Guest Post by The Zman
One of the truths about politics that many would prefer to ignore is that politics is not about facts and reason. The game is about persuasion. If you live under a monarch, then the game is to create popular support in order to persuade the king that some policy is good for his people. If the ruler is a despot, then he needs to be convinced his best interest lie in a particular policy. In theory, at least, democracy is about persuading fifty percent plus one in favor of some course of action.
In order to persuade someone, you need to understand his needs and motivations in order to frame your appeal to him in a way that he can understand. Good salesmen always start by understanding what their prospect needs and why he thinks he may need whatever it is he may buy. He is far more likely to buy the widget that makes the boss happy than the widget that works a tiny bit better than the rest. He needs the widget and is motivated to make his boss happy.
A similar approach must be done with the sorts of people dissidents seek to persuade in the political arena. The so-called normie has become the universal white guy everyone says they want to bring to this side of the great divide. As President Barak Obama once said, he is the typical white person. This is the guy who votes Republican and listens to Rush Limbaugh when he is driving around during the day. His dream is to be left to live his life as he sees fit with whom he sees fit.
Normie would naturally come this way, but he has been convinced of a number of things that operate like a leash keeping him in lefty’s yard. For example, normie is sure that markets matter a great deal. When he sees all of the corporate oligarchs promoting black violence, he mutters to himself, “Get woke, go broke.” He truly thinks the marketplace will punish these companies. He thinks the sportsball leagues will suffer for kneeling to their black players. The fans will punish them for it.
The mistake made by dissidents when discussing the magic market issue is in thinking they need to be anti-market. The thing is, normie needs to believe the market will magically solve these problems because he is not motivated to act on his anger and frustration over what he is seeing. The choice he sees is to abandon the convenience of buying from Amazon or forgoing the joy of watching sports. If he is going to walk away from consumerism, there has to be something in it for him.
There is something similar at work with race. Normie has been told his whole life that if he just tries hard enough, black people will stop thinking he is a racist. It’s not that explicit, but that is the point of race messaging from the ruling class. They want white people in a constant struggle session over race, where they examine everything they do with an eye on reaching the magic state of being not racist. Since no such place exists, the struggle can never end, hence the endless riots.
It is why explicitly racist language is a dead end for normie. He sees that and is confirmed in his desire to not be a racist. Those taboo-breakers with their salty language and snarky comments are mostly singing to the choir. There’s a place for it and a need for it, but when it comes time to pitch normie on race realism, such language and symbolism is a deal killer. You become the salesman who walks into a Christian business using four-letter language and wreaking of alcohol.
Normie also likes feeling a bit self-righteous and sanctimonious. This is true of all people to some degree. All of us want to be good people in the universal sense, but we also want the people around us to acknowledge it. As John Derbyshire explained back in the Neolithic, social thought is a foundation of man. When it comes to politics, the easiest way for normie to feel good is to triangulate. He rejects the far-left, but also rejects those bad people and haters to his right.
You see this in business. Often a buyer will justify his decision as being the value proposition, which means not the best, but not the cheapest. It is a form of self-flattery that the good salesman can exploit. He recognizes that the buyer needs to feel like he is a reasonable guy not taken by fads and thoughtful in his analysis. Normie takes a similar approach when it comes to thorny cultural issues in politics. He naturally seeks some middle ground that he can then pretend is the high ground.
This is, in part, why normie remains smitten with immigration. It has always been framed for him as a choice between open borders and xenophobia. Normie really needs to believe that those immigrants want to be like him. To reject them out of hand is to reject himself. Again, it is a form of self-flattery. Think about how so-called conservatives sell normie on immigration. They talk about immigrants starting businesses and being natural conservatives who love Jesus and family
On the other hand, normie makes noises about the need for immigration being legal and measured, because it makes him seem reasonable. He rejects the chaos of open borders, because he is an orderly sort of guy. He wants a tough border, but as long as there is a legal process, he is fine with immigration. The current immigration levels have become his value position. He’s not taking the cheap route of open borders, but he is not going for the expensive option of a moratorium.
Then there is the weird fatalism of normie. He looks around at the madness of the day and thinks, “They have gone too far. The snap-back is coming.” This is similar to his belief in the magic of the marketplace. Normie just assumes the excesses he sees around him will cause the silent majority, of which he is a member in good standing, to move like a school of fish in a different direction. Millions of private decisions motivated by left-wing excess will put things back in order.
This is why talk of whites becoming a minority is so effective on normie. It’s not so much that he fears being at the mercy of non-whites. He fears he will lose the validation of being in that silent majority and that the silent majority will no longer be that magical force that rights all wrongs. In other words, so much of the normie mindset that keeps him tethered to conventional politics, depends on him believing he is part of a perpetual majority of good white people like himself.
It’s why the scenes of whites washing the feet of blacks and kneeling before them is so powerful, when combined with demographic reality. When normie understand he will be a minority and it means washing the feet, he suddenly becomes a highly motivated buyer for a new political ideology. The good salesman is always prepared for the motivated buyer. He does not bore him with a long sales pitch. He just presses on those pain points until he gets the sale.
Every salesman will tell you that there are good times and bad times. The good salesman weathers the bad times and maximizes the good times. Right now, it has never been a better time to sell dissident ideas to the normie in the market for something better. Not all are motivated buyers, for sure. Some people never let go of the past. You can’t save everyone, but there are a lot of white people looking around right now thinking, “There has to be something better than this.”
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“Normie” has been sold the option of bad and worse for decades now. I don’t know about “other normies” but this one is no longer ok with the “bad or worse” option.
I have a suspicion that others are reaching the same point as well.
Just Sayin’
I see only 2 ways forward. Let’s pretend with BLM to make the movement look more radical and popular then it is. Or we coax BLM into targeting their megaphones the Joos.
The best way forward is to accelerate the end game.
Both suggestions have merit.
I’m seeing much more explicit hatred toward White people. The blacks and browns are now explicitly condemning “Whites” and “White America”. That has to register with Normie at some visceral level. The Chosen have worked very hard to keep Normie deracinated but now Whites are being told they are the enemy, must submit, and the police are to be disbanded or greatly weakened. Doesn’t Normie find that a little unsettling?
rr
Neuday, Normie has a nice enough little gig going. He is working, has a wife, a kid or two, some siblings, a few friends. He does not live in the ghetto or barrio . He just can’t really imagine hor entertain the possibility that things might be as fucked up as he dreads it might be. So he pretends and hopes that it isn’t so bad. Pretty soon now, he is not going to be able to pretend anymore. He knows all this BLM/Antifa shit is just a distraction from 40 MILLION people out of work and God Knows how many small businesses dead and dying, not to be reborn or replaced. The lockdown is off, and the money is gone. He knows a whole lot of people that are out of work for the forseeable future. He knows his 25 yo boy hasn’t worked in months, and doesn’t plan to. Normie isn’t stupid, Normie is scared of the big unknown right in front of him. Will Normie man up? I wonder. I hope so. Hope ain’t much of a plan, though.
After July people start getting evicted and going hungry in much larger numbers.
Anon, I wonder about that eviction thing. I have managed a few, and the Sheriff has to show up to enforce the court order. No Sheriff or Deputy, no eviction. Same thing for the end of a mortgage foreclosure. Are the cops going to assist serving evictions? We are going to find out. My bet is not so much. Not in the ghetto, anyhow.