3 min read

It’s the simple stories that stick, and the big ones that inspire.

Earlier this week I watched President Trump’s inaugural address in my preferred setting (1.25 speed). And even at that breezy clip, I think it illustrated a couple of fundamental lessons about persuasive communication that help us understand his unfathomable staying power in American politics—and, more germane to our purposes, that you can apply to your fundraising messaging.   

So, whether you watched the inauguration rage-knitting for the next march or trying to cash in your $TRUMP meme coins for Trump Bibles and bobbleheads, let’s take a look.

The Ethics of Community

That might seem like an unlikely heading for a discussion of a Trump speech. But I think it’s fundamental to his persuasive appeal.

As Jonathan Haidt explains in his indispensable The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, there are three moral frameworks from which humans derive moral intuitions and judgments: autonomy, community, and sanctity. Our modern culture tends to be dominated by the ethics of autonomy—involving individual flourishing—hence our fixation on harm, choice, and consent as the decisive criteria for moral judgments. An ethics of community, by contrast, involves groups and relationships—emphasizing categories like fairness, loyalty, obligation, etc.

In Haidt’s account, the left has largely ceded the ethics of community to the right, by fetishizing individual rights while delegitimizing more “groupish” ethical claims (think: family obligations, tribalism, patriotism, respect for authority, etc.) This, he claims, puts his fellow liberals at a disadvantage in crafting compelling political messaging for a broad audience.

In any case, Trump’s inauguration speech was particularly rich in moral claims concerning community. Sure, he mentioned freedom, and God. But notions of fairness and loyalty (or its inverse, betrayal) were front and center. He offered a litany of ways in which the government has “failed” the American people while profiting or protecting the interests of outsiders (criminals, foreign countries, and so on.). Panama has treated us very badly. President McKinley never should’ve had his mountain renamed. Etc.

He called his election a “mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place.” Cumulatively, the message was: you’ve been cheated of what you deserve . . . and betrayed by those who ought to have been loyal to you. He promised to set things right. To take care of our own. He conjured a nation unified.

That’s a powerful message. Claims about fairness and loyalty resonate more or less universally—from the pre-school playground to The Divine Comedy (remember, Dante places betrayers deep in the iciest depths of hell). And it’s one you should harness in your fundraising.

One way to do that is to emphasize what people deserve. It’s not just that someone is cold or neglected—they deserve warmth and companionship. But a deeper truth that Trump puts to work with the language of loyalty/betrayal is that people want to be part of a group. We want to belong to something bigger than ourselves, to be part of a tribe and to have a shared mission. By integrating the language of belonging and shared purpose into your messaging, you make it more compelling.

Which brings me to the second lesson of the Inauguration Address.

Tell a Big Story

The other thing that stood out to me about President Trump’s speech was how it grabbed and owned the language of “Manifest Destiny.”

Admittedly, I received my intellectual formation in the halls of Literature departments, so maybe my perspective is atypical. But I’d never heard that phrase as anything other than a discredited historical artifact—one used to put a fig leaf on the id of various American land grabs. I’d expect a politician, even today, to try to whitewash it a little bit by talking about the “spirit of exploration and innovation” or something.

But nope, not Trump. “Our nation’s glorious destiny will no longer be denied” and “we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars.” All ambiguity, caveats, contextualizations are swept aside for the One, Simple Story: America is great, and we’re going to keep on making it greater.

And here’s what struck me: By burnishing the story of America to its utmost simplicity, it becomes very powerful on an intuitive level (if not an intellectual one). I heard for the first time how an idea like Manifest Destiny could be, as Marlow says of Britain’s imperial rhetoric in Heart of Darkness, “not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to . . .” Hell yes we’re going to colonize Mars. Why not?

I’m starting to ramble, like a Trump speech when he weaves off script. My point is this: it’s the simple stories that stick, and the big ones that inspire. Not the nuanced, ahem-but-actually, two-sides-to-every ones. Once, there was something great. It was shackled and betrayed. Together we will make it great again. 

To be clear, I’m not saying this is a good thing. It’s just how humans are. So, remember that when you’re crafting your messaging. Behind and above any detail or specific coloring, the story you tell your audience needs to be: You are part of something great. Let’s do it together.