Magicians and Politicians
What do magicians and politicians have in common? Sounds like the lead-in to a good joke, doesn’t it? It isn’t.
Magicians and politicians share a common trick based on the idea that if they can focus people’s attention on one thing, they can do something else and get away with it. For magicians, it’s all in good fun. No harm; no foul. With politicians, it’s time to call a foul on these masters of misdirection.
“The technique of misdirection, which is most notably and professionally practiced by magicians, is also a highly valued technique employed by politicians.”
Manipulation of the public is a valued political technique!?!
“As magicians have long known and neuroscientists are increasingly discovering, human perception is a jury-rigged apparatus, full of gaps and easily manipulated…A great deal of the success of a piece of magic is simply getting the audience’s attention and sending it to the wrong place…Magic shows are masterpieces of misdirection.”“…people have a pronounced tendency to miss things that are happening right in front of them.”“…we miss things simply because we aren’t looking at them.”“…there’s a value in simply coming to grips with the gaps and limits in our awareness…”
People are growing more and more aware of the way politicians use a crisis —a distraction—to push through some law or take some action that leaders more than likely know the public would not accept under normal circumstances. With the Great Recession in 2008, it was the Quiet Revolution in education policies (Common Core Initiative, robust data systems, Magicians and Politicians - The Crucial VoiceThe Crucial Voice: