If you can't convince him, confuse him

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IF YOU CAN’T CONVINCE HIM, CONFUSE HIM

1. Introduction. “If you cannot convince him, confuse him” is a philosophy. This was originally taken from the great quote “If you cannot convince them, confuse them,” popularized by the 33 rd president of US, Mr. Harry S. Truman. Though it was popularized by the former 33 rd president of US but there are proof that, use of this philosophy stared much before. After being popularized, it was used by many organizations and companies as their motto. While describing the philosophy, open source was used as the base. It is learned from various literatures that both positive and negative interpretations are available and people used both of those as to fulfill their specific aims.

2. Aim. The aim of my speech is to apprise you about the philosophy “If you cannot convince him, confuse him”.

3.

Scope.

My speech will be unfolded in the following sequence:

a.

Background history.

b.

Meaning.

c.

Application.

d.

Personal opinion.

Salient Aspects of the Quotation

3. Background History. In the year of 1919, it was a famous writer from England, William De Morgan who in a novel featured a clever character named Christopher Vance. Vance had to be the idol of this motto RESTRICTED

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as sometimes, he resorted to distracting and baffling other characters to achieve his aims. Later in the year of 1942 it was discovered to be a tactic of Adolph Hitler during World War II. Few years later in the year of 1948, former US president Harry S. Truman spoke on the occasion of the National Plowing Match. There, he criticized his political opponents, and mentioned the proverb while accusing them of cleverness. The very next day it got huge coverage in many newspapers and was circulated worldwide. Since then it used to be known as a great quotation by Harry S. Truman. 3. Meaning. If we go for the anatomy of this very statement, we will see both negative and positive implication of it. The literal meaning of the proverb says that, if you cannot get people to agree to what you want, just confuse them to the point that they do it anyway. As an example, we can see that, the way republicans had been using this as a tactic against democrats in the year of 1948 while spreading propaganda through mass people, was indeed a negative application of it. On the contrary, it also explains that, if you cannot outride someone with knowledge, you dazzle him with your words, logics and information those he is not aware off and finally he follows you. In this connotation I can refer a publication named ‘Never take No for an Answer’, where the writer Samfrits Le Poole, did mention this statement as one of the persuasive tools for convincing people instead of debating with them. 4. Applications. This famous quote has many military applications as well. While in war, if you think that you cannot outride your enemy by your strength, then do something to confuse him so that you can achieve your aim. Not only in the battlefield but also we can imply this as a tool for our communication skill also. We being the junior leaders of our Army, often need to speak to our under commands, peers and even to our superiors to convince them in carrying out our missions. We are trained to become a good communicator in various courses and activities. Even if we look at the present scenario, in the staff college we are given with exhaustive practices to develop our communication skill. Public speaking being the most important means of communication needs your confidence, your depth of

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knowledge, articulation of speech with logic and information to convince people whom you are addressing. 5. Personal Opinion. While giving my personal opinion, we may take the example of our research methodology classes conducted by Dr. A. I. Mahbub, an intellectual and scholar, presenting before us, numerous terminologies of Research Methodology. At times, maybe we remain confused because our poor depth of knowledge, but he is taking us to his point by his words, style of explaining things and lastly with so much of information and examples arranged logically that we are not aware of. 7. Conclusion. To conclude, it can be said that, this is a philosophy which you can use both positively and negatively. While utilizing it positively, we should realize the core of this philosophy and feel the need of confidence, depth of knowledge and logical development of speech to convince people. If we can understand this inner meaning, aim of today’s talk is achieved.

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