How to Coach Yourself and Others Beware of Manipulation | Page 123

23. Shifting the blame to others and detract in subtle, hard-to-detect ways
Source: Ken Sanes - http://www.transparencynow.com/news/disguises.htm
It is obvious that discrediting attacks, whatever their motive, generally take place under heavy disguise.
First, the attacker must portray his attack as an attempt to support the order of values of society by
exposing a violator who deserves to be exposed, in essence enhancing his own image as he assaults
another's.
If this were all there were to these disguises, we might have an easier time discerning the role of
discredit, domination, assertiveness and sadism in public life. But the disguise of motives is often
supplemented by a far more insidious deception, one that masks the fact that an attack is taking place at
all or that the attacker is the one making the attack. Manipulators often portray themselves as merely
asking questions, reporting what others say or describing events, when everyone knows a verbal
mugging is actually taking place that may leave the designated victim stripped of the self-defense
provided by an effective image.
Fortunately, these disguises tend to be very transparent once one begins to identify the various games
and strategies that are being used. Once that has been achieved, we can begin to expose these disguised
attempts to expose others; we can discredit these disguised attempts to discredit; and hold these
attempts to embarrass others up to embarrassing scrutiny. If all this sounds familiar, it is because what
we will be doing is applying a more sophisticated version of the techniques used by manipulators,
turning the tables on the great table-turners and holding them up to a kind of scrutiny that reveals the
degree to which they are steeped in both dishonesty and cruelty.
Our basic technique will be to contrast image, as it is presented, with an underlying reality or, at least,
with what we claim is an underlying reality. We will look at what manipulators claim they are doing
and what they are really doing, and see that the twain meet a lot less often than one might think. Given
the complex motives all people have when they communicate, there is no doubt but that the disguises
we will examine, here, are merely an example of the disguises that all of us use when we communicate.
For all of us, there is a disparity between the actions we engage in and those we claim we are engaging
in. That doesn’t let manipulators off the hook, but it does put what they do in a larger context.
Here, than, is an incomplete compendium of some of the ways manipulators, and others, go about
dominating and harming those they encounter, while they claim to be upholding the valu