Emotions Rule

The Unexpected Surprise

by Paul-Charles Chocarne-Moreau (1855-1931)

This image is in the Public Domain {{PD-US}}

"In politics, being deceived is no excuse." 

                                            - Leszek Kołakowski [1]

The post-election mood in the United States ranges widely from intense feelings of jubilation through fear. Many pundits now focus less on the election than what it means for people's lives, locally and globally. 

Initially, some in the media are trying to watchdog a slew of appointees to high-level government roles. But ongoing news cycles continuously amplify agitation as indistinguishable from anything meaningful in daily events.[2]

Despite multiple analyses of opportunities seized or missed in the election, much of what motivated voters appears little understood. The opinion poll industry has rapidly self-congratulated, camouflaging again how useless the poll projections were. When election results are close, a poll is meaningless with an aggregate error range totaling as much as 6 percent (that is, plus or minus 3 percent error margin). 

In an online newsletter, one writer helpfully offers that the Harris campaign "...failed to trigger the necessary emotive responses...arguments were too sensible."[3] Perhaps future outreach to voters will seek to better express, rather than describe or advocate for feelings. 

While ideas are powerful, expressed emotions are more powerful. We all respond more readily to "ouch"[4] than a description of pain or other emotions. In other words, even urgings or propositions for change to benefit folks are immaterial or redundant against bursts of emotion.[5] 

We daily acknowledge this in lots of ways. Notably, the ever-present memes on social media largely deal in emotions. There, interjections, polite, impolite or worse, carry the day. Controversy and polemic now frame politics in an emotion-filled landscape of interjections with proffered certainties.

In an attention culture devoted to what's intuitive and snappy, what matters is truly engaging early and often with people. To overcome many years of sophisticated microtargeting of voters' emotions, candidates for public office should no longer count on eleventh-hour election campaigns.

References:

1. Leszek Kołakowski [Polish philosopher/historian] quoted in Timothy Snyder (2017), On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, New York: Tim Duggan, p. v

2. Jacques Ellul (1965), Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, New York: Knopf, p. 20

3. Elisa Bird (2024), "The Transatlantic Sequel to Brexit," Read or Die! November 8, https://medium.com/read-or-die/the-transatlantic-sequel-to-brexit-6ab726673b36

4. Tim Wharton and De Saussure, Louis (2022), "The Pragmatics of Emotion, Argument and Conflict," in Gesine Lenore Schiewer, Jeanette Altarriba and Bee Chin Ng (Eds.), Language and Emotion: An International Handbook, Volume 1, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 664-680, at p. 667, https://doi.org/10.1515/97831103475240032

5. Wharton and De Saussure, p. 666