If you support Trump and want to rally public opinion to his side, don’t drive around with a “Trump-Vance” bumper sticker. (Fun Fact: In the 1990s at a political marketing summit, we were taught that the optimal placement for a bumper sticker was actually on the front of the car, and each sticker was worth $200 in advertising. Your mileage may vary, of course.) When was the last time a bumper sticker changed how you vote? Never, right?
So instead, if you truly support Donald Trump, your best bet is to put a Harris-Walz bumper sticker on your car and drive like a total a**hole: Cut off people in traffic! Give schoolchildren the finger! Go off-roading on your neighbor’s lawns! Tie up the drive-thru line with insane specialty orders! (My favorite is courtesy of Steven Wright: “May I have a small Coke in a large cup? And please fill it up the rest of the way.”) If you do all this, I absolutely guarantee you, waaaaay more people will be motivated to vote MAGA than if you just put a Trump-Vance sticker on your car.
That’s because the human brain is a strange, contradictory device. It’s not only wired to seek pleasure, but it’s also predisposed to avoid pain. Virtually every commercial on television uses the former or the latter for its sales pitch: Either this product will give you pleasure or it will help you circumvent trouble. It’s always one or the other.
There’s no great mystery why they structure ads like this: It’s proven to be the most effective way to drive revenue and maximize your ROI.
Our brains work this way because we tend to interpret data points within the context of storytelling. It’s how we make sense of the world; there’s a reason why Jesus communicated in parables. After all, if your marketing message isn’t aligned with how people think, your marketing campaign is unlikely to be successful. The best marketers are the best storytellers.
All great stories need a hero and a villain. The higher the stakes, the more interest we have in the story.
The Russia-Ukraine war is one where the storyline is still in flux. Two basic narratives are dueling for supremacy: The first is that Putin is an aggressive dictator who’s attempting to rebuild the Soviet Union, and his invasion of Ukraine follows a pattern of stealing neighboring territory via force. If Putin succeeds in swallowing Ukraine, it will further embolden him to seize even more territory, putting NATO on a collision course with a nuclear-armed Russia. So our best bet is to stop Russia now, lest World War III become inevitable.
The second narrative is the one that pundits like Tucker Carlson espouse: Russia is a Christian nation that simply wants to sell oil, grain, and resources to the West; its relationship with neighboring Ukraine is absolutely none of America’s business. But we made it our business by expanding NATO to Russia’s borders and ignoring every single red-line Putin declared. So of course, Russia invaded Ukraine! After Biden-Harris plotted to put Ukraine in NATO, it didn’t have much of a choice.
Naturally, each side is trying to demonize the other.
If you’re pro-Ukraine, then Putin is Hitler incarnate, and ignoring his aggression is akin to Chamberlain seeking “peace in our time” with Nazi Germany. If you’re pro-Russian, then Ukraine is a corrupt kleptocracy that’s run by psychos, crooks, fascists, and criminals.
Yesterday evening, Ryan Wesley Routh was arrested after (allegedly) pointing an AK-47-style rifle at former President Trump in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Two quick observations: One, it’s mildly interesting that John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Ryan Wesley Routh all have names with exactly 15 letters. (Doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, but hey, if you have OCD, you notice stuff like that.)
And two, if you’re pro-Russian, you now have the perfect villain for your story.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was always a lousy villain: Too charismatic, sympathetic, and likable. Especially when you compared him to Putin, it was next to impossible to perceive Zelenskyy as a monstrous warlord. It didn’t ring true.
But Ryan Wesley Routh? He’s a “useful idiot” — a phrase that Cold War aficionados fondly remember. Routh is the perfect bad guy: An unstable leftist who tried to recreate the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Empires have fallen over less.
Yesterday evening was Russia’s greatest propaganda victory since the end of the Cold War. Just you wait.
And the fallout is just beginning.
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