What is said isn't what is heard.

The problem with a careful, nuanced description of policy is that people do not necessarily hear and process the nuance.   What they actually hear and take away is that the speaker is a pretentious jerk.

Oh.

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A college classmate sent me an op-ed from our college's newspaper.  The author, Anna Kuritzkes, made a point that college discussion of issues of offense and appropriate political speech turns out to be counterproductive.  She contrasts that with "Trump's ability to tell it like it is, or in other words, to communicate his message in a way his supporters could understand." 

College sensitivities get criticism from both left and right.  There is an tone of preciousness and victimhood communicated on campus.  I witnessed it personally, with a two hour seminar on micro-aggressions at the local university, Southern Oregon University.   A woman who led the class in apparent comfort, dexterity, and good eye contact with the audience of forty, said she took offense that people didn't realize she was legally blind and therefore made the offensive assumption that she could see what others could see.   My own thought: how would I know?  

Another woman who led the group said she was routinely offended that people assumed, when she mentioned she was married, that her spouse was male. How dare they make that assumption?  The third woman, who spoke English with a strong accent, was offended that people asked her where she was from.  What makes you think I am foreign?

Each speaker was attempting to explain the pervasiveness of offensive micro aggressions and the multiple ways others acted insensitively.  That is what they intended to communicate.

What I heard and integrated, though, was: "Yikes, what a minefield of easily hurt feelings.  Anything i said or did was likely wrong.  Stay away from here."

The article above referenced the now well-known exchange between a faculty member and students regarding Halloween costumes at Yale, with a warning not to offend, a response urging students not to be so delicate and touchy, and then the blowback after that.  Critics on the right saw the whole dustup as an example of liberal college "snowflakes" who melt at the smallest confrontation with reality.  The Kuritzkes article urged liberals to "condense and simplify" our message.

Snowflake

I have a stronger, harder message, based on a blunter theory of communication.  

When the general public hears words of complaint regarding, to quote the words of a group of Oberlin students, “functions on the premises of imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, and a cissexist heteropatriarchy," the actual message is not misunderstood.  It is heard and understood all too well.  They hear pretentious jerk, and that is the totality of the message.

They do not consider the power asymmetries within gender and pull nuance out of the word "hetropatriarchy".  They stop at a quick impression of "snowflake asshole."

This blog expressed a theory of communication that emerged from watching the performances of a variety of national politicians.  I concluded the denoted meaning inside any political speech was only a small part of the communication and the least important part.  

Crowds responded to posture, tone, intensity, word choice (but not the formal meaning of the words), demeanor, mood.  Political speech communicates who you like, who are the bad guys, whether you will do anything about it other than talk.  Therefore, political candidates are sometimes deeply incorrect about the message they are sending.  They think they are convincing you.  In fact, they can be turning you off.  The intention of the communication--either an explanation of the unfairness of hetropatriarchy or the meaning of an NFL player taking a knee--is not created by the speaker/actor.  It is interpreted by the listener/audience, picking up cues and impressions of their own.  They decide what it means to them.   That decision is largely unconscious, drawn quickly from impression and intuition and pre-formed archetypes.

Reno, Nevada speech

Back in December 4, 2015, I wrote the following observation about Trump and his message. It took place after viewing a Trump speech in Reno, Nevada.  I created a transcript of portions of the speech from a recording I made.  Trump--in transcript--is nearly unintelligible.  He starts and stops sentences.  He speaks in short phrases.  It was near-nonsense, in written form.   In vocalized speech, it was persuasive to a large audience.  He connected, he looked strong and decisive and sure of himself, and he got a few basic ideas across about how was good (normal, white Americans) and who was bad (foreigners and Muslims.)  Back in December 2015, before Iowa, before New Hampshire, back when Trump was thought to be a joke candidate on a vanity tour, he was sending a message that I thought created a plausible route to the White House.  From my blog:    

   "I cite this to demonstrate how treacherous it is to do political speech in America, and to highlight one reason for Trump's success.   He appears unguarded and extemporaneous for one big reason:  he is in fact unguarded and extemporaneous.

Trump talks in plain, short sentences, and that he says what is on Republican voters' minds, which is that:
   ***immigrants are scary and thy probably take some of our jobs
   ***Muslims cannot be trusted, not really
   ***white Americans aren't appreciated enough
   ***normal people get accused of racism or sexism for the itty bitty tiniest things that are "taken wrong" by people with a chip on their shoulder
   ***American leaders talk too much about partnerships and coalitions and peace process and diplomacy and we don't get the respect we would get if we just were tough.

There:   I think have explained the Trump phenomenon". 

What made him president was apparent back in December, 2015, when my progressive friends thought he was a joke.