"You know who's responsible for the fires? California and Washington State and Oregon politicians, who have not allowed all these dead trees to be cleared out of there." Questions can make it seem that the intent of the speaker was the listener's own idea. "Would you like to sit down?" really means, "Please sit down," especially if a gesture suggesting its use follows. Questions also temporarily confuse the listener. The mind becomes anxious while searching for a respectable reply. Then the speaker answers the question, much to the relief of the listener. In this vulnerable moment, the listener is more likely to accept the answer than if presented initially as a simple declaration. Finally, a question can have a hypnotic suggestion or assumption embedded in it, or quickly after it, that the hypnotic mind tends to accept, especially if attached to an idea with some plausibility.
"These forests are nothing but kindling. And if you would go in and clear these forests out, you wouldn't have fires anywhere near this intense." This is called a "Contingency" strategy. It is when a speaker links two ideas so they must be accepted or rejected together. If the listener identifies with the first idea, he or she often accepts the second if in the lightest of natural trance states.
But we can't touch the forests. No, no, no. That would be messing up things no, no, no, we can't we can't do that!" Well, yes we can, and we should. This uses two psychologically persuasive language techniques: forbidden fruit and authority. People tend to do what they are told they cannot do. Imagine Limbaugh's audience ready to pounce on doing whatever comes after "we can't do that!" The use of his emotional tone is also a factor. You would have to hear him to note how just the right amount of enthusiasm and emotion can promote affirmative responses.
It is past time for more critical thinking and awareness about this phenomenon. Most people taking positions leading our world to the edge of extinction are good-hearted people, wanting what people like Limbaugh and his followers, including Trump, promise. If only they could recognize, without losing face, the hypnosis of their illogical or inaccurate positions, perhaps such metacognitions could grow exponentially with the use of positive self-hypnotic transformations. And while we are at it, all the so-called "liberal" people, also good-hearted, who are equally duped by uninvestigated beliefs that also contribute to misdirected choices, can learn this material as well. Noam Chomsky says: "It does not require extraordinary skills or understanding to take apart the illusions and deceptions that prevent understanding of contemporary reality. It requires the kind of normal skepticism and willingness to apply one's analytic skills that almost all people have." I have great respect for Noam and he has endorsed three of my books. Although I disagree with him when he says that knowing what happened on 9/11 is unimportant, what he says here is true but only up to a point. Once the hypnotic effect takes place, average analytic skills can fall into "trance logic."
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