Dan Boyle: How To Be Happy Being Angry

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From top: Donald Trump protests in London during the US president’s UK visit last week; Dan Boyle

Identify issue.

Create a narrative based on fear.

The more irrational the fear the better.

The more distant your target group is from the effects and/or the realities of the issue, the more appreciative your audience can be.

Be vague in your language.

Devise trigger words and phrases, meaningless in themselves, designed to confirm your narrative.

Virtue Signalling – that’s a good one.

Place emphasis on words to give them evil intent – Left, Liberal, Do Gooder.

Accept no responsibility.

Others are always to blame.

Truth is expendable. Rarely rely on it.

Re-invent history to suit your narrative.

Demonise the future.

Always deflect never reflect.

Deny deny deny.

Refute refute refute.

If your truth isn’t working make up another truth.

Counter the telling with whataboutery.

When in danger of exposure resort to name calling your opponents.

Make up insults suggesting diminished intellectual capacity against those who oppose you.

Libtard – that’s another good one.

Compare what shouldn’t be compared.

Equate what can’t be equated.

Quote liberally but always out of context.

Use only information that confirms your bias.

Never seek to verify.

Discover bogeymen

If you discover an individual so much the better.

Invest in their persona every foible you can imagine.

Remember opinions are facts, your opinions in particular.

Anecdotes represent scientific observation.

You are not alone although there need not be many of you.

If you lack charisma find your own God. Invest in them human qualities. Have them speak plainly however ignorantly.

Your God will always be right and well intentioned.

Your Bogeymen will always be mendacious, and be forever evil in their actions.

When in doubt claim you misspoke.

No one will believe you, but they will admire your shamelessness.

Or Lost in Translation. That’s another good one.

Choose your friends and companions wisely.

They need not be friendly or approachable. They should be encouraged not to be.

Neither should they be wise or knowledgeable.

Only convinced they are right.

Science or scientists are not your friends, and can never be.

Say we have had enough of experts and everyone will laugh.

You can never go wrong with a good conspiracy. They never are true. They never need to be.

Shut down all criticism.

Question the motivation of those who criticise.

Seize on any error, no matter how minuscule or how petty.

Exaggerate accomplishment.

Ignore failure.

Misrepresent actions

Lie. A lot.

Denigrate any, and every, accountability mechanism.

Make what you don’t like fake or deep.

Repeat ad nauseam.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator. His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

Pic: getty

 

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40 thoughts on “Dan Boyle: How To Be Happy Being Angry

  1. SOQ

    Good stuff Dan, you have just described 3 if not 4 regular posters on this site to a tee of course.

    Negativity seeping out of every pore.

    1. Janet, I ate my avatar

      hear hear
      They will probably be along any minute to scoff.
      Good article Dan

  2. Wellness

    All these clichés are worthy of a metaphor. Let us open up the sheet to suggestions. Best one wins a night in with Dan.

  3. bisted

    …Dan…looks like you’ve posted an extract from the green party canvassers manual instead of your usual wonderful article…

  4. baz

    Dan ‘rejected at the ballot box’ Boyle has issues with democratic outcomes.

    Dan has progressed to advanced Trump Derangement Syndrome.

    1. Nigel

      I think people who can’t handle criticism of their preferred elected clown have more trouble with democracy than anyone else.

      1. Clampers Outside!

        Those who assume a preference for a candidate X, if they don’t support candidate Y, have been demonstrably hysterical on this site.
        And likely to score an A+ in a tick box exercise of Dan’s list, in fairness.

        1. Nigel

          Those who relentlessly attack candidate Y are gonna have to take being associated with the triumph of candidate X no matter how much they try to distance themselves.

  5. Sentient Won

    “Create a narrative based on fear. The more irrational the fear the better”

    This is exactly how you push your man-made climate change nonsense.

    But you forgot “Projection” – Accuse your opponent of exactly what you are guilty of

      1. Sentient Won

        I’m not the one pushing a scam.

        From “The Real Global Warming Disaster” by Christopher Booker

        Nothing alerted us more to the curious nature of the global warming scare than the peculiar tactics used by the IPCC to promote its orthodoxy, brooking no dissent. More than once in its series of mammoth reports, the IPCC had been caught out in very serious attempts to rewrite the scientific evidence. The most notorious instance of this was the extraordinary prominence it gave in 2001 to the so-called ‘hockey stick’ graph, mysteriously produced by a relatively unknown young US scientist, which completely redrew the accepted historical record by purporting to show temperatures in the late twentieth century having shot upwards to a level far higher than had ever been known before. Although the ‘hockey stick’ was instantly made the central icon of the IPCC’s cause, it was within a few years to become one of the most comprehensively discredited artefacts in the history of science.

        https://www.amazon.com/Real-Global-Warming-Disaster-Scientific/dp/1441110526/

    1. scottser

      isn’t that how you handled any discussion on the abortion referendum? spreading your lies as science, fearmongering, deflections, insults etc?

        1. SOQ

          With some of the comments you have made, if BS editors were actually doing their job you wouldn’t be here at all.

          You don’t get it do you? You tick most of the boxes in the piece above. Your transphobic comments alone were reprehensible. What business is it of yours how someone else lives?

          1. Nigel

            Also the author of the book he just linked to is notorious in a very minor way as an Anders Breivik fan.

  6. Kevin Quinn

    ‘Virtue signalling’ is a real thing Dan,, and a useful phrase if one wishes to call out particularly sanctimonious public posing. But just because the ‘right’ wing invented the phrase doesn’t mean it can only be used by them against the ‘left’.

    For example: If you are still wearing your Love Both badge or your Repeal 8 badge, please stopit, the campaign is over, the people have spoken, you’re just virtue-signalling at this point.

      1. Janet, I ate my avatar

        saw a lady doing her coast walk in her repeal top just last night,
        all I thought was at least she’s getting the wear out of it

        1. scottser

          yeah, same with old concert t-shirts. now, the ‘i finished a 10k in 2015’ t-shirts are another thing – they should be relegated to the status of gardening or sloppy bedwear.

          1. scottser

            cotton isn’t the best for running in, especially in this weather. something nice and breathable is best.

          2. ReproButina

            Ah, I was thinking more of the wick away t-shirts that are given away at 5Ks and 10Ks.

      2. Chris

        What he’s really saying is that “virtue signalling” really gets on his nerves for some reason. All I want to know is where can I get me some triggering badges

      1. Cian

        Except it isn’t over. The clusterfupp of getting the legislation through the Dáil has only just begun.

  7. ollie

    Place emphasis on words to give them evil intent – Left, Liberal, Do Gooder.

    You forgot to include “populist” Dan, one of your favourites

  8. Gabby

    If Dan doesn’t get elected, we can put it down to his articles on Broadsheet. Don’t blame Dan when it happens – blame Broadsheet.

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