The Secret Dreams and Twisted Fantasies of the Fanatical Left

Pinsker’s Law of PR #1: If you don’t know the problem your audience has, then YOU are the one with the problem.

That’s it, folks — the Big Kahuna. The #1 rule of PR. Problem-solving is where it begins and ends, and not just for PR: It also applies in sales. (Which makes sense, when you stop and think about it: Propagandists are still salesmen; we just sell storylines.)

But I am cheating: Even though this revelation completely transformed my approach to PR, I wasn’t the one who first noted it. Credit goes to my old mentor, the legendary Bob Circosta. His name might not ring a bell, but I’ll betcha you’d recognize his face: Circosta was the first-ever home shopping host in TV history and has personally sold over $3 billion in products.

More than anyone else, he invented the TV sales/infomercial format. That’s Bob’s baby.

Everyone in the industry still follows Circosta’s template. I absolutely, 100% guarantee you, if you turn on ANY infomercial today, it’ll begin with a visual and/or a voice-over of something going horribly wrong. Perhaps it’ll be a set of hands struggling with something (and throwing it down in disgust!), with the narrator exclaiming, “Oh no! Not again!” Or maybe, “Don’t you hate it when…?”

That’s because of Bob Circosta.

HSN (formerly the Home Shopping Network) has been on the air 24/7 for decades. Through trial and error, they’ve tried every sales approach imaginable — and the metrics are unmistakable:

When people aren’t aware that they have a problem, they aren’t interested in paying for a solution.

That’s why you’ve ALWAYS gotta overtly, explicitly describe the problem at the beginning of your sales pitch. Home Shopping channels rely on a formula called D.P.M. — dollars per minute — and if a product fails to hit a good enough D.P.M., it’s yanked from the airwaves.

Competition can get cutthroat.

And after decades of data, the results are clear: If the problem isn’t top-of-mind, your sales fall flat. Someone’s willingness to pay for a product is directly linked to how much he desires the solution.

It’s Sales Psychology 101.

There’s a powerful political lesson in all of this — one the GOP would be wise to heed: You tell me your audience’s greatest dreams, and I’ll tell you your audience’s greatest vulnerability.

Lots of “problems” are aspirational. We yearn to feel sexy and beautiful; we covet love and attention. (Brands like Victoria’s Secret realize this, which is why they don’t talk about the quality of their fabric or the craftsmanship of their stitching. The “problem,” after all, that Victoria’s Secret is solving has nothing to do with clothing — even though that’s literally what they sell.)

Dreams and problems are connected at the hip. The former is tied to the latter.

So let’s take a peek at the secret dreams and twisted fantasies of the fanatical left and see what we can learn. Fortunately, we don’t need to wander for 40 nights in the wilderness; with liberal journalists writing for liberal outlets for liberal audiences, they’re letting their freakiest freak-flags fly:

Yesterday at The American Prospect, there was this gem from Robert Kuttner, who’s also a professor at Brandeis University: “The Museum of the Trump Resistance.”

A few excerpts:

I am imagining that someday, in America, there will be a Museum of the Resistance to Donald Trump. But while there have been some scattered acts of resistance, courage is in far too short supply. For now, it would be a very small museum.
[…]
The eventual museum that I imagine will honor the Americans who hid immigrants at risk of illegal deportation and in some cases torture. It will honor mayors and governors and local police who refused to cooperate with ICE. It will honor college presidents who refused to be played off against each other. We need far more solidarity among leaders of institutions. As of now, too many are eager to cut deals, Vichy-style.

Isn’t that the dream of every starving artist, failed writer, and unpublished poet — that even though they were so cruelly spurned by their closed-minded contemporaries, future generations will recognize their superior talent and genius?

Consider it the Van Gogh effect.

Psychologically, it’s an extremely common fantasy: The suffering martyr. The idea that after you’re gone, everyone you know will suddenly realize how important you were — and how much you truly cared.

And then, finally, they’ll love you back!

But it also signals something deeper: Recognition that liberals have permanently lost today’s audience.

Liberals lost the Culture War. They lost the 2024 election. Their approval rating is in the toilet. So now they’re fantasizing about FINALLY winning the debate over Trump — oh, maybe a few decades from now. (Go get ‘em, tiger!)

Our second article comes from Terrence Petty, who seems hyper-focused on writing essay after essay about Hitler/Trump comparisons. His latest screed followed in the Vichy-inspired goosesteps of Kuttner’s piece: “Germany had a complicated reckoning with its Nazi past — will post-Trump America face a similar reckoning?”

His opening paragraph:

Eight decades ago, one of the most formidable challenges for postwar Germany was what to do about the millions of Germans who remained die-hard loyalists of Adolf Hitler. With a third of Americans seemingly in hypnotic thrall to Donald Trump, we face a similar reckoning.

Not unlike Kuttner’s piece, Petty fantasizes about a mythical “post-Trump” period where those dirty, filthy, racist MAGA Republicans are treated like the Nazi scum that they are. His logic is unassailable: If Trump is literally Hitler, then his followers are literally Nazis.

Which, of course, makes today’s liberals the spiritual heirs to the Greatest Generation!

That’s the ultimate liberal fantasy: “One day, far off in the future, our enemies will all be vanquished and our allies will all be vindicated.” Might not happen today or tomorrow, but y’know, somewhere down the road.

It’s awfully revealing, because even in their fantasies, liberals have given up on winning in the current climate! That’s how shellshocked, heartbroken, and pessimistic they are!

It also exposes another vulnerability that Trump could exploit: If the Democrats are reduced to dreaming about the far-flung future, Trump could REALLY make ‘em howl by stepping on the gas with his Smithsonian oversight. For conservatives, the Smithsonian crackdown is at best a minor victory — an icing-on-the-cake kind of thing — but for leftists, it represents something hallowed and precious:

Long-term victory and vindication.

They’re surrendering the present to win the future. Not because they want to, but because — even in their deepest, darkest fantasies — they no longer see any other choice. This is the “problem” Democrats are facing.

Trump should counterprogram ASAP. The tools at his disposal are enormous.

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