How Anchoring Shapes Political Narratives ｜ 5⧸15⧸23
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
171.54105
Summary
In this episode, I discuss a mistake that I see made by people online all the time, especially on the right, when it comes to how political narratives are constructed, and how the frame of political discussions is controlled. It's called Anchoring.
Transcript
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We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
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Fast-free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.
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Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equipped Flight.
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So today I want to address a mistake that I see made online all the time by people,
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especially on the right, when it comes to how political narratives are constructed,
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how language is used, how the frame of political discussions is controlled.
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And the technique that I want to talk about today is called anchoring.
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Now, many of you might already be familiar with one kind of anchoring, especially if you're
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If you're somebody who gets deals done, if you're somebody who negotiates for a living,
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works in sales or finance or some of these areas, you might already be familiar with this.
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In fact, Donald Trump actually talks about an aspect of this in his book, The Art of the Deal.
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And what anchoring does is it places an idea in someone's mind of a barrier, a boundary,
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kind of the things that will fit inside the discussion.
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So for instance, if you're in a business context, Donald Trump says you should ask for something big,
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You should go for a big number, a number that is larger or, you know, whatever the context of the deal is,
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whatever you're asking for, you should go beyond what you actually expect to get, right?
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And the reason you do that is that by anchoring what the ask is,
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by setting the far field of kind of where this negotiation will take place,
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you're controlling all of the space inside which the negotiation will happen.
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Because even if the number you've asked for is ridiculous,
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the person who has now heard that number has that number anchored in their mind.
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And so every discussion that happens going forward will have that price or that ask
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that will already be set in their mind as kind of the furthest boundary.
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even though they might ultimately not end up anywhere near that number,
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it will pull them closer to that number, closer to that ask, whatever it was,
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And what that does is that allows you to control the negotiation
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because negotiations are generally moving towards some type of consensus.
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And so the further out your ask is, the further out your middle ground will be.
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And so if you ask for some kind of ridiculous number, even if you don't get it,
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by setting it out there, you'll probably get a higher number that you settle on,
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than you would have gotten if you had given a more realistic ask.
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They want to resolve this conflict somewhere in the middle.
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then the middle ground that you get to will be much further out than it would have been otherwise.
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This is also true when it comes to political narratives.
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Now, the left is pretty sure that it's never actually going to get something insane,
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like $5 million per African-American for reparations.
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They know that's not a real thing that's going to happen.
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Not only is that not a real thing that's going to happen,
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it's not even something that I think the left would want to happen.
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Because if they actually gave every African-American in the United States that kind of money,
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then African-Americans probably wouldn't be as beholden to the Democratic Party as they are now.
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They're much more valuable as a solid voting bloc because they are dependent on the Democratic Party.
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If you handed out a bunch of money and made them all independent of the party,
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But that doesn't matter because the Democrats never expect to actually get what they ask for.
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They set the anchor out really far away so that when the discussion starts,
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then when they start putting in what they really want,
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which is a bunch of money into university departments that study black history
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or a bunch of money into community centers that will be staffed with nothing but Democratic apparatchiks
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or creating a bunch of government loan programs that will be operated at every step by Democratic donors
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and people who benefit from the Democratic Party,
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that seems less radical because they've already anchored the discussion way out at the edge.
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And so you're already listening for that compromise.
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Things that you already would have seen as ridiculous,
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you no longer see as ridiculous because they're less ridiculous than the ask.
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Now, this works kind of obviously when it comes to some Democratic issues,
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but we can also see that anchoring works when it comes to how people interact with, say, political candidates.
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This guy, you might like him, you might hate him,
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but the truth is Donald Trump is a blue dog Democrat.
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Donald Trump has most of his positions set about the same as somebody who would have been a Democrat in the 80s or 90s.
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He now supports actually things that are probably left of even many Democrats from the 80s
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But he also wants protectionism when it comes to American workers.
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They declare Donald Trump a crazy authoritarian.
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They make it seem like Donald Trump is as crazy and radical and insane as a right winger
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as has ever existed in, you know, any time in humanity.
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Donald Trump is at most a moderate Democrat who has changed, I think, maybe one position, the pro-life position at all, really,
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from when he voted Democrat and donated heavily to Democrats earlier on in his life.
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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.
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More or less, again, he's holding pretty moderate positions from just a few decades ago.
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But because we've become so radically progressive in the United States, those really moderate positions are now painted as extreme.
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And by painting Donald Trump as extreme at every opportunity, the left gets to paint him as the farthest right edge of politics.
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And when Donald Trump is the farthest right edge of politics, because he's just literally Hitler, right?
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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.
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He's, and again, this is not a knock on Donald Trump, to be really clear.
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Sadly, at best, he might be as right wing as things get in the United States.
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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.
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So, again, I'm not attacking Donald Trump by saying this.
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I'm just pointing out that there is a specific reason to paint Donald Trump as this crazy right wing person,
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And as long as Donald Trump is as far right as you can go, then no one introduces anything further to the right,
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which is just anything that would be right wing at all, because anything past Donald Trump has to be just way beyond the pale,
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because Donald Trump is already the crazy right wing fringe.
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And so by establishing Donald Trump as the anchor here, by painting him as the craziest right wing edge,
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you actually preclude any discussion over actual right wing positions.
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And when it comes time to then find the moderate, the consensus, that middle ground,
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you've already made sure that whatever it is will be wildly to the left,
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because you took a blue dog Democrat, a moderate Democrat from a couple decades ago,
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and turn him into the craziest right wing option available.
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So by definition, anything that the consensus eventually settles into will be much further to the left.
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And this is, of course, a beautiful way to control the political conversation.
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Now let's get back to anchoring and how it helps control political narratives.
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So for instance, let's look at something that didn't even exist 10 years ago,
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We started getting a little bit of rumbling about people cross-dressing into women's bathrooms.
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I don't know if you guys remember kind of the Target bathroom thing,
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The idea that you would turn, you know, these crazy quote-unquote doctors,
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they're just butchers, loose on children is insane, right?
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That would not have even been something that could have entered the discussion.
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Had you suggested it, you would have probably been called a transphobe or something
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And of course, the left denied over and over and over again that this was happening.
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This is a radical conspiracy theory, radical right-wing conspiracy theory.
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Not only was it all true, and it was true the whole time, obviously, we always knew it was
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happening, but on top of it being true, it's absolutely essential.
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And any attempt to ban it is an attack on trans people and their right to exist.
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So if you don't let people mutilate children, you are a transphobe, of course.
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But more importantly, you're threatening the right of trans people to exist.
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Again, the moderate position just a few years ago.
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Was that basically this stuff didn't exist at all and could never possibly exist, right?
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That was the moderate position was, look, these people are adults.
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We're trying to do the best to help them live their truth or whatever.
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But of course, we would never turn this loose on children.
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Now, they've anchored their position in the idea that not only does this exist for children,
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And not only does it have to exist for children, but anyone who denies that this has to exist
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for children is literally pushing for some kind of genocide, right?
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You're already seeing these kind of bulwark-style conservatives, these middle-of-the-road Mitt Romney-whatever-esque
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I'm not saying Mitt Romney himself holds a position.
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So it'd be fair to put David French, I guess, out as the example.
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My point being, we're already seeing these squishy conservatives, these establishment
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conservatives, trying to create some kind of middle ground between the radical position
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of, of course, we can give puberty blockers to six-year-olds and push gender ideology on
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five-year-olds and mutilate 12-year-olds and the position that this shouldn't exist at all.
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They're already trying to find some kind of middle ground.
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And so if you want something, you should ask way beyond it so that when the resolution comes,
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And this is the problem that a lot of conservatives and kind of fed-up liberals, the rationalists,
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I just want to have straightforward discussions.
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I just want to have a reasonable discussion with people and go into the marketplace of
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And the best idea will win and all of this stuff.
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And so the key thing is to be calm and moderate and reasonable.
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You want to anchor your position well beyond what's actually going to happen.
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Because in any of these discussions, in any of these dialectics, especially when we're
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talking about this kind of political situation, when you're having this discussion, people
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And so if your opponent is always kind of this irrational person making crazy, far-reaching
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demands, anchoring their position well beyond what any reasonable people would do, and you're
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always presenting exactly your position, exactly what you think is reasonable, exactly what
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you think is respectable, then guess who's going to win every one of these discussions?
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It's going to be the person who is pushing the boundaries because they are using the
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anchoring technique to put you so far away from what you actually want and so much closer
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to their radical position that you'll line up with what they really wanted in the first
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place by just meeting them somewhere in the middle.
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And when you have an entire idea that your political system is built on compromise, when
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the entire idea of your political system is that you're supposed to meet somewhere in
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the middle, that you're supposed to work with one side and the other, and each person gets
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something that they want, and then you arrive at the center, anchoring is the perfect technique
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because it makes sure that you're always in control of the frame, that you're always in control
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And this is why it's so important for every Republican candidate who comes up, be it Donald
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Trump or Ron DeSantis, or I remember when they were calling Mitt Romney and John McCain
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They might've been right about John McCain, but you understand what I'm saying here, right?
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The reason the left always calls these people radical, always calls these people crazy,
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always couches everything they do as the most insane position.
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It's because they want that milk toast, Mitt Romney, whatever middle ground to be the far
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That's why they make sure that the idea that you could, I don't know, close a border and
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stop all illegal immigration and all legal immigration at this point.
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We need at the very minimum a time where we have a solid group of people, an unchanging
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group of people that can hopefully, maybe if we're very lucky, reform into kind of one
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culture that can generate one unified body with one understanding.
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I think at this point, our moral visions are too diverse.
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But if we're going to have any solution, we need to have some kind of stability of our
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polis inside our country if we're going to be able to figure that out.
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But of course, we're not even allowed to discuss that.
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The right is barely able to have any kind of discussion about actual border control.
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The weakest T in the world is maybe we'll get a wall.
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We can spend over $100 billion in Ukraine, but we can't spend a few billion dollars to protect
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The idea that we would use our own military to protect our own border is radical.
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But the idea that we'd ship our military over to Ukraine to fight a nuclear armed enemy,
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By placing the anchor so far away from the actual point you want to arrive at, you control
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the frame, you control the discussion, you control what's acceptable inside that Overton
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Anytime someone like Donald Trump gets out there and makes a radical demand, a crazy
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demand, a man that's really far out, rather than understanding what's happening there,
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that Donald Trump is setting at anchor and that everything now gets negotiated back from
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that, people on the right go to police him and say, how could your rhetoric be that crazy?
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How could your rhetoric be that out of control?
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My point is, this is a basic technique of negotiation.
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This is a basic technique of narrative control, of framing.
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And if you want to participate in the game, if you want to participate in this democracy,
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But the point is, if you're going to participate in it, if you're coming to play the game at
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You need to understand the techniques that are being used.
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And if you want to win, you need to set your anchor way further than you're doing right
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And if someone does set the anchor, if someone like Ron DeSantis says, no, we're done with
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Disney, or someone like Donald Trump says, no, we're getting the border wall.
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You don't step in and do the national review thing where you wring your hands and hem and
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You understand that what the person is doing is setting an anchor.
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And even if you don't get exactly what you want by setting the anchor, you're more likely
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to get a resolution in your debate, in your discussion, in your negotiations that is much
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closer to what you really wanted in the first place.
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They get some kind of compromise that isn't the crazy radical thing.
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They've simply lost control of the political narrative.
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They lost control of the edges of what could be accepted in the political discussion.
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And if you're going to win, you have to understand the power of anchoring.