The INTENSIFY / DOWNPLAY Schema
TECHNIQUES

Diversion Diversion
People downplay by distracting focus or diverting attention away from key issues or important things; usually by intensifying the side-issues, the unrelated, the trivial. Traditional names of common variations of diversionary tactics include: "hairsplitting," "nit-picking," "attacking a straw man," "red herring"; and emotional attacks (ad hominem, ad populum), plus tactics which drain the energy of others: "busy work" and "legal harassment." Humor and entertainment ("bread and circuses") are used as pleasant ways to divert attention from major issues.

Applied to ADVERTISING, you can ask these questions:

  • What benefits (e.g. low cost, high speed) get high priority in the ad's claim and promises? Are these your priorities? Are these significant, important to you?
  • Is there any "bait-and-switch"? (e.g. an ad stresses low cost, but the actual seller switches buyer's priority to high quality by denigrating the advertised product and praising a more expensive one).
  • Does an ad divert focus from key issues, important things (such as nutrition, health, safety)?

  • Does ad focus on side-issues, unmeaningful trivia (common in parity products)?
  • Does ad divert attention from your other choices, other options: to buy something else, to use less, to use less often, to rent, to borrow, to share, to do without? (Ads need not show other choices, but you should know them.)
Expect people to downplay by means of Omission, Diversion, and Confusion.
A good axiom about how to counter downplaying by advertisers or politicians is: When They Downplay, Intensify.

 

 
Applied to POLITICAL RHETORIC, you can ask these questions:

  • Are there ad hominem attacks (to the person) instead of the issue?

  • Are there ad populum appeals (to the public), focusing on the audience's emotional feelings (stirring up "gut issues" fears, anxieties; hopes, desires)?

  • Are there ad misericordium appeals by the speaker ("poor me") for pity or sympathy?

  • Is there a "pointing to another wrong"? Counter-attacks against criticism are often ad hominem diversions.

  • Any evasions, steering clear,or changing the subject away from problems? Alibis, excuses? "Red herrings" -- false trails, noisy distractions?

  • Is there an emphasis on a minor "good": style over substance, cosmetic superficialities?

  • In attacks, any "nitpicking" or "hairsplitting" about petty items? Or, "attacking a straw man" - a non-argument, or a weak minor point?

  • Are there any pleasant distractions: humor, jokes, entertainments (like ancient Rome's "bread and circuses" policy to divert public attention from serious issues)?
Diversion occurs when time, effort, or money is spent on unimportant issues, trivial things, on side-issues instead of on the main issues. But, people often do not agree on what are the main issues: on priorities, mix, and degree of support when several issues are involved.

Identify or stipulate the priorities: What's most important? Least? Most beneficial? Most harmful? (For you, for others?)

In politics, people agree in general about goals, the ends (peace and prosperity), but disagree about specifics, the means (the "guns or butter" debate -- about priorities, mix, degree) or the best way. Arguments so often get "side-tracked" that many diversionary tactics have traditional names in Logic books. The basic counter to any diversionary tactic is to define or to re-focus attention on the main issue.

Education may help us recognize the common diversionary tactics. But, basically, we have to clarify, or to stipulate, our own priorities and goals: to create a rank ordering of our priorities, the degree and proportion and sequence given to the parts.
Expect people to downplay by means of Omission, Diversion, and Confusion.
A good axiom about how to counter downplaying by advertisers or politicians is: When They Downplay, Intensify.