except it missed its audience by a country mile.
I hope the actor/singer didn’t totally ruin his career. I kinda liked him.
“Less moralizing, more respect.
Less ideology, more lived experience.
Less about who’s to blame, more about what’s possible.”
As Huxley suggests, not gonna happen. I believe the main reason is the takeover of the Democrats by the hard left. Leftists never concede ideological error. To honestly confront the Trump phenomenon they don’t have to support him, but they do have to recognize they got certain things really wrong. And they simply won’t do that.
@FOAF: As Huxley suggests, not gonna happen. I believe the main reason is the takeover of the Democrats by the hard left. Leftists never concede ideological error.
You read me rightly.
I wouldn’t wish to make broad claims about the left in general, but the New Left has consistently faced down Jim Crow, the Vietnam War, its Underground Years, then somehow emerged to put Obama in the White House.
Stubbornness has mostly worked for the New Left. They won’t be compromising soon.
You make good points, huxley. One might observe that stubbornness worked for many decades for the Soviets, until it didn’t. It would be nice if we are at that point with the American left. I am too chicken hearted to predict the future though:)
So Democrats are trying to learn how to fake sincerity.