Political Speeches
It’s election year here in the United States, and I’m sure some of my readers are already tired of the speeches, campaigns, phone calls, and so forth to which they have been subjected. On this subject, as on so many others, G. K. Chesterton had something to say. (The Buffs and the Blues to which he refers, by the way, were the two political parties in the town of Eatanswill in Charles Dickens’ novel The Pickwick Papers, though here they represent any two political parties.)
A party meeting is frequently a machine for the cooling of party ardour. A man comes to a Buff meeting already an enthusiastic Buffer; if he were not an absurdly enthusiastic Buffer he would not come. The first three speeches, let us say, increase his Buff enthusiasm. The great eternal Buff verities can bear being said at least three times. When said the fourth time they detain and worry him. Said the fifth time they bore him. Said the sixth time they enrage him. By the seventh or eighth time the Buff verities have been said he does not believe in the Buff verities at all. He has, in every sense of the word, gone over to the Blues.
This is a psychological perversity which it would be well for practical politicians and wirepullers to realise much more seriously than they do. Tell a man the enemies’ opinions as often as you like. The more often he hears them, the more monstrous and bizarre they will appear to him. Tell a man the absurd opinions of his opponent again and yet again, if you will. But beware of often telling him his own opinions. When he has heard his own opinions for the nine hundred and ninety-ninth time, he may suddenly scream and adopt some other opinions. State the wrong views, but be a little afraid of stating the right views. Exaggerations, fallacies, false statements are in their nature vulgar, and grow familiar every time they are mentioned; as does the vulgar refrain of a music-hall song. But the truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it. — G. K. Chesterton, “On Long Speeches and Truth,â€Â Collected Works 27: The Illustrated London News 1905-1907, pp. 130-131 (paragraph break added).