Some say Obama is persuasive. He is not persuasive to me.
I understand how he deceives some people. His tricks are not very complicated. We make an error if we elevate him to some grand deceiver status. It’s more like the Emperor who had no Clothes and is a bit embarrassing when the townspeople realize the simplicity of the tricks they’ve been fooled by.
1. Obama presents himself as uber-relaxed. Nobody would really act like that if they were authentically relaxed. Like a child pretending to be asleep by laying stiff as a board, Obama gives himself away by his continuous overacting.
He shows this through a few of his common mannerisms. My favorite and most obvious one is the hand on top of the other hand. This is a mannerism that someone like Mother Theresa might do. But when she does it, it is authentic. She is calm and serene. Why wouldn’t she be? She’s not in a confrontational situation.
But Obama does this when he is giving a speech to a mixed audience, including people who don’t like him. People who have legitimate objections to his words, policies and failed results of his policies.
He is at least partially wrong about something. He doesn’t want to admit it. So he overcompensates with this relaxed gesture.
It’s not a normal gesture for someone in the context he uses it in. It’s a show. To gain trust “wow he’s so relaxed and confident in his position. He must be right, this all couldn’t possibly be an act” (because then it would be evil and I don’t want to accept that possibility, that opens up a can of worms for me).
2. Another mannerism that Obama does is a two-part mannerism. It starts with the stop sign gesture:
He often uses it when handling questions from reporters. First he holds up the stop sign halting the challenge. Then he relaxes the hand down. To provoke an empathetic feeling on the part of the listener to relax their objection down. It does work on some people.
Obama doesn’t need a question to do this, he often presents the opposing view himself, puts up the stop sign, then relaxes it down. Signalling by his body language that he explained away the objection.
But usually he didn’t refute anything. Most times he dealt with the objection by means of a half-truth or emotional manipulation. “But his body language signaled he refuted the objection. That body language gave me an empathetic relaxed feeling about the objection. I must trust how my body feels. Because only a con man would use such a trick. If he is a con man to that extent, that is ….. evil. That opens a can of worms for me.”
3. Obama has developed this last one for years. I watched a video recently of Obama during an interview in 2008. I was struck by how much faster his speaking pace was. He still did have the tendency to have slow relaxed pauses, but they were less pronounced. Over the years he has become slower.
Why does that matter?
When Obama talks slow with unnaturally long pauses, the listeners brain must slow down to match the cadence to process the information.
When awake, people’s brainwaves are usually in a beta wave. This is good for activity, thinking about things, conversations, etc. This is not a very suggestible state. It is a state that recognizes threats. Including lies people try to tell them.
Obama would prefer someone not be on alert to his falsehoods. He would prefer they be in alpha wave state. This is the brain wave that hypnotists get people to relax into. This is a suggestible state. A state where ones defenses are lowered.
Once he gets someone in this state, it is more difficult to object because the brainwaves required to object have been slowed down to process Obama’s slow speech!
It’s not only the cadence, it is also Obama’s long-winded diatribes. This also has an effect of putting ones brainwaves to sleep, lulling someone into compliance. Or at least quieting them temporarily until their brainwaves raise back up.
I don’t know whether Obama is aware he’s even doing these things or not. He may have just picked them up somehow. But it is a form of hypnosis.
Hopefully after reading this one can be informed about these tricks so they do not fall prey to them.
Not just from Obama. But any politician. Any kind of person who wants to sell something. Or for women, men that you are dating or who want to date you. Important choices should be decided on merits, not because of psychological manipulations.
Handling that can of worms would help too. It will make you less vulnerable to deception in general.
