Yes, pick up artist nonsense has gotten popular, in part because of frustrated little Republicans and sadly some Democrats were angry that women are no longer defined as those that serve their desires and needs (not in that order.) However, will be on pick ups, this is the technique that conservatives, especially religious conservatives use to manipulate people into being the neat little ponds and servants that they want and need.
Let's for example take a look at religion, one of the typical things that clergy will do is speak about how much we love you, how much potential you have, how great you would be if you only stop wasting time and submitted to them. In the midst of all this love and encouragement, the subconscious understands that not only are you a bad person for refusing all this "love", but that the reason you are getting all this criticism is because you actually deserve it. Nevermind the fact that the sets up an endless treadmill or you start denying yourself to please someone who knows that every pat on the head will make you work even harder for them, a Stockholm syndrome where the kidnapper knows that the person will try to make them endearing to them in the hopes that they don't get shot.
Now pick up artists focus on this as a tool for getting laid, and also, because they are not interested in actual relationships. What is deadly in our era is that pick up artist and political conservative have teamed up to attack all those women and brown people who dared question white male authority. There is a line from Eric Hoffer that applies here "Woe when the strong copy for survival mechanisms of the weak." Allow me to explain that.
Pick up artist are weak people; they have to rely on lies and they know that after the trickery ends, they will never be able to have a relationship that does not rely on superficial trickery. Take a look at the Republicans and how many marriages most of them have gone through: Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, even our current President. Especially our current president. What make Trump dangerous is that he applied pick up artistry to politics; the same "I can make you famous and rich" that allowed him to bed women younger than his daughter was applied to his voters, including and especially the 55% of white women that picked him over Hillary. He made people feel inferior, feel insecure, and offered himself as the only solution.
He is a weak man, and that makes them relate to weak people. Look at any of the scans he has run, I know that combination of weak mind, weak will, but sheer greed and arrogance that many of his victims share, as John Steinbeck once put it "most Americans think they are just temporarily poor millionaires." The age of reality TV has made many people think they are just one lucky break at one bit of personal manipulation away from success, and sadly Americans are suckers for that, albeit is the decay of the European Union is showing, they are by no means the only ones.
If where to mind any silver lining out of the disaster that already is the Trump presidency, it will be that this is what Obama called a "teachable moment", the sort that America is really good at avoiding. We will need to teach people how to avoid manipulators, and sadly, like many the victim of the pickup artist work, or con artist, the American people will only listen when they are already in a heap of trouble and disgrace. Let's be honest, if the George W. Bush administration was not such a fiasco, would Obama have won? No, you were that many people on both left and right talking about how John McCain really wasn't that bad, or how Mitt Romney wasn't that bad, and how since the left is not the majority in this country (sarcasm flag way high) we have to settle for someone who really isn't that bad.
Sorry to say, the center's version of pick up artistry is the flattery that says "I know we deserve better, but if we don't make the rich people happy and avoid scaring the church people, we will never, ever win." Sad to say, most politicians on either side are pick up artists, it takes a special type of narcissism to throw oneself into the gears of the American political system, or rather the lack thereof. We're going to need to teach ourselves that anybody that wants our trust had better not start off with a well-established pickup line. There are certain political expressions and overtures that frankly should get shot down as quickly as the cliché of someone polyester leisure suit asking you "what your astrological sign?" Or "May I buy you a drink?"
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