The Auron MacIntyre Show - How Anchoring Shapes Political Narratives ｜ 5⧸15⧸23

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00:00:30.000 All right, guys.

00:00:38.020 So today I want to address a mistake that I see made online all the time by people,

00:00:43.300 especially on the right, when it comes to how political narratives are constructed,

00:00:48.560 how language is used, how the frame of political discussions is controlled.

00:00:54.460 And the technique that I want to talk about today is called anchoring.

00:00:58.820 Now, many of you might already be familiar with one kind of anchoring, especially if you're

00:01:04.780 in the field of business.

00:01:06.100 If you're somebody who gets deals done, if you're somebody who negotiates for a living,

00:01:10.660 works in sales or finance or some of these areas, you might already be familiar with this.

00:01:15.800 In fact, Donald Trump actually talks about an aspect of this in his book, The Art of the Deal.

00:01:20.760 He calls it the big ask, okay?

00:01:22.820 It's called anchoring.

00:01:24.920 And what anchoring does is it places an idea in someone's mind of a barrier, a boundary,

00:01:31.920 kind of the things that will fit inside the discussion.

00:01:35.160 So for instance, if you're in a business context, Donald Trump says you should ask for something big,

00:01:40.820 the big ask, right?

00:01:41.740 You should go for a big number, a number that is larger or, you know, whatever the context of the deal is,

00:01:47.740 whatever you're asking for, you should go beyond what you actually expect to get, right?

00:01:52.420 And the reason you do that is that by anchoring what the ask is,

00:01:57.560 by setting the far field of kind of where this negotiation will take place,

00:02:02.680 you're controlling all of the space inside which the negotiation will happen.

00:02:07.920 Because even if the number you've asked for is ridiculous,

00:02:11.180 the person who has now heard that number has that number anchored in their mind.

00:02:15.880 And so every discussion that happens going forward will have that price or that ask

00:02:21.680 that will already be set in their mind as kind of the furthest boundary.

00:02:26.360 And it will pull them towards that number,

00:02:28.560 even though they might ultimately not end up anywhere near that number,

00:02:31.560 it will pull them closer to that number, closer to that ask, whatever it was,

00:02:36.360 than they would have been before.

00:02:38.400 And what that does is that allows you to control the negotiation

00:02:41.300 because negotiations are generally moving towards some type of consensus.

00:02:46.520 You're moving towards a middle ground.

00:02:48.660 And so the further out your ask is, the further out your middle ground will be.

00:02:54.220 And so if you ask for some kind of ridiculous number, even if you don't get it,

00:02:57.480 by setting it out there, you'll probably get a higher number that you settle on,

00:03:01.560 than you would have gotten if you had given a more realistic ask.

00:03:05.160 Everyone wants to meet in the middle.

00:03:07.160 They want to resolve this conflict somewhere in the middle.

00:03:11.160 And so if you put your number way out there,

00:03:13.540 then the middle ground that you get to will be much further out than it would have been otherwise.

00:03:19.200 This is also true when it comes to political narratives.

00:03:22.860 And the left often understands this.

00:03:25.580 So let's look at something like reparations.

00:03:28.600 Now, the left is pretty sure that it's never actually going to get something insane,

00:03:34.200 like $5 million per African-American for reparations.

00:03:39.660 They know that's not a real thing that's going to happen.

00:03:42.720 Not only is that not a real thing that's going to happen,

00:03:45.700 it's not even something that I think the left would want to happen.

00:03:49.040 Because if they actually gave every African-American in the United States that kind of money,

00:03:54.680 then African-Americans probably wouldn't be as beholden to the Democratic Party as they are now.

00:03:59.380 They're much more valuable as a solid voting bloc because they are dependent on the Democratic Party.

00:04:05.360 If you handed out a bunch of money and made them all independent of the party,

00:04:08.800 you would actually be hurting yourself.

00:04:10.880 You wouldn't help yourself.

00:04:11.680 But that doesn't matter because the Democrats never expect to actually get what they ask for.

00:04:17.220 They set the anchor out really far away so that when the discussion starts,

00:04:22.560 you're already thrown off center.

00:04:24.920 You're already thinking of this big number.

00:04:27.100 You're already thinking of this crazy ask.

00:04:29.780 And so when it comes time to start talking,

00:04:32.120 then when they start putting in what they really want,

00:04:34.920 which is a bunch of money into university departments that study black history

00:04:40.000 or a bunch of money into community centers that will be staffed with nothing but Democratic apparatchiks

00:04:45.800 or creating a bunch of government loan programs that will be operated at every step by Democratic donors

00:04:53.020 and people who benefit from the Democratic Party,

00:04:56.260 that seems less radical because they've already anchored the discussion way out at the edge.

00:05:02.200 And so you're already listening for that compromise. 0.67

00:05:05.460 Things that you already would have seen as ridiculous, 0.93

00:05:08.380 you no longer see as ridiculous because they're less ridiculous than the ask. 0.66

00:05:12.940 Now, this works kind of obviously when it comes to some Democratic issues,

00:05:17.100 but we can also see that anchoring works when it comes to how people interact with, say, political candidates.

00:05:24.320 So Donald Trump, right?

00:05:26.300 This guy, you might like him, you might hate him, 0.72

00:05:29.280 but the truth is Donald Trump is a blue dog Democrat.

00:05:33.320 Donald Trump has most of his positions set about the same as somebody who would have been a Democrat in the 80s or 90s.

00:05:41.220 He's more or less socially liberal.

00:05:43.540 He now supports actually things that are probably left of even many Democrats from the 80s

00:05:47.800 when it comes to things like gay marriage.

00:05:50.400 But he also wants protectionism when it comes to American workers.

00:05:55.380 He wants stronger border security.

00:05:57.480 He, again, he's not a radical.

00:05:59.800 He's not a crazy right winger.

00:06:01.360 But guess what the left does?

00:06:02.880 What do they do at every opportunity? 0.95

00:06:04.300 They declare Donald Trump a fascist. 1.00

00:06:07.100 They declare Donald Trump a crazy authoritarian. 1.00

00:06:10.220 They make it seem like Donald Trump is as crazy and radical and insane as a right winger 0.99

00:06:15.820 as has ever existed in, you know, any time in humanity. 0.97

00:06:19.900 But of course, that's not true.

00:06:21.600 Donald Trump is at most a moderate Democrat who has changed, I think, maybe one position, the pro-life position at all, really,

00:06:30.560 from when he voted Democrat and donated heavily to Democrats earlier on in his life.

00:06:35.980 He's not really someone who had this come-to-Jesus meeting, this kind of Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment where he changed all of his positions.

00:06:43.600 More or less, again, he's holding pretty moderate positions from just a few decades ago.

00:06:49.640 But because we've become so radically progressive in the United States, those really moderate positions are now painted as extreme.

00:06:57.460 And by painting Donald Trump as extreme at every opportunity, the left gets to paint him as the farthest right edge of politics.

00:07:07.780 And when Donald Trump is the farthest right edge of politics, because he's just literally Hitler, right? 1.00

00:07:12.980 He's just crazy, insane.

00:07:15.140 As long as that's your definition of far right, then you can never actually contemplate anything that's really right wing because Donald Trump isn't right wing. 0.95

00:07:24.300 He's, and again, this is not a knock on Donald Trump, to be really clear.

00:07:28.100 I'm not attacking Donald Trump right now.

00:07:29.980 Sadly, at best, he might be as right wing as things get in the United States.

00:07:34.460 And, you know, he's done a lot of important things when it comes to opening up conversations on issues that the Republican Party wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole.

00:07:42.100 So, again, I'm not attacking Donald Trump by saying this.

00:07:44.960 I want to be really clear. 0.96

00:07:45.820 I'm just pointing out that there is a specific reason to paint Donald Trump as this crazy right wing person, 0.91

00:07:53.840 because it anchors the discussion.

00:07:56.620 And as long as Donald Trump is as far right as you can go, then no one introduces anything further to the right,

00:08:03.500 which is just anything that would be right wing at all, because anything past Donald Trump has to be just way beyond the pale, 0.66

00:08:10.660 because Donald Trump is already the crazy right wing fringe. 0.57

00:08:14.280 And so by establishing Donald Trump as the anchor here, by painting him as the craziest right wing edge, 0.79

00:08:22.420 you actually preclude any discussion over actual right wing positions.

00:08:27.420 And when it comes time to then find the moderate, the consensus, that middle ground,

00:08:34.120 you've already made sure that whatever it is will be wildly to the left,

00:08:38.520 because you took a blue dog Democrat, a moderate Democrat from a couple decades ago,

00:08:43.440 and turn him into the craziest right wing option available.

00:08:47.160 So by definition, anything that the consensus eventually settles into will be much further to the left.

00:08:55.360 And this is, of course, a beautiful way to control the political conversation.

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00:11:20.260 Now let's get back to anchoring and how it helps control political narratives.

00:11:24.860 This is how narratives are crafted.

00:11:27.420 So for instance, let's look at something that didn't even exist 10 years ago,

00:11:32.440 really didn't even exist five years ago.

00:11:34.880 That's the trans kids debate.

00:11:36.300 This did not exist at all 10 years ago.

00:11:40.040 We started getting a little bit of rumbling about people cross-dressing into women's bathrooms.

00:11:46.680 I don't know if you guys remember kind of the Target bathroom thing,

00:11:50.100 but there was no idea.

00:11:52.100 The idea that you would turn, you know, these crazy quote-unquote doctors, 0.95

00:11:56.680 they're just butchers, loose on children is insane, right?

00:12:01.340 That would not have even been something that could have entered the discussion. 0.87

00:12:03.680 Had you suggested it, you would have probably been called a transphobe or something 0.99

00:12:07.640 for saying something so ridiculous. 0.97

00:12:10.160 And of course, the left denied over and over and over again that this was happening. 0.96

00:12:14.360 It wasn't happening at all.

00:12:15.600 We don't know what you're talking about.

00:12:16.900 This is a radical conspiracy theory, radical right-wing conspiracy theory.

00:12:19.960 And just a few years later, here we are.

00:12:22.380 Not only was it all true, and it was true the whole time, obviously, we always knew it was

00:12:26.420 happening, but on top of it being true, it's absolutely essential.

00:12:30.020 And any attempt to ban it is an attack on trans people and their right to exist.

00:12:35.440 So if you don't let people mutilate children, you are a transphobe, of course.

00:12:40.200 But more importantly, you're threatening the right of trans people to exist. 1.00

00:12:43.500 You're threatening trans genocide, right? 0.95

00:12:45.560 That's the term they're using now.

00:12:47.400 Now, why do they do that?

00:12:48.780 Well, again, anchoring, right?

00:12:50.700 Again, the moderate position just a few years ago.

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00:13:26.520 Was that basically this stuff didn't exist at all and could never possibly exist, right?

00:13:30.940 That was the moderate position was, look, these people are adults.

00:13:33.980 They're making choices.

00:13:34.980 We're trying to do the best to help them live their truth or whatever.

00:13:39.160 But of course, we would never turn this loose on children.

00:13:41.580 We would never do that.

00:13:42.520 That's insane.

00:13:43.440 Now, they've anchored their position in the idea that not only does this exist for children,

00:13:50.320 but it has to exist for children.

00:13:53.520 And not only does it have to exist for children, but anyone who denies that this has to exist

00:13:59.920 for children is literally pushing for some kind of genocide, right?

00:14:03.580 That is the position that's now out there.

00:14:06.040 Now, again, that seems crazy, right?

00:14:08.220 That seems radical.

00:14:09.940 That seems insane.

00:14:12.040 But it's already working.

00:14:14.140 You're already seeing these kind of bulwark-style conservatives, these middle-of-the-road Mitt Romney-whatever-esque

00:14:22.560 conservatives.

00:14:23.320 I'm not saying Mitt Romney himself holds a position.

00:14:25.360 I'm just giving you the understanding.

00:14:27.620 David French, I think, at this point does.

00:14:29.440 So it'd be fair to put David French, I guess, out as the example.

00:14:33.040 My point being, we're already seeing these squishy conservatives, these establishment

00:14:37.580 conservatives, trying to create some kind of middle ground between the radical position

00:14:43.120 of, of course, we can give puberty blockers to six-year-olds and push gender ideology on

00:14:48.200 five-year-olds and mutilate 12-year-olds and the position that this shouldn't exist at all.

00:14:54.220 They're already trying to find some kind of middle ground.

00:14:56.640 And this is how a dialectic works.

00:14:58.980 People want resolution.

00:15:00.940 They want the middle.

00:15:02.320 And so if you want something, you should ask way beyond it so that when the resolution comes,

00:15:07.940 it lands in the position you want to be in.

00:15:11.040 And this is the problem that a lot of conservatives and kind of fed-up liberals, the rationalists,

00:15:18.400 centrist, classically liberal crowd.

00:15:21.300 This is something they don't get.

00:15:22.640 They say, I want just to be honest.

00:15:25.600 I just want to have straightforward discussions.

00:15:28.160 I just want to have a reasonable discussion with people and go into the marketplace of

00:15:32.540 ideas and figure this out.

00:15:34.660 And the best idea will win and all of this stuff.

00:15:36.500 And so the key thing is to be calm and moderate and reasonable.

00:15:40.800 And no, actually, that's not how this works.

00:15:44.780 That's actually not how you win this.

00:15:47.280 You want to anchor your position well beyond what's actually going to happen.

00:15:52.980 Because in any of these discussions, in any of these dialectics, especially when we're

00:15:58.560 talking about this kind of political situation, when you're having this discussion, people

00:16:03.000 will want to meet in the middle.

00:16:05.040 They will want to meet in the middle.

00:16:05.900 And so if your opponent is always kind of this irrational person making crazy, far-reaching

00:16:13.620 demands, anchoring their position well beyond what any reasonable people would do, and you're

00:16:19.220 always presenting exactly your position, exactly what you think is reasonable, exactly what

00:16:24.460 you think is respectable, then guess who's going to win every one of these discussions? 0.92

00:16:29.460 It's going to be the crazy person. 0.85

00:16:31.160 It's going to be the irrational person.

00:16:32.760 It's going to be the person who is pushing the boundaries because they are using the

00:16:37.120 anchoring technique to put you so far away from what you actually want and so much closer

00:16:43.860 to their radical position that you'll line up with what they really wanted in the first

00:16:49.780 place by just meeting them somewhere in the middle.

00:16:52.480 And when you have an entire idea that your political system is built on compromise, when

00:16:58.680 the entire idea of your political system is that you're supposed to meet somewhere in

00:17:03.520 the middle, that you're supposed to work with one side and the other, and each person gets

00:17:07.060 something that they want, and then you arrive at the center, anchoring is the perfect technique

00:17:11.680 because it makes sure that you're always in control of the frame, that you're always in control

00:17:17.820 of how political narratives are presented.

00:17:21.480 And this is why it's so important for every Republican candidate who comes up, be it Donald

00:17:27.280 Trump or Ron DeSantis, or I remember when they were calling Mitt Romney and John McCain

00:17:32.680 the devil.

00:17:33.320 They might've been right about John McCain, but you understand what I'm saying here, right? 0.64

00:17:37.080 The reason the left always calls these people radical, always calls these people crazy,

00:17:41.920 always couches everything they do as the most insane position.

00:17:46.200 It's because they want that milk toast, Mitt Romney, whatever middle ground to be the far

00:17:52.640 right edge of discussion.

00:17:54.560 That's why they make sure that the idea that you could, I don't know, close a border and

00:17:59.560 stop all illegal immigration and all legal immigration at this point.

00:18:03.920 I mean, let's be serious.

00:18:04.680 Look at what's happening in our country.

00:18:06.160 We need at the very minimum a time where we have a solid group of people, an unchanging

00:18:12.380 group of people that can hopefully, maybe if we're very lucky, reform into kind of one

00:18:18.360 culture that can generate one unified body with one understanding.

00:18:23.140 I don't think that's going to happen.

00:18:24.680 I think at this point, our moral visions are too diverse.

00:18:28.540 They're too divergent.

00:18:29.640 There's no way to meet in the middle anymore.

00:18:32.040 But if we're going to have any solution, we need to have some kind of stability of our

00:18:37.340 polis inside our country if we're going to be able to figure that out.

00:18:41.080 But of course, we're not even allowed to discuss that.

00:18:43.960 The right is barely able to have any kind of discussion about actual border control.

00:18:48.740 The weakest T in the world is maybe we'll get a wall.

00:18:52.280 That was already too radical, right?

00:18:54.320 We can spend over $100 billion in Ukraine, but we can't spend a few billion dollars to protect

00:19:00.320 our own border.

00:19:01.500 The idea that we would use our own military to protect our own border is radical.

00:19:05.000 But the idea that we'd ship our military over to Ukraine to fight a nuclear armed enemy,

00:19:10.800 that's fine.

00:19:11.600 That's not crazy.

00:19:12.660 You see how these discussions are controlled.

00:19:15.160 By placing the anchor so far away from the actual point you want to arrive at, you control

00:19:22.440 the frame, you control the discussion, you control what's acceptable inside that Overton

00:19:27.120 window.

00:19:28.200 The left is very good at this.

00:19:30.320 They understand this.

00:19:31.540 The right is not. 0.97

00:19:32.520 Anytime someone like Donald Trump gets out there and makes a radical demand, a crazy

00:19:37.280 demand, a man that's really far out, rather than understanding what's happening there,

00:19:41.380 that Donald Trump is setting at anchor and that everything now gets negotiated back from

00:19:47.160 that, people on the right go to police him and say, how could your rhetoric be that crazy?

00:19:50.840 How could your rhetoric be that out of control?

00:19:53.560 Again, maybe you like Donald Trump.

00:19:54.840 Maybe you're not.

00:19:55.400 That's not the point here.

00:19:56.980 My point is, this is a basic technique of negotiation.

00:20:00.840 This is a basic technique of narrative control, of framing.

00:20:05.240 And if you want to participate in the game, if you want to participate in this democracy,

00:20:10.880 that's what you've got to do.

00:20:12.600 Maybe you don't like a democracy.

00:20:13.800 I don't like democracy.

00:20:14.600 But the point is, if you're going to participate in it, if you're coming to play the game at

00:20:18.160 all, they need to understand how it's played.

00:20:21.040 You need to understand the techniques that are being used.

00:20:24.000 And if you want to win, you need to set your anchor way further than you're doing right

00:20:28.500 now.

00:20:28.860 And if someone does set the anchor, if someone like Ron DeSantis says, no, we're done with

00:20:33.460 Disney, or someone like Donald Trump says, no, we're getting the border wall.

00:20:37.140 You don't step in and do the national review thing where you wring your hands and hem and

00:20:41.660 haw about how radical the guy is.

00:20:43.900 You understand that what the person is doing is setting an anchor.

00:20:46.740 And even if you don't get exactly what you want by setting the anchor, you're more likely

00:20:51.780 to get a resolution in your debate, in your discussion, in your negotiations that is much

00:20:57.040 closer to what you really wanted in the first place.

00:21:00.320 The left gets this.

00:21:01.300 The left does this all the time.

00:21:02.840 They set the crazy radical anchor.

00:21:04.880 The right chases after it.

00:21:06.900 They get some kind of compromise that isn't the crazy radical thing.

00:21:10.480 And they think they've won, but they haven't.

00:21:12.480 They've simply been out negotiated.

00:21:14.420 They've simply lost control of the political narrative.

00:21:17.120 They lost control of the frame.

00:21:18.880 They lost control of the definitions.

00:21:20.660 They lost control of the edges of what could be accepted in the political discussion.

00:21:25.960 And that is why the right loses.

00:21:28.380 If you're going to play the game, play to win.

00:21:30.440 And if you're going to win, you have to understand the power of anchoring.

00:21:34.880 If you're going to win.

00:21:36.000 Thank you.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - May 15, 2023

How Anchoring Shapes Political Narratives ｜ 5⧸15⧸23

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