Let’s talk about dog whistles. Why? If we respond to them, we’ve forgotten who we are. We are less than ourselves. I will explain what I mean by that below. Let’s get started.
My dog’s name is Sadie. After my wife, she’s my best friend. You likely get that because you may also have deep bonds with your pets.
Let’s start with the obvious. Sadie is a canine, and I’m a sapiens. Scholars say canines and sapiens have evolved together for over 15,000 years. We have a synergistic relationship. But we can’t get confused about our roles for the relationship to be coherent. She must remain a canine, and I must stay a sapiens.
Sadie can outrun, outsleep, outsmell, and out-hear me. She can also think critically and collaborate to solve problems.
Sadie is the most intelligent and loving canine in canine history.
I have only two advantages over Sadie. I can sweat, and she can’t, which means I can run a marathon without stopping to cool down, but she can’t.
Like her, I am a critical thinker. But my brain enables me to imagine and manage relationships at a scale far more significant than my pack or family.
Indeed, I can collaborate with people I’ve never met to create solutions all sapiens face.
That capacity to think critically and work collaboratively at a large scale makes me a sapiens. Mature sapiens are in a reconciled relationship with all creatures, always striving to love their neighbor as themselves and imagining how to flourish at scale.
If I forget that and instead act like a dog, both Sadie and I get confused. I debase myself by acting less than human. Flourishing depends on our acting according to our kind.
Sadie’s so bright she can make associations and then react to things she sees later. For example, if I give her a piece of meat every time I ring a bell, I can ring that bell in the future, and she’ll begin to salivate.
Or, if she sees me getting on a particular shirt that she knows I run in, she’ll immediately run and block the door because she knows that means I’m about to go running. She’ll insist that I take her with me. That’s called a Pavlovian response.
Which brings me to dog whistles.
A dog whistle works the same way. I can sound a dog whistle, and Sadie can hear that frequency and respond to it as if it were my voice. I can whistle in specific ways and cause her to react according to how I’ve trained her. Again, that’s a Pavlovian response.
The interesting thing about dog whistles is that other sapiens don’t hear them. The sound is too high a frequency, so it’s not audible to sapiens. But canines listen to them. Sadie hears the dog whistle and has the inside knowledge that enables her to decode the sounds and respond as I want her to.
Because Sadie and I are in a pack leader/pack member relationship – I’m her master – I could control Sadie completely with dog whistles. That’s a normal relationship between Sadie and me.
But if I tried to command you with a dog whistle, I’d debase both of us. Ours is not naturally a master/slave relationship. Commanding you with a dog whistle is not appropriate to our kind. We are equal in our human dignity. Flourishing depends on both of us acting according to our kind.
Which brings me to the use of dog whistles in our politics.
The concept of political dog whistles
In politics, a dog whistle is a phrase or statement that appears benign or ordinary to most people but carries a concealed, often contentious or harmful, meaning intended for a specific audience, potentially causing harm if not critically examined.
It is a way to communicate secretly with a particular group without drawing attention from others. A speaker uses this technique to appeal to views or beliefs that would be considered unacceptable or offensive if openly expressed.
Dog whistles are commonly used in politics and are not necessarily destructive.
They become destructive when their covert messages cloak the subversion of American values from their intended audience, triggering reflexive responses without awareness of being manipulated.
So, what’s a dog whistle? A dog whistle is a covert appeal to an unhealthy set of political attitudes that have to be disguised because they undermine accepted American values.
Dog whistles are a form of covert politics
Those politics typically involve three tactics:
A subtly disguised message, appealing to views that cannot withstand the light of day.
If called out: a denial of violating core values
If called out, it attacks those who call out the dog whistle, often accusing them of playing the victim.
Examples of political dog whistles
Politicians on the Left sometimes use dog whistles to command performances of disdain and condescension toward groups.
Left-Wing Dog Whistles
For example, Hillary Clinton famously used the dog whistle, “Flyover country,” to signal that the opinions of those in America’s heartland should be dismissed because they reflect less enlightenment than those of citizens who live along the East or West Coast.
“Rural” is often used in the same way. More subtly, declaring that a candidate “voted for the ‘90s crime bill” that resulted in massive incarceration rates for Blacks is a way of signaling that someone is racist without actually saying so.
Right-Wing Dog Whistles
Politicians on the Right have since the 1870s used the communist/socialist/Marxist trifecta to name someone as America’s enemy, to create a false association of proposed social welfare policies with communism or socialism, and to command that patriotic Americans rally in opposition to defend the American Way. I will unpack that more in a future post.
Similarly, mentions of George Soros, the Rothschilds, or “globalist” or “globalism” are right-wing dog whistles that invoke centuries-old anti-semitic tropes about rich, usually Jewish, men conspiring to control the world’s finances.
Dog whistles ask us to stop being sapiens and start acting like canines. They debase our politics and cause us to be less than we are called to be. What’s the solution?
Let’s consider how dog whistles operate.
The role of dog whistles in political manipulation
Understanding the mechanics of dog whistles is crucial.
They demand that we shut down our critical thinking and embrace Machiavellian claims.
They demand we abandon our collaborative imagining and regard others as enemies to hate rather than neighbors to love.
They demand that we regard the one holding the whistle as our master rather than our equal.
They demand we overlook the evidence that a charlatan sees us as his dog.
We act like dogs rather than humans when we respond to dog whistles. We are not dogs. We ought not to respond to whistles.
Let’s flourish together by acting according to our kind.
Beaver, David, and Jason Stanley. The Politics of Language. Princeton University Press, 2023.
Lakoff, George. Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. 3rd edition. The University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Lopez, Ian Haney. Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class. Illustrated edition. Oxford University Press, 2013.
McWhorter, John. Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. Portfolio, 2021.
Mounk, Yascha. “How to Argue Against Identity Politics Without Turning Into a Reactionary.” New York Times, September 22, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/opinion/identity-politics.html.
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