Political Advertising As Aversion Therapy

We all know that political advertising is a bedeviling form of behavioral psychology gone terribly, terribly wrong. Not that behaviorism was ever a good idea in my book. But now political “conditioning:” has become so gross and stomach turning it’s collapsed into a kind of aversion therapy, creating a nauseating response to itself in most of us. Operant conditioning, as the behavior scientists say, must have a reward system to either change or solidify certain responses. Political propaganda supplies none. It’s surely long past the right time for candidates to stop wasting money on political consultants who are merchants of vitriol and backfiring cant.

And of course it’s almost axiomatic now that most hate PR and vampire advertising is directed at strengthening the resolve of one’s own followers, not to changing the minds of the opposition. It’s the roar from an avalanche thundering down from mountains of illogical garbage.

The waste of paper and electricity alone is staggering. I might get as many as a dozen or more political emails a day even in the off seasons. Hysterical terror postings from both the lunatic right and the sky-is-falling left swamp my inbox to the point of bursting. No matter how diligent I am in trying to unsubscribe to these little bags of stink and propaganda they just keep on piling up in my trash. And it seems that both political parties sell their lists of suckers to each other! There’s no escape. I can’t think of a quicker way to discourage democracy and polish it off.

My solution to all political “messaging,” and I do mean all, is to simply and irrevocably “don’t go there.” When I get a text saying “this is Nancy Pelosi” I immediately dump it. When I get a text calling Trump a maggot, I dump it. When I get emails from the Tea Party PAC, trashing all democrats as cretinous traitors, I dump it.

But I’d be an even bigger fool if I didn’t look at them with a cold steely glare from time to time — not to react to the content, but to see what millions of people presumably are reading and being corrupted by.

What the pols and their consultants are sending us is not information, of course. It’s manipulation. It isn’t even fake news, or junk news, or any kind of news, it’s the failed trickery and ho hum humor of a tone-deaf advertising exec trying to doll up tawdry bigotry in the noble duds of patriots and boots-on-the-ground grunts.

In political genre, you see propaganda at its most wild eyed and inflammatory. But it’s really no different in structure than an ad for the indestructible flashlight, the solar flare deflecting tactical sunshades, or the kangaroo gland extract that will shrink belly fat and throttle up your virility with a single pill for only a fraction of the cost, so to speak.

This truly is “behavioral science” at its most inept and dangerous. Modifying political behavior with a complete disregard for the higher rational functions is training voters to pull the lever like one would train famished skunks eager for juicy grubs. In the 2012 presidential election this malfeasance was worth some $3 billion dollars to consultants, ad agencies, and the propaganda media.

I’m reminded of the grisly work of the famous and somewhat notorious early founder of behaviorism, John B. Watson and his Little Albert experiments, proving the power of operant conditioning. Little Albert was a 9-month-old infant who was jangled into fearing rats, and, as it turned out, all little furry creatures. It was aversion therapy at its simplest and most effective. Little Albert was shown a rat and at the same time he was being shown the little beast someone else would whack an iron pipe on something like an anvil, making a terrible clang that scared little Albert out of his wits. A few times associating furry things with the terrible clang, and Little Albert would start wailing any time he saw any little thing with fur, even in a stone silent room. Operant conditioning at its worst! Awful enough, but even worse for Little Albert. No one thought to decondition him, so he was terrified of furry critters all the rest of his life. Is the hate and fear message of most political advertising creating a generation of people who will one day revert to political violence because they cannot be, and will not be, deconditioned from their searing, take-no-prisoners aversions?

It seems horribly possible that the clang of political advertising is causing Americans to feel a wailing aversion to politics in general, so much so they are more than willing to surrender their right to consent to be governed and replace it with mad shopping sprees and endless face time.

We have such an aversion to advertising that it spoils whatever it champions. Would you ever seek out an attorney who does billboard advertising? Would you buy pills online from a so-called doctor selling utopia tarted up in mango extract? Would you go to a dentist who promises you pain free dentistry during the commercial break of s football game?

The answer, I am sure, is no, never. And why is that? Because advertising implies, on the very face of it, some kind of scam, or sleazy deception, or omission or something devious and debased. It can be an artfully disguised form of manipulation like a 5-pound glamour magazine or manipulations that are so obvious they make you laugh, like associating polenta or mittens or toe warmers with scantily clad young women.

What’s happened to politics in America, the lifeblood of democracy here or anywhere, is that a catastrophic misuse of behavior modification techniques is turning citizens into people who are actually afraid of politics, and averse to self-government because it has become associated with nauseating baloney. We are close to being conditioned to regard politics with the kind of fear and repugnance that little Albert had for rats.

*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it