{"id":9406,"date":"2022-11-28T15:04:51","date_gmt":"2022-11-28T15:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=9406"},"modified":"2022-11-28T15:04:51","modified_gmt":"2022-11-28T15:04:51","slug":"pay-attention-to-policy-not-narratives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=9406","title":{"rendered":"Pay Attention to Policy, not ‘Narratives’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“opinion leaders create narratives about how the world works\u2014and then voters essentially buy into one that suits their biases. They pick a team. Social media reinforces<\/a> each side’s thinking habits. As the election arrives, most voters aren’t doing a cost-benefit analysis\u2014but embracing the candidate who touts the story their team tells (whether it’s true or not).
“Narratives \u2026 provide a rich source of information about how people make sense of their lives, about how they construct disparate facts and weave them together cognitively to make sense of reality,” explains a 1998 UC Irvine study<\/a>. They can be helpful for understanding the world, but they can also send people down a rabbit hole.”
…
“fewer people can be persuaded by evidence. If you subscribe to the narrative that your opponents want to destroy everything that you find holy and dear, then you’ll put up with anything from a candidate from your tribe. During the 2016 election, Republicans embraced the “Flight 93”<\/a> theory\u2014it’s time to rush the cockpit because a Hillary Clinton presidency would crash democracy.
Democrats believe something similar about a Donald Trump re-election, although they’re on more solid ground given that he did indeed try to steal an election and his election-denying acolytes filled the GOP ticket this year. Polls show most GOP voters have bought into that denialism narrative\u2014and no evidence likely will sway them from their vote-stealing<\/a> fantasies.”  
…
“Jumping on the narrative bandwagon<\/a> can take you to some morally dubious places. I don’t expect voters to adopt my balls-and-strikes voting strategy. But unless there’s a movement back in that direction, the story of our democracy might not have a happy ending.”  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pay Attention to Policy, not ‘Narratives’<\/a><\/blockquote>