Accusations of recklessness or insufficient caring
This post is part of a series focused on political persuasion. Others in the series are linked from an introductory overview.
Much political messaging boils down to “They don’t care (enough)”. Indeed, that theme is central to:
- Much fear-oriented messaging, for example in the areas of immigration, national security or economic security.
- Most complaints about selfish or “out-of-touch” elites.
- Much of what could be called “compassionate outrage”.
- Much other political outrage as well.
At the highest level, this is obvious.
- People want their leaders to care about them.
- Negative political messaging often works better than positive claims.
- Therefore, “My opponent doesn’t care about you” is a natural claim to try.
As in so much else, debates about “caring” often hinge on credibility/confidence and/or importance.
- Trump supporters accuse Democrats of favoring “open borders” and “catch and release” tactics that irresponsibly allow the country be flooded by murdering rapist thugs.
- Democrats claim to care just as much about rape and murder as Republicans do, but dispute the view that immigrants are to blame.
- Democrats accuse Republicans of ignoring the devastating dangers of climate change.
- Republicans argue that the 97% of relevant scientists who believe in climate change are biased and mistaken.
- Some Republicans further minimize the importance of climate change by arguing humans will engineer our way out of the worst problems anyway.
- Everybody admits African-Americans in the United States suffer prejudice. But how they view it differs greatly.
- Leftists argue that racism is of overwhelming importance – economically and psychologically devastating, and too often downright fatal.
- Right-wingers argue that it’s more occasional, with few effects that shouldn’t just be shrugged off.
- Similar things are true about white conservative Christians, but with the political parties reversed.
- What liberals might call a “micro-aggression”, demonstrating grave lack of caring toward women, people of color, or LGBTs, might to conservatives be “just words”.
More generally, claiming your opponent doesn’t care about something faces two inherent credibility challenges:
- They will usually claim and try to prove the direct opposite.
- You’re not a telepath, so your claims about your opponent’s state of mind cannot be authoritative.
Thus, a “non-caring” claim often expands to some version of “Truly doesn’t care or perhaps just is ignorant”, e.g.:
- “There’s a great danger. My opponents are ignoring it.”
- “They can’t see past their privilege to understand the real problems out there.”
Accusations of cowardice or some lesser form of wimpyness sometimes get into the mix as well.
One of the earliest examples of this I recall was a recording of a 1952 Richard Nixon campaign speech, in which he said – in the context of McCarthyish anti-Communist warnings — that Adlai Stevenson’s “loyalty” was not to be questioned, but his “judgment” was.
- I looked a few days ago and couldn’t find audio online, but did eventually come up with a couple of written links.
- Bizarrely, I also found a 1960 Stevenson speech in which – whether straightforwardly or in a trolling clapback – he used the same formulation against Nixon: “Our indictment of this Administration is not with a lack of loyalty, but with a lack of judgment.”
Finally, an old joke seems too relevant to omit:
“What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.”
Related link
- A Michael Jackson song anticipating the “Black Lives Matter” movement was called They Don’t Care About Us.
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[…] That’s spelled out in a post about accusations of recklessness or insufficient caring. […]
[…] So it was between Richard Nixon and Adlai Stevenson (in both directions, as outlined in my post on Accusations of recklessness or insufficient caring). So it was with many accusations of insufficient defense spending, or when Michael Dukakis looked […]
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