Did you know that if you see or hear something often enough, you begin to believe it, even if it’s an outrageous, unbelievable lie?

This is based on studies conducted in labs and has come to be known as the Illusion of Truth Effect.

You can watch a short video here to learn more about it.

Lying is a big part of our society: politicians are elected, religions are followed, and products are bought just by the scientific art of lying. And this is not a new idea.

It has been going on for thousands of years in every culture throughout history.

Aristotle wrote about it in his Poetics 2,300 years ago. Great book if you want to learn how to write and sell.

Why do you think in the political arena, propaganda works so well?

“Make America Great Again.”

“Feel the Burn,” and…

“Stronger Together.”

These slogans are meant to sell you on an emotion first (products and ideas are always sold and eventually bought 100 percent through pathos – emotions).

Then the individual thinks about the credibility of the seller (ethos), and AFTER we’ve bought into the idea or product, we justify it with (logos) logic and reason – “Honey, I bought the Hummer because it’s much safer for the kids than the F-150.

We can’t put a price on their safety, now can we?”

I teach these three rhetorical appeals all the time in my high-school English classrooms and do not fail to emphasize enough the importance of the first one, pathos/emotions.

So, to prove this point, let’s take our three examples from above.

Using slogans is known as a propaganda campaign. Politicians know that it works. Heck, one of the evilest politicians that ever walked the face of the earth wrote about it extensively in his book, Mein Kampf.

It’s no surprise that all three candidates in the 2016 presidential campaign used this selling technique.

So, let’s look at all three slogans:

Feel the Burn:

It’s a pretty good slogan, right? Especially when you add the visual of Bernie Sanders disguised as Doc from Back to the Future.

Who do you think his target audience is? You guessed it, our youth.

Before we go on with these pathos slogans, let me put on my English teacher’s hat and explain a few things that I constantly tell my students.

To write using the pathos rhetorical appeal, syntax is everything; in other words, the sentence must begin with an active verb, such as the one in Sander’s slogan, “Feel.”

You write in pathos using the five senses: touch, taste, sound, smell, and sight.

In this instance, Bernie uses touch. What are you touching? A BURN! Ouch!

It’s powerful; the senses come alive just by saying it. It’s a great figurative slogan as well – let’s turn around and burn the people from the top.

The problem is, Bernie didn’t have enough money to advertise as the other candidates had, hence, the Illusion of Truth Effect could not stick.

Stronger Together:

Clinton’s slogan contains absolutely NO active verb, and none of the five senses are engaged. It’s weak.

These two words are made up of an adjective and an adverb, which are meant to describe a noun and a verb (a thing and an action). However, there’s no noun to describe, and most importantly, no action. Even with The Illusion of Truth, it doesn’t appeal, and won’t create the persuasion that it’s aimed to hit.

Make America Great Again:

The first word in Trump’s slogan is an active verb, Make. It elicits action.

This active verb in the slogan, “Make” makes the audience feel like they’re actively molding something from clay. Right?

Then it gives a noun for the action. America . “Make America” insinuates taking part in the process: We, the People, can make this happen.

Make what happen? Make America Great! It’s an adjective for America. We the people, by voting for this man, can make America Great.

But wait. There’s more!…

The adverb (the word that describes the verb) is Again. It hits the emotions of the “the good-ole’ days.”

Think about it. The past always seems better when you look back. Don’t you feel like that? When we reminisce about childhood, the teen years, etc., we tend to forget about the bad and focus on “the good ole’ days.” Am I right?

And don’t forget this was Reagan’s slogan too, so it REALLY takes you back to “the good-ole’ days.” Unless, of course, it doesn’t if you’re an opposing party.  But for the targeted party, people fed up, it works, syntactically and emotionally.

To sum up, the last slogan and winning slogan, Make America Great Again, has an active verb that feels like something is being done to a noun – the place that we emotionally connect to as patriots, America.

Then we describe it as Great (Eat Frosted Flakes, They’reeee Greeeeeeat!).

Then comes the finale, the adverb that brings us emotionally back to the good-ole’ days of Great America.

It works!

The icing on the cake, however, for Trump isn’t just that his marketing team knew the impact of (1) using an active verb (2) writing in imagery – the five senses, and (3) applying only pathos as the rhetorical appeal, he had PLENTY OF MONEY to use The Illusion of Truth Effect to brainwash the masses.

Over, and over, and over, and over again you saw it… on cars, on social media, on house signs, t-shirts, flags, hats, and even bibles – just about everywhere you looked. Heck, he even went so far as to have it patented.

So, before you hold something as truth, remember to analyze the art of persuasion (lies) that was used to help you form your ideology or “truth” in conjunction with the thousands of times you saw it, hence, The Illusion of Truth Effect.

You got hooked by a lab-conducted scientific truth that is just a big, fat lie. But don’t worry, it’s been going on for thousands of years; it’s called the art and power of language: rhetoric.

Thoughts?

Let’s philosophize!