Energizing the ratchet

Performers sometimes say they're energized by the energy of the crowd. They do better than they planned, more than they planned, louder than they planned.

While no doubt almost all politicians are manipulative, I suspect quite a few get similar energy from the crowds, and sometimes depart from the stump speaches and say things that weren't on the cue cards. The morning after, some of those claims sound too wild, but they fit the moment. You can sometimes walk back things you say, though it is harder when everything is recorded.

These moments can also ratchet the wider dialog. AVI elaborated on the power of the perversion of language mentioned in Codevilla's essay. What struck me was the ratcheting--what Codevilla called the spiral. Sometimes it's clearly deliberate, and sometimes the participants have no options, but I wonder how often the ratcheting is inadvertent. The accusations just become more extreme, and sometimes it isn't part of any master plan, it just evolves.

That "energizing" seems to have a parallel in online discourse. The intensity/energy level they find in a group seems to inspire people to match it and exceed it--they must get a rush out of it, even though the mechanism is far more impersonal than is meeting face to face. Unless members of the group jump on someone who's out of line, I never see the culprit back down from an extreme claim. The morning after a bull session you can start more or less fresh, but the online conversations seem to pick up where they left off. The text is right there, just as you left it.

Without a guiding plan, with just the feeding off each other's energy, the accusations grow more extreme and the enemy more vile.

Politician meetings with hoi poloi seem to be alternately more attacked by coordinated noisy opponents, and more locked down and scripted to deal only with loyalists. Ratcheting.