Newton's Laws of Political Action
So, this is just my personal philosophical take on it, but IMHO the basic Newtonian laws of physics apply to political action.
It just makes a large amount of sense to me that the laws of basic physics might apply on a larger level than just physical objects. In my admittedly fairly short life I've seen the same things over and over, and many of the psychoses and problems we find in our political discourse make much more sense if you look at it as a problem of fundamental tendencies. Now admittedly, the wording isn't identical, but the principle is so similar that not giving credit to Newton for the inspiration seems almost sacrilegious.
Rule 1: Every Political Entity in a state of uniform action tends to remain in that state of action unless an revolutionary force is applied to it.
Have you ever heard the definition of Insanity? Doing the same thing, over and over again, and expecting a different result? In my opinion, this is a result of the inherent resistance to change of direction that is present in all political movement. Notice how rhetoric about the "Political Enemy" will not change even when it clearly no longer applies. Notice the same pandering to the same political forces, over and over again, as the system falls into disrepair. That's a clear case of the inherent laziness and corruption of our politicians, YES, but it all falls under the category of inertia.
The only way this can be changed of course is through a revolutionary action. Why such resistance against this kind of activity though? You'd think that a revolution that had better ideas would of course change the direction of the political entity? Well, sadly you're up against TWO more laws here, and they explain a lot.
Rule 2: The relationship between an Entity's Political Attention a, its message dissemination d, and the applied Revolution F is F = ad.
I'm slightly modifying the rule to illustrate the point. Essentially the overarching power of a political message is equal to the power of its message, times the bandwidth the message is spread about on. In order to change this, you must have force of Revolution equal to or greater to the product of these two, not the sum.
You can have the best message in the world, but if you are silenced by lack of dissemination of your message, your effective political power is zero. This was put to GREAT effect in the early days of the Sanders campaign by the MSM. Lacking any way to counter the POWER of his message, the media relied upon the technique of reducing the multiplier of attention. Ironically enough, when DWS did the same with her lack of debates, and reducing the audience reached in turn, she effectively reduced the overall power of Democratic ideas. We can easily see the result in the Turn out figures of the primary election.
For a more basic example, take the BLM protests against Sanders which were disseminated widely. If anything those protests GAINED him votes. The nearly exponential increase in media dissemination of his message as a result overcame any subtractive effect that the protests had upon his message. As a pure mathematical example if Message = 4, then Message squared by attention is 16. Even if the Message is reduced by negative press to 3 prior to dissemination its effective Message becomes 9. An over 100% increase in power.
A prime example of this is Trump. Every single one of his messages is squared, Cubed, or quintupled by the media. Even if reduced in power by ridicule, the 3rd and 4th order multiplications of his message gain enormous power. This is the danger of the media, and the great danger of its control by a small handful of people.
Rule 3: For every revolution there is an equal and opposite counter-revolution.
All our DKOS Veterans know this one already.
Throughout history, every single positive change has been met by equal negative attacks and attention. It is only through the proper application of other factors that we can hope to overcome the opposition. Messages alone are wonderful, but they cannot reach those who will not listen. There must be a multiplication of some kind, or another factor that appeals.
Loathe as I am to delve into racial politics, I feel that South Carolina is a prime example of this. Sander's message was objectively MORE powerful than Hillary's for the populace there. Why then was there a failure of it to carry the day? A combination of factors, but inertia, secondary messages unrelated to the main point, and counter-revolutionary tendencies all had something to do with it. The base resistance to change effectively caused the powerful force to be met by an equal force. Add in leadership amplifying a different message within the echo chamber of "Community" and you are left with people voting against their own interests and a perfectly logical reason for them to do so.
So what are we to take away from this theory? In my opinion, this theory accounts for many of the "Inexplicable" reversals that we've seen throughout many political seasons. Political messages operate according to predictable and wholly understandable rules. It's only a matter of turning those rules to our advantage which will carry the day.
Comments
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A missing factor is "Branding", which has been very
obvious in this race in general and in SC as a case in point. At some point early in one's education, one should read "The Hidden Persuaders" and then, review it after a decade more or so. Then one should ruminate upon the vast advances in both the technology applied to such trickery and the increased knowledge of factors, elements, keys and techniquest of that particular black art known as PR - marketing - advertising.
Hillary has a powerful brand, and the concepts associated with that brand are things like "liberal", "mother", "grandmother" (compassionate, caring, helpful, etc.); "experienced" (knowledgeable, competent, wise); etc. Even when evidence is presented to the contrary, people can't get past it (say "Pepsi" and people don't think of high calorie oversweetened flavored water, but laughing youthful people partying on the beach).
Strategically, those who seek to create change need to make it or the elements or actors thereof into a powerful, catchy brand, without lying or being unethical. We also need to learn how to counter brands, such as Hillary's. A mere recitation of facts showing the contradictions, conflicts and deceptions generally doesn't work, as one can readily see at Daily Kos and SC show.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
I would lump that in with "Inertia"
But your point is valid.
Essentially "Brands" represent a long term sustained burn of political action. Imagine a spacecraft in a vacuum. A "Brand" in this example represents a long term, low yield burn associating a particular direction and motion with it.
I would suggest that the best way to counter that is to skew it, as this election has proven to be effective. Changing the Overall direction of the Brand is nearly impossible due to the long term power you have to overcome. However, movement Is MUCH easier to change the course in any other direction.
For an example, The Brand "Mountain Dew" has been associated for many years with "Extreme" and "Sports". Until recently, when it seems to have taken on an association with Extreme "Wanna-bees" who sit around on a couch and fire off rants on the internet. The fundamental message portrayed has not changed, yet it has been successfully skewed by perpendicular pressure and association. Not Contradicting the initial impression, but skewing it.
Hence why Hillary supporters are so desperate to censor talk of Hillary's racism and wealth. Those both are also associated with the qualities she wants to portray, but in a much more negative direction. We should concentrate on the negatives of those qualities she wants to present, rather than attempting to directly counter them with less force.
YMMV, of course. Thank you for the discussion and feedback. Helps to refine my ideas considerably.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.