Understanding Politics So You Never Fall For It (Part 3)
The Blame Game
Remember when you were young and playing with your classmates. Sometimes, as a joke, when something bad happend your friends would point at you and tell the teacher “He did it”. Well, some people never stopped playing that game.
Pointing The Finger
This is a strategy as old as time. It’s when a person in a political position uses somebody or something as a scapegoat to hide their own incompetence or a problem they can’t control. Why do this? because the people that are competent in that field or competent in general are outnumbered by the incompetent. As long as numbers are on their side, they’ve successfully redirected something that could hurt their perception or election number to a scapegoat.
Let’s take a look at a real life example:
This is the United States Whitehouse blaming US Dollar inflation on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Everyone that knows a little bit about economics understands that inflation has been going crazy way before the Russia-Ukraine war. You’re missing the point though, most people don’t know anything about economics so “Putin” did it seems valid to them. They will also repeat this during their elections, politicians want to avoid blame at all cost. Circumstances may change but what is always constant is human nature.
This strategy works particularly well if you can turn someone the people already dislike into a scapegoat. They will question it far less then if you tried it with someone that has the love of the people.
To end it, some Cliffnotes from ‘The Prince’ by Machiavelli:
“Cesare Borgia became a prince by his father's influence, and, despite his best efforts, could not maintain his state after his father's influence failed. This was not his fault, but was caused by extraordinary bad luck. Alexander VI wanted to make his son great, but had no troops he could rely on. Alexander allowed the French into Italy in exchange for the use of their troops to conquer the Romagna region. Borgia succeeded and made more conquests, but worried about the French king and the loyalty of his Roman troops, led by the Orsini family. He lured the Orsini leaders with gifts and promises of friendship, then killed them all. He won the loyalty of the people in Romagna. He had at first found the Romagna to be lawless, so he put Remirro de Orco in charge of restoring order, which he did well. However, Remirro de Orco was so cruel that everyone hated him, so to deflect bad feeling from himself, Borgia had him publicly executed.”
Thank you for reading, subscribe for more content.