​EIE (Zelensky)

EIEs are amplifying. Zelensky is able to identify the emotion dominating the interlocutor(s) at a particular moment and make that emotion central to his communication. On a mass scale, he intentionally personifies a collective emotional state. Nor is the emotional tone of Zelensky radically disconnected from what his audience is experiencing. Zelensky doesn’t merely reproduce the audience’s emotion at equal intensity but turns up the volume. Thus, the diffused public feeling becomes concentrated and dramatically expressed through the EIE. Zelenskys communicate the emotion both somatically as well as verbally. They redirect energy having the talent of turning a passive emotion into an active emotion; humiliation becomes anger.

EIEs are congruent. The interlocutor gets the impression of watching someone react, rather than watching someone calculate. Even the highly prepared performances can create this effect. Hesitations, unusual phrasing, emotional excess, fatigue, irritation, and other imperfections in delivery paradoxically increase perceived authenticity. Their temperaments continually leak through Zelenskys institutional role. The Zelensky appears personally affected by what he discusses. Belief appears to exist below the level of his words. Even though the EIE can rehearse their presentations extensively, such preparation does not prevent his audiences from experiencing his performances as genuine.

EIEs are dramatic. The EIE dramatizes through archetypal framing. They have a tendency to interpret and communicate reality through recurring symbolic roles, placing both oneself and one’s interlocutor inside that larger drama. The Zelensky doesn’t merely communicate an event but makes it feel like a scene. Separate events are connected into a continuing story. Concrete objects, places, clothing, ruins, battles acquire meanings beyond themselves. They personally act out the emotional position they are advocating.

EIEs are pseudological. He frequently engages in pseudo-systematic causal reasoning. They construct elaborate chains of cause and effect, with the problem that the premises and causal links are frequently unsupported and unfalsifiable. They move easily between observation, speculation, generalization and enormous historical conclusion while experiencing the entire sequence as explanatory. Although each jump is unsupported, the accumulation of these tenuous “causal” chains gives the appearance of a comprehensive argument. They treat the coexistence of multiple phenomena as evidence that one caused the other. They can make extremely abstract arguments feel real, creating the illusion of explanatory depth.

EIEs are manipulative. The manipulativeness of the EIE is best understood not simply as lying, but as an ability and willingness to shape other people’s perceptions, emotions, expectations, and choices in order to get the desired response. They are attentive to what particular audiences want, fear, resent or hope for. Existing emotion becomes material to work with. Resentment is not merely reflective but deliberately intensified and redirected. They are able to present themselves differently according to circumstance. They leave their intentions unclear when explicit disclosure would create resistance. Threatening behavior alternates with professions of peaceful intentions. Rhetoric constructs identities from which desired actions could be presented as naturally following and changes the meaning assigned to action.