r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/Named_after_color • 1d ago
US Politics Could a way to combat the "Flood the Zone" strategy simply be picking one message, drilling it down to bullet points, and repeating it constantly despite continuous attempts at distraction?
Flooding the Zone / The Firehose of Disinformation seems to be the most prevalent strategy for running propaganda and forcing opponents to jump from hoop to hoop to address every fire. This is similar to the gish gallop debate strategy. A recommended technique in rhetoric is to simply focus on the easiest, most obvious thing to disprove, and repeat it. Over and over again.
I'm unaware if this has been tried on a national level, or historically. One commercial, broadcast everywhere, that simply says something like.
"Trump initiated the war in Iran. Gas prices are up. Democrats will vote to stop it."
Just a simple, factual statement, with no calls on patriotism, or implications of morality, culture, or anything like that. Short, repeatable, true.
Granted, individual candidates are forced to explain more of themselves to their constituents. It seems too simple to work, but has it been tried?
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u/Nyrin 1d ago
A recommended technique in rhetoric is to simply focus on the easiest, most obvious thing to disprove, and repeat it. Over and over again.
The Medhi Hasan strategy. That only consistently works if you have unlimited time and attention. In realistic cases, this ends up with many effective things "sticking" while the points you spent your limited time on are vulnerable to dismissal as "he was obviously just joking a bit."
Structured containment is way more effective: you don't choose the most ridiculous claims, but the most important ones. Still acknowledge and dismiss the "you just laid out 30 claims in 20 seconds and our listeners don't have all night" the same way, but break down the claims that matter most to the platform.
Either way, you choose what you're tearing down and don't let the topic change.
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u/Historical_Course587 15h ago edited 7h ago
I'm going to argue no, it doesn't work because flood the zone is not designed to win arguments - it's designed to control the news cycle. Saying the same thing every day at every opportunity will make for boring news, so the news networks will all move to whatever is outrageous and new.
Flood the zone works because it's always something new AND it leads to opponents who always sound the same: "Trump did THIS" or "Trump did THAT" and the complaints all start to run together and people start to quibble over details but OH LOOK THEY'RE EATING THE CATS THEY'RE EATING THE DOGS IN SPRINGFIELD.
New media makes the firehose impossible to fight because now it's in the news feeds and algorithms. You get it from bots, from AI voices and faces, from "friends" and strangers. You can be smart, identify it or unplug, but nobody else will and that's the rub. The percentage of people who don't recognize what they have fallen into guarantees that the firehose gets protected by herd stupidity, so even if some people wise up it'll never be enough to force the news cycle back on track.
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u/sllewgh 1d ago
Worked for Mamdani. "Make life easier" was a brilliant slogan. Government should not be a culture war, I'm sick of it from both sides. Say you're gonna do specific shit to make people's lives better, and follow through. It's not complicated, just rare.
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u/Possible-Voice23 22h ago
Exactly this. He won because he brought every conversation back to affordability. He continues to be popular because he’s following through on that platform.
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u/RocketRelm 11h ago
The most important part is that it doesn't actually require following through. Just repeat the buzzwords, tell people the small anecdotes, have a loud crowd to create a bubble where there is no opposition. No matter good or bad or just the same as every other dem there'll always be a reason to Trust. Effort spent following through is effort not spent telling people you will folllow through.
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u/sllewgh 6h ago
This is completely wrong. You cannot simply say things and not do them. That's what led to the democrats being so unpopular they lost the election to a diaper shitting senile rapist.
The only way it actually works to bring you popularity is if you are consistent about it and follow through. That's what Mamdani has done. He's fulfilled plenty of campaign promises and put actual effort into those he didn't. The rest of the party doesn't have that reputation.
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u/DLeck 9h ago
What are you accusing democrats of not following through on?
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u/RocketRelm 6h ago
Dems generally follow through. But mamdani and the people pretending only his kind can help americans are populists. And populists by their nature and strategy prioritize short term popularity over long term results.
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u/RKU69 7h ago
Yeah both Mamdani and Sanders basically stuck to a very specific set of talking points that they always brought each conversation back to. Although Mamdani is more nimble at directly addressing other matters when they're brought up (i.e. Israel) but then smoothing pivoting to "we're gonna focus on making NYC affordable for everybody". And these are probably the two most popular politicians in America
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u/SeanFromQueens 16h ago
Not sure if Brandolini's law (or the bullshit asymmetry principle) can be combatted with consistency of a message. If it worked then Rudy Giuliani having 99% of all sentences in 2007 being noun, verb and 9/11 would have been effective, but it wasn't. If you kept to the very limited message then Chris Christie predicting what Marco Rubio would say on debate stage wouldn't be a rarity but commonplace until no one would try it for awhile again.
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u/Named_after_color 15h ago edited 15h ago
Huh, thanks for bringing that up. Was unaware of some of those nuances. I was pretty young in the post 9/11 years.
I wonder if those rules still apply though, because it honestly feels like politics has had massive paradigm shift since Obama's election. He was the first to really use the internet to spread a message, and Trump was the first to flood the internet in short form low effort ultra targeted content.
But, I admit, I've only ever lived in ultra-non-competitive states, so I've barely even seen ads in election year. Maybe direct messaging isn't effective to people who've been exposed to that sorta thing before.
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u/m_sobol 1d ago edited 1d ago
Destroy and ban the source of the disinformation. Introduce increased network traffic costs for spammers. Apply immediate costs and bans on obvious and outrageous lies. Volume spammers will evade with VPNs. But political personalities should have immediate deplatforming when they lie.
The US should introduce a set of laws that punish those that defraud the people of the United States. Introduce automatic punishments for liars (Watchmen problem: who determines who lies? What truth base?). Hate speech should be punished and not tolerated by 1A
On an international front, foreign spammers and political interference should be hunted down like terrorists. They are active military targets when they seek to defraud the US. The risk of spamming must be fatally high
Media and info network companies must be forced to change their business model. Or they will never turn down the ad money, the political ads, and the angry engagement algorithm flywheel
Long term, it comes down to primary education. Kids should be taught why spam lies are bad, and how to recognize and reject them. But given the disaster state of students behavior and reading skills, America has little chance. Parents don't care, and taxes are too low to rejuvenate poor schooling
Otherwise, just allow the spam and lies to continue. You cannot outcompete dedicated spam floods, so lies overwhelm social unity and depress political participation. Dictators easily gain power.
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u/suckarepellent 15h ago
Parents don't even know. I'm a parent and I don't know how to combat this flow of misinformation to myself. Do you have any suggested reading?
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u/Named_after_color 9h ago
No parenting book has a guide on how to handle the digital deluge. If you want to get your kid to be able to identify fake information appropriately, it's going to take homework and unfortunately, luck.
The best thing I think you could do is to try to get your child interested in rhetoric so they can develop the skills to recognize bad faith arguments themself. You're not going to be able to stop influencers - many who are currently the target of an astroturfed support campaign - from appearing in your child's feed.
Try to have passive audio from sources you trust playing regularly in your house. Listening to NPR in the background during yard work is boring old people stuff, but casually asking your kid "What do you think about that?" every now and again encourages them to consider points they picked up on.
You could install parental controls or something to block certain websites, but that could make it seem like forbidden secret knowledge.
You are not responsible for stopping the world from existing in it's current state. You are responsible for giving your child the tools to navigate it. Education and active interest is the best way to prepare them, in my opinion. And limit screen time, I guess.
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u/m_sobol 14h ago
Not a parent. Only despairing from the self selected doom posts on r/teachers, lamenting the poor reading skills and behavior of kids. Really got to make sure kids learn phonics instead of the scam fad reading techniques they teach now
It's the screens and the feeds. We never had this tidal wave of targeted brainwashing when younger. We used to get home and watch tv cartoons, maybe gameboy and PlayStation. Now the kids have games, phones in their pockets, feeds, shorts, porn, AI...
I believe strict media diets and audits must be done for young kids. Who are they watching? What channels? Prune and limit any right wing adjacent channels, which start the right wing pipeline for boys. There is no honest and healthy conservatism to be learned through popular online media imo.
Ultimately, you ask and teach young kids to choose kindness every day. That means denouncing and banning inflammatory discourse, to provide negative examples to the kids. You train their shields up. I know it's too young to poke their innocence, but patents give them screens at too young an age
Make them read history books. Esp about war and suffering. Teach them how stupid votes allow dangerous men to destroy great nations (Germany ww2). Teach then how stupid apathy leads to starvation.
Otherwise, prepare them for the tough world they will soon inherit, since there are no good outcomes coming from Trump and climate change. America is wasting 20 years on Trump and the post Trump recovery period.
That is, we soon enter a high inflation, low supply, and tight resource period. The cheap goods made by cheap Chinese workers are gone due to China aging. Numerous Chinese and German workers, cheap Russian 90s oil gas, and the USSR peace dividend will never come back. Deglobalization, AI growth, and energy shocks all seek to reduce supply of cheap food, durables, and electronic goods. High Sovereign debt forces a high rate environment, so millennials to gen alpha will never buy cheap houses. Robots won't save us- displacing human labor means income loss, and the rich will never sell cheap robots since they democratize the means of production. Growing seniors tax burden and military arms growth means decreased domestic consumption.
And then there is the heat.
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u/BioShockerInfinite 22h ago
Obviously.
Republican’s:
“Hunter Biden’s Laptop!”
“Lock Her Up!”
We never heard the god damn end of it.
The response over and over and over and over and over needs to be:
“Trump’s Epstein Files!”
Invade Iran? Trump’s Epstein Files!
$5000? Trump’s Epstein Files!
Whatever it is- Trump’s Epstein Files!
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u/please_trade_marner 11h ago
Nobody outside of reddit or bluesky cares about the Epstein Files. They were released. They were a nothingburger like always. Everybody else moved on.
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u/icareforplants 9h ago edited 8h ago
I still can't get over how quickly the maga owned media stopped talking about Epsteins rape partner.
Ghislaine Maxwell Epsteins convicted corapist got moved from an appropriately tough prison to a camp where she gets to leave all day, has a puppy, takes yoga classes and even gets carryout food delivered. This has never happened to an offender of her caliber.
She was moved to the camp the day after she met with Trump's personal attorney off record which is crazy unheard of in of its self. It's pretty clear she got moved in order to not nark on trump.
Epstein testified under oath that trump was his best friend when he was most rapey. Trump said in writing that they "shared beautiful secrets together" and drew a little topless girl.
Absolutely wild that the party who claims to be godly and holy is letting pedos get away with it.
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u/please_trade_marner 8h ago
The epstein files proved Epstein and Maxwell committed crimes. The Biden doj had an open investigation into the files all 4 years. Why no indictments?
I didn't see the Dems becoming the pizzagate tier conspiracy theorists in my T2 bingo card.
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u/icareforplants 6h ago
Maga's pizza gate had zero credible evidence. Y'all went nuts over nothing, post a link to show otherwise if you disagree.
On the other side we have quotes, convictions and trump giving one of the most notorious pedos in history a get out of jail card. And here you are apologizing for him.
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u/please_trade_marner 6h ago
There is credible evidence in the epstein files. The problem is that they only apply to Epstein and Maxwell. That's what the Biden doj issued no further indictments even though they had an open investigation into the Epstein files all 4 years. They were released. There was nothing there. It has now turned into a pizzagate tier conspiracy theory.
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u/icareforplants 6h ago
Why the hell did trump let one of the worst rapist in history out of a prison and into a camp where she gets insane benefits? It's insane how his followers will literally apologize and give preferred treatment to child rapists.
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u/please_trade_marner 6h ago
I don't believe any "journalism" that is based on "anonymous sources". Not in 2026.
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u/icareforplants 6h ago
You're purposely not looking into this because it implicates your party and leader. This is not anonymous, Google Noella Turnage or read the source.
You can't explain why the most natorious child rapist in US history was moved by Donald Trump after he had his personal attorney meet with her off record, which is again unprecedented and uncalled for. You know this.
This is exactly what qanon was talking about it just happens to be their leader who is the linchpin.
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u/please_trade_marner 6h ago
The BOP says the Trump admin had nothing to do with it. That Maxwell had made a case that she was being targeted and her life was at risk at the high security prison. That's what we know as fact. You're spouting pizzagate tier conspiracy theories.
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u/satyrday12 6h ago
I 100% agree with you. I compare it to a lion in the middle of a huge herd of wildebeest. If he keeps changing targets, he ends up with nothing.
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u/please_trade_marner 11h ago
"Trump initiated the war in Iran. Gas prices are up. Democrats will vote to stop it."
How does that even make sense? Ok, so the Democrats win and then vote to "stop" it. Now what?
Is Iran is going to say "Good job Democrats. Based on your voting, we've decided to let bygones be bygones and we've opened the Strait. Oh, and here is some free oil. Oh, and we 'promise' to not start our nuclear program again. We swear".
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u/Named_after_color 9h ago
I wasn't talking about literally solving the war with Iran, I was using a topical example that has wide public support. The Iran war is extremely unpopular snafu that has an incredibly simplistic cause effect throughline.
While it's fair to want more information about what "Stopping it" means, the more details one gives about a plan, the easier it is to find the weakest part and use that to dismiss the rest of the message, you did that yourself.
I agree that the mess we're in isn't going to be solved with one vote to cease hostilities, it would be a solid step in the right direction, and to most people, that would register as an obvious, good-faith attempt to follow through with a promise.
Notice how you're immediately trying to poke holes in the suggestion. Momentum in the argument belongs to the party trying to offer a solution, not the party trying to maintain status quo by saying "We can't!" To the general public, who are very low information, who would present the more satisfying argument?
"We will vote to stop the war in Iran." vs "We can't stop this war, it's too complicated!"
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u/please_trade_marner 8h ago
This messaging is terrible. At this point, both parties want the Strait of Hormuz opened and in operation. It's Iran, not the Trump admin, that refuses to do so. The Dems can't force Iran to do things by voting on it in congress.
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u/Named_after_color 6h ago
Once again, I suggest we fight the attempts at distraction with providing one consistent message.
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u/icareforplants 9h ago
When the entire media apparatus does not cover extreme corruption we are in trouble. Trump is at a great advantage since most main stream media and talk radio is owned by maga.
I still can't get over how quickly the maga owned media stopped talking about Epsteins rape partner.
Ghislaine Maxwell Epsteins convicted corapist got moved from an appropriately tough prison to a camp where she gets to leave all day, has a puppy, takes yoga classes and even gets carryout food delivered. This has never happened to an offender of her caliber.
She was moved to the camp the day after she met with Trump's personal attorney off record which is crazy unheard of in of its self. She got moved in order to not nark on your dear leader trump.
Epstein testified under oath that trump was his best friend when he was most rapey. Trump said in writing that they "shared beautiful secrets together" and drew a little topless girl.
Absolutely wild that the party who claims to be godly and holy is letting pedos get away with it.
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u/lakeview9z 7h ago edited 4h ago
Wow, there truly has been such a mountain of shit from this administration I had forgotten about this disgusting Maxwell affair. Just sordid, filthy outright corruption.
This is a sad truth. The news divisions and agencies are no longer about public service. They're profit centers, forced to compete for clicks to get profits and they need to increase those profits every year to increase investor and shareholder value. So the fire hose of outrage and tabloid crap gets those numbers up.
And it's such an important point how the news is not relentlessly screaming about all the corruption. The right wing media never even talks about it. The mainstream media mentions things as unique or unprecedented but never call it corruption since the top levels don't want it pointed out or it's out of tear of retaliation from the president which is an especially scary precedent for our country.
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u/quickwaxsix 1d ago
Democrats are not doing this because Trump is doing it for them. The blatant corruption and incompetence of the last summer is a marketing campaign designed to do two things:
1) Disincentivize political leadership - Republicans don't have a chance to talk about anything other than incompetence and Democrats don't have a reason to.
2) Send a signal to Trump's real constituency - the billionaires - that the admin is going full steam for this coup, no holding back. Get on board for the spoils or become the enemy.
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u/I405CA 21h ago
The problem with the Iran war is not that Trump started it.
The problem is that he is losing it.
Nobody likes a loser. Focus on that.
Consider what the GOP would be saying if the situation was reversed, then say what they would say.
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u/Black_XistenZ 13m ago
That's only an effective talking point if voters believe that you would have a better idea for how to win the war, which Dems quite clearly don't have.
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u/Impossible_Pop620 1d ago
'Sharp as a tack' didn't work out too well last time, despite everyone keeping to that kind of message.
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u/Named_after_color 1d ago
That's not what I'm suggesting, that's a slogan/meme. I don't even think I was exposed to that messaging. It's also objectively an opinion, it invites interpretation.
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u/Impossible_Pop620 1d ago
You mean like, um..."There is not a thing that comes to mind" didn't cut it with the voters?
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u/Named_after_color 1d ago
Sorry I might not have been clear, a simple "I'm going to do x about y to handle z"
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