WAS: What Adults are saying about Communication Context
Recent campaign debates offer a textbook example
In our hyper-paced world the amount of communication that tickles our senses is startling. No wonder many of us try to swim our way out of this information tsunami by simply requesting “just tell me the answer.” Yet the “answer” to anything is limited unless hooked to an associated question. There are exceptions of course but most of them involve a scenario that includes collegiate Greek-life, Senator John Blutarsky and Finals week.
In some cases a plainly stated question and reply is complete enough to seal the deal. Consider questions like:
“Should we open another wine?” or,
“Can I do the canyon hike with one water bottle?” or even the always dangerous,
“Do these jeans make my ass look fat?”
Most of us instinctively know the universal answers which, in order, are:
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Honeeeey, don’t be so silleee.”
Other times just knowing a question and its answer doesn’t get the job done. The answer to “where did you eat last Thursday?”, is in a completely different context from your doctor trying to isolate a food poisoning source or a local police department investigating a dinner time crime. Context is the communication magic elevating our interaction to a level befitting our species. It is everywhere and knowing it and how it differentiates situations is essential for us to interpret and thus, have a chance to “learn” anything.
Recent Presidential debates have shown a fitting example of how context changes things mightily. Consider our 45th President and current GOP candidate Donald Trump. He has been in nine such debates across the term of his career—including two within the last 90 days. In late June of this year, he debated our current President. His opponent performed so poorly as to lay the groundwork for a stunning withdrawal from the campaign. Just days ago he took on the Democratic replacement for the first time.
Across his many debates Mr. Trump has proven repeatedly that he is nothing if not consistent. How and what he says and his tone of candidate conduct is unlike anything seen before or since for the highest Federal office. He affirms virtually nothing and condemns much—which in the course of normal campaigning would seem an odd way to lure votes. Instead his style/worldview/strategy/comments are largely grievances—filled with overstated claims about things that are either wrong or dangerous and potentially catastrophic to America. He will endlessly detail this with stunning inaccuracy. Successive debates bring nothing new (although pets in an Ohio town this week likely tread more lightly). His oral lunacy is a desperate act even by politico speak—falling somewhere between a holes-in-his-shoes carnival barker and a professional wrestling concept that was left on the cutting room floor. But, no American politician has owned this style and made it a calling card like Trump.
He has drawn many supporters. Those who have been rapidly distanced in an advancing world are staples. Perhaps unable or unwilling to understand a changing world they mimic Trump’s same grievances—with a tint of self-pity—largely because when the calendar switched from the 20th to the 21st century, it was ignored. (Who knew that would be the real social damage of Y2K?)
Against a long list of political opponents Trump had successfully used this approach to disarm, discombobulate, and eventually, disembowel them. As our 46th President was losing to Father Time in June Trump did nothing different from previous debates. He complained, whined, impugned, insulted and just shot from-the-hip as he always does. Biden’s faculties (at least that night) were shot and he was a heartbreaking figure. His failure as a political communicator occurred in virtually the identical context as all of Trump’s previous debates—he encountered a bully against which he was either too something (incapacitated?) to effectively counter. Typically, Trump lumbered away with the entrails of another victim in his pocket.
Its not clear whether Trump’s consistency in debates is a result of the context presented him or if his style creates the context that he exploits as apparent consistency. But this much is clear, for the first time as a politician last week, he encountered a much different context when debating Kamala Harris.
As bullies go, the afflicted know that neutralizing them always includes a punch in the mouth. But a simply punch is not always sufficient. Sometimes it needs to be mixed with disdain, curated non-verbal cues that connote disbelief and a sense that “I came here tonight to engage an adult and was met by a child.” When deployed correctly this trifecta will almost always defang any bully. Simply, that’s what Harris did recently.
To say it was a contest of any merit requires one to think of the relationship between a hammer and a nail as a contest. It’s challenging to recall an instance where such a comprehensive ass-whipping was in play between candidates for the Oval Office. Unlike any before her, Harris knew how Trump would ramble and expose his eighth grade intellect. With great certainty and virtually zero cause Trump lit his own incineration that made the Hindenburg look modest.
Above all else what Harris did so effectively—as the ultimate context changing strategy—was to neither wash with sanity nor outright ridicule Trump’s maniacal spew. She alternated deftly between handing him matches, proverbially patting him on the head and then (just like any parent fed up with her teenage son) sternly proclaiming the rules of the house here in adult land.
This shift in context was a textbook example as how the same behavior, in two different settings, can be interpreted so differently. When Trump’s crap bumped against Biden’s failure in June, GOP lackeys were so ecstatic as to be carping over plum White House posts. Last week these same folk were crestfallen—now left to await consequences for so heartily supporting the Trump traveling side show. In making her mark Harris simultaneously established her growing cred while removing the thinnest layers of varnish that leads some to see Trump as legit. Of course now, just as before (even when in the White House) his legitimacy is zero. Whether you vote for him or not, to recite how Trump has benefited us requires either a suspension of the senses or the belief our President directly controls the price of gasoline and hamburger.
Harris’ actions brought to some joy and thanks for (proverbially speaking), patting the little-boy on the head while asking him to “go sit down so mommy can talk.” Her oratorical success, coupled with Trump’s implosion, made this a reasonable conclusion and hope for more illustrations that her context change might signal a return to a reasonable and adult-like life.