Compliance-gaining rhetoric

One of the major problems with political deliberation is that people think that the main reason to talk with anyone else is to get them to submit to your views. But, that isn’t the only option.

What are you trying to do when you start talking to someone with whom you disagree?

You might be trying to understand their position, or maybe just getting them to hear what you’re saying, or trying to work with them toward a solution that works for everyone, or trying to use their disagreement to figure out what’s true (in other words, what things you might have missed), or find ways to bargain with them about the outcome, or a lot of other options. One of those other options is: going into this discussion is that you will get them to comply with your view. You will sell them a car, you will get them to support your candidate, you will get them to date you.

It’s a Machiavellian approach to rhetoric, in that you believe that your ends justify any rhetorical means. You can lie, threaten, distort, or in various other ways engage in rhetorical practices you would condemn if the out-group did them.

Whether other people are consuming propaganda doesn’t matter. That there is propaganda for “the other side” doesn’t matter.