When Trump famously proposed "Build the wall," it was one of the best examples of persuasion-by-simplicity you will ever see. Learn from it.

Being accurate matters for science and for budgeting. Accuracy often requires details and nuance and context and all that stuff. But persuasion craves simplicity. Every detail you add to a clean message gives someone a reason to not accept it.

We see this problem for the critics of Critical Race Theory. They try to argue it is a Marxist worldview, and 95% of the country isn't quite sure that is true, and isn't quite sure why that matters, exactly. Sounds bad, but perhaps not so bad for left-leaning people. And that's who the right needs to persuade.

Calling CRT "anti-white" might be close to the truth, but that doesn't matter to persuasion. The "anti-white" critique sounds exactly like a Fox News talking point, and not something moderates would take seriously.

That's why I am A-B testing some new persuasion approaches. In this tweet I reframe CRT as sorting children into two classes: Losers and Assholes.

The "losers" would be any non-white kids born into this oppressive racist system. The assholes are the white kids who allegedly benefit from the system and perhaps are not keen to change what works for them.

While I agree we live in a racist world, what makes CRT unusually vile is that it doesn't work for ANYONE. I'd have some respect for a system that helped the powerless at the expense of the powerful, even if it cost me something. But I can't respect a worldview that cripples everyone who comes in contact with it.

If you're new to my opinion on systemic racism, I think it is real, but 75% of it is perpetuated by a broken education system, thanks to Teachers Unions. The other 25% is bad strategy, e.g., are non-white kids taught that Fortune 500 companies PREFER to hire them over white applicants? If not, that is a crime.

Anyway, here's my proposed reframing for CRT into LOA. I'll see how it performs on Twitter before trying an alternative. See how I focus on simplicity and how it feels, as opposed to the academic argument that is impenetrable for most of us, including me.