Vance, Comments, Ecosystems and Persuasive Argument

J.D. Vance is getting a lot of flack

Must mean that he is over the target. Schumer offered Trump some advice "Dump Vance".

How odd that Schumer would, out of the goodness of his shriveled heart, offered Trump advice on what he needs to do to win his election.

The brouhaha over the wine-drinking, childless, cat-ladies is humorous. Those ladies take themselves VERY SERIOUSLY. They are also prime constituents of the "I need to leave a legacy. I need to coach some autistic kid to cut off his dick." crowd. How very brave of them!

Comments

Other than spam, I think I deleted fewer than 10 comments in the eleven years I have been blogging.

I get that many of you have high-stress jobs. Some of you work third-shift. Some of you work in Emergency Rooms or in Law-Enforcement. I am not going to be a woke-scold and lecture people who may have found a human-head in a motorcycle helmet after a traffic accident or admitted a close family member into ER six hours before they read one of my posts and comment.

I get much more enjoyment out of creating content than in editing my own work. Why would I get any joy out of editing or monitoring content created by other people (that is, the comments)?

I have no intention of starting.

The blog-o-sphere as an ecosystem

Mature ecosystems self-regulate as a general rule. The populations of specific species will fluctuate based on variation in flow of energy and other resources and due to internal dynamics/harmonics. But in general, most of them are stable-within-bounds as long as enough niches are filled and there are enough species to buffer the system as it experiences internal and external shocks.

Thank-you to all of the commenters who fill those various niches. You make my life easy.

Persuasive Argument

One of the cornerstones of persuasive argument is to start with premises (often several premises to get them in the habit of nodding their head and agreeing with the sales-person) that the prospective buyer agrees with.

If you are trying to "sell" your opinion or perhaps move somebody who is undecided to your position, you need to read the audience and start out with statements that they will agree with without hesitation.

"Know your audience? Whaddya mean, Joe"

Suppose you pop-open an article and the first line reads:

• "Diversity is our greatest strength" or
  
• "Cases of Hantavirus tripled in the last year because of Global Warming" or
• "Failing to start a conversation with your pronouns is an act of violence" or
• "It is impossible to see systemic racism if you are white"

Most of my readers are likely to discount everything else the author tries to communicate (even if those statements lend credibility and gravitas among the author's core audience).

So if you find yourself attempting to persuade somebody, you are almost always better served to start out with observations that your audience will agree with and then expand from there.

Examples: 

• "Food prices everywhere...grocery stores, fast-food, gas-stations...are going up and packages are shrinking"
• "My kid makes $20 an hour and cannot afford healthcare insurance"
• "All of my kids refuse to consider living in Lansing due to the rising crime-rate"
• "Advancement based on anything other than demonstrated-ability always hurts the clients and disadvantages those who are passed-over for promotion. It also destroys moral"
• "Mentoring is fine as long as it isn't a pretext for quid pro quo"