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There is another confusing element in all of this. How many people currently cross the border illegally each year? It matters since that is the number that either the President’s wall or the oppositions technology is expected to reduce. I haven’t heard even an estimate of how many. Further, I haven’t heard how much reduction we should expect using either people stopping approach. Focusing specifically on criminals and hooligans, how many bad people illegally cross the border each year and how much will that number reduce by way of the wall or advanced technology?
For the business people among us, let’s think about this. the current border security has been working fairly well for quite some time. Most but certainly not all illegal border crossing is already being prevented. Without any border security, let’s say that the number of criminals and hooligans crossing the border illegally would be X. With the current security Y criminals and hooligans are prevented from crossing illegally. The number still crossing is then X minus Y criminals and hooligans. Let’s call that Z criminals and hooligans. The value of the wall or the technology is thus how much reduction there would be in Z and not the overall reduction in X. Do you know what the reduction in Z would be? I sure don’t.
I think we are getting an unhealthy dose of snake oil from the President and from the opposition as well. Both sides seem to agree that more and better security are needed, although it seems that we are to simply assume that there is something real to fear. What is that? Criminals and hooligans of course. Little to no attention is being given to just how much of a real problem the illegal crossing of criminals and hooligans actually is. Is it justified to spend billions of dollars to reduce a threat that has no clear definition? Is it a valid fear or little more than political snake oil?
Let me share some perspective on snake oil and on snake oil peddlers.
Jay Conger thought, “We have found that the most effective persuaders use language in a particular way. They supplement numerical data with examples, stories, metaphors, and analogies to make their positions come alive. That use of language paints a vivid word picture and, in doing so, lends a compelling and tangible quality to the persuader’s point of view.”
It would be easy to focus on the details of Conger’s observation and miss the more interesting message. His emphasis on examples, stories, metaphors, and analogies indeed paints a vivid word picture and thus draws attention away from the compelling and tangible quality of the persuader’s point which is to persuade, compellingly. The goal is to make people adopt a certain position, belief, or course of action. Sure, you are twisting somebody’s arm. Were that not the plan, they wouldn’t need persuaded. William Bernbach had this take on persuasive arm twisting, “The truth isn’t the truth until people believe you, and they can’t believe you if they don’t know what you’re saying, and they can’t know what you’re saying if they don’t listen to you, and they won’t listen to you if you’re not interesting, and you won’t be interesting until you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.” No one is going to buy your snake oil, no matter how fine it is, no matter how good it is at curing everything, until you show them the truth, until they are persuaded.
There is an old Chinese Proverb that says, “The tongue can paint what the eye can’t see;” and no less an authority than St Thomas Aquinas advised, to convert somebody go and take them by the hand and guide them.” Even Epicurus had a little guidance on pitching snake oil, although he likely smiled as he disguised it as philosophy, “Human nature is not to be coerced but persuaded and we shall persuade her by satisfying the necessary desires if they are not going to be injurious but, if they are going to injure, by relentlessly banning them.” The actual pitch might have gone like this, “My friends, this genuine snake oil satisfies your most important and necessary desires to relentlessly ban potentially injurious demons from your lives, nigh, from the world as you know it.” Now do you need some of that or what?
Benjamin Franklin identified the cardinal element in persuasion, “Would you persuade, speak of interest, not of reason.” Marcus T Cicero went Franklin one better, “Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable;” and Joseph Conrad agreed, “He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.”
There are just a few additional techniques you will need to round out your bag of persuasive tricks. Dale Carnegie suggested adding, “There is only one way to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it.” How do you do that? Know that, according to Eric Hoffer, “The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.” Lord Chesterfield offered this tidbit, “He makes people pleased with him by making them first pleased with themselves;” but Ralph Waldo Emerson gave this caution, “That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.” It might be tempting to conclude that only those who passionately believe can passionately persuade; but there is still a lingering caveat. Don’t ever underestimate the power of the dedicated snake oil huckster to persuade.
It is pretty clear that the argument for what is euphemistically called enhanced border security is in the interest of relentlessly banning potentially injurious demons illegally crossing the southern border, all two thousand miles of it. The current demons are criminals and hooligans from the south and are the cause of the multibillion-dollar fear. At least, that is what the current crop of snake oil sales people are peddling. The value of Z is presumably high enough to partially close the government for the benefit of reducing Z but not reducing it to 0. What will the percentage reduction be in Z should we get that enhanced security? Do you know? I sure don’t.
If snake oil is mostly to feed our appetites, soothe our fears and above all, justify our vanity, I ask myself who benefits most from the snake oil being peddled in support of border security beyond what we already have. I’m pretty sure it’s not me.