Persuasion Is Outdated

In a recent post economist Bob Graboyes lists twelve strategies that won’t work for persuading him to vote for you:

1. If your message only works when shouted, you won’t persuade me.


“DONALD TRUMP IS A THREAT TO OUR DEMOCRACY!!!!!” is a message that only tends to be delivered loudly and angrily—and shouting almost never persuades. (Say that sentence softly, with a smile, and you’ll sound a bit unhinged.) If you think Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, calmly itemize his behavior on January 6, his unsettling third-term chatter, and his suggestions that the U.S. take Greenland by force. To help you distinguish between these modes of communication: Bernie Sanders, AOC, Chuck Schumer, and Jasmine Crockett always shout. Josh Shapiro, Ro Khanna, Abigail Spanberger, John Fetterman, and Ritchie Torres tend to discuss.

2. If you reflexively ignore or reject what I say, you won’t persuade me.
   I agree that President Trump’s behavior on January 6 was deeply unsettling, but, personally, I’m just as bothered by President Biden’s decision to allow protestors to surround the private residences of Supreme Court justices, day and night, for months. Dismiss my view out-of-hand, and your power to persuade evaporates. Acknowledge that my point is legitimate—even if you disagree—and you may still sway me.

He continues with ten more. Appealing as I might find his list, I’m afraid he’s whistling past a graveyard. If you don’t understand that expression, it means persisting cheerfully with a hopeless task. It’s hopeless for reasons I explained at length more than twenty years ago. Before smartphones.
Before X or Instagram or Facebook had the reach they do now. Relatively few of the brains of people under 60 work that way. Agonistic (that means combative, emotional) modes of expression work where logical discourse does not. The written word is becoming less and less meaningful.

Trump communicates the way he does because it works. Others are communicating that way because it works. It isn’t an Atlantic world any more. It’s an Instagram and X world.

Nearly everything he describes as something that won’t persuade him is an artifact of the modes of communication that are effective in this post-literate world. I despair of anyone taking his advice and, indeed, of democracy itself. I don’t believe it can survive in the post-literate world.