Misdirection: The Real Magical Information Neutralization Trick.
Now you see it. Now you don’t!
By Kimboak Benham
We’ve all seen it in action. We’ve all fell for it a time or two. Some fall for it over and over. Seeming to never learn that it is a trick. Some of us may even have used the move ourselves. It is very popular and works much like a magic trick.
While you are looking at the obvious, so caught up with what the magician is showing you, busy convincing you that what isn’t there is there (and you buying it), he is buying time; simultaneously waiting for the real rabbit to be moved off stage. You saw him put the rabbit back in the hat, but now where is it? You look in the hat, and nothing is there. Where did it go? Is it in the box, under your seat? How’d he do that? You feel dumbfounded.
Astonished. The same as it is on the stage with a magician, so it is too in politics and public relations, or any presentation where much of the purpose of the speaker or subject is to neutralize a negative or diminish fears some may have of him. This is the trick of the hypocrite. Saying one thing and doing another.
A question is asked, and no sooner than it has been posed, it is twice as quickly dismissed. Gone! Poof! Just like magic. Once having seen this trick performed a time or two, upon seeing it starting up again we want to say “wait a minute, I’m not done with you, you don’t get off that easy. I have follow up questions”. But by that time most people — I dare say — have followed the magical lead of the interviewee and have had their attention drawn elsewhere, now with their eyes and ears looking at and listening to whatever it is the trick master: politician, PR person, or perhaps preacher, is doing, or saying, they’ve forgotten both what was asked, and his response to it. All the while the movement of the truth had gone stealthily from point “A” to out of sight, and out of mind — which is always the goal — with a quickness.
The audience caught up in the excitement of the misdirection were clueless.The information first sought wasn’t given, not to the questioner nor to the audience, and never will be. Even knowing this to be true some people who witnessed the action will still swear that the question as asked was wholly answered, though it never was. And that is the trick. It leaves you, the person wanting to ask a follow up question, being seen as an antagonist, a causer of trouble and as such are berated as though you did something wrong.
Another of these tricks which has become very popular and common is the BOTH accusation. When one is accused of doing wrong, he feels driven to point out that others do it too! “Don’t look at me, look at him”. This is a common trick, especially with kids and opposing political candidates. Kids in their attempts to mimic adults, or for whatever reason, when questioned, will sometimes blame one another. It is a behavior most all who have lived a life of liberty, either as practitioners or witnesses, can identify with:
kid 1 — “He did it”
kid 2 — “I didn’t do it. He did it”
kid 1 — “You did it too”
kid 2 — “No I did not”
kid 1 — “Did too!”
Mom — “Okay boys”
No matter who was really, or most at fault, the one who wins is the trick master. The one who proclaimed both had done it. The one who accused the innocent and successfully moved both attention and burden away from himself as the main culprit, and untrustworthy one, has won. The sly boy; the pertinacious liar; the whittler of his brothers fate; has succeeded. His brother is now as equally accused as he, though he really hadn’t done much wrong at all. The real effect is the lessening of, or the removing of, guilt from himself at the expense of his brother. Shared blame always lessens the punishment of the actual guilty party.
Mom — “If y’all do that again I’m gonna have to tell your father.”
kid 2— "But I didn’t do nothing”
kid 1 — Silent smirk.
The trick is as old as dirt. If not, I suspect it is at least as old as human language and conflict. Once a person gets good at carrying out this trick — of neutralizing blame through the use of deception by attaching their own fears of penalty to the belief of others — they tend to rely on it. It becomes a part of their shtick, their routine. And those who come to admire them, as sure as gravity causes and apple to fall, pick up their magical leader’s habit and forward it. Before you know it they are all practicing the art of misdirection.
Nowadays it is so often used there isn’t a day goes by that one can’t watch the evening news, or venture online, without seeing the maneuvers in action, live or recorded. It’s use so prevalent, especially on news talk radio and televised political roundup shows, that if you had two TV’s, you could see on one a defender of the President busily fighting back the challenge of a questioner with the ever worn counter-charge: “Every President before now has done the same. It’s, like, a tradition!”. When in fact a quick web search would show that they haven’t. On the other TV, before a bank of microphones, could be the President himself declaring “I was just following a precedent, set long before I was elected”. And the people — again, I dare say most — will accept it as truth. Perhaps that reaction is as old as dirt, or language, too.
In the streets and in common areas of America, in slang terms, this magical deception is simply known as tricking. Tricking is a deceptive hustle, and includes prostitution. This street method is a play on honesty (false fronts) and binding agreements. After you have reached an agreement with a trickster (sometime after the fact finding out that that is what he was) you can’t do a thing other than grin and bear it. You can’t even challenge it. It being commonly known that if the con is challenged, the person who did the tricking will say “but I was told you were doing to same to me so I had to balance it out”, which is a way of saying “I just did to you the same thing you were trying to do to me — we are BOTH guilty of the same thing”, though, of course, they aren’t. The only difference here is that it was the third party who played them against each other and by doing so put himself in the clear. Tricky, tricky, tricky.
So, the next time you see some one playing the neutralizing trick; the they both do it — or did it— trick, or the playing one against the other trick, be sharp and don’t get tricked. Magic shows don’t just happen in Vegas and trick or treat isn’t just a Halloween night request.
Political Pundit — “You Republicans (or Democrats)have been caught in the act, this you can’t deny.
Party Speaker — “But the Democrats (or Republicans) do it too!
Political Pundit — “And American doesn’t seem to mind. ‘All is fair in love and war’. So, for now, we will leave it right there.
