Is Feigning an Accent to Gain Constituents a Good Idea?

     Feigning accents in order to gain political approval from voters seems to be a very popular strategy these days. If in the southern USA, speak as a southerner. If among Afro-Americans, speak similar to how you think all of them speak. If in New York, speak like a New Yorker, watch the "My Cousin Vinny"  film, and imitate. If in the Southwest, talking to Mexican Americans, employ their accent when delivering your message. Is it a good idea to do that? Does it gain the trust of the listeners? How exactly do listeners feel when they witness such a blatant attempt to gain their approval in that so obviously artificial way? After all, they have seen  politicians in other places and know that's not the way he or she usually speaks.

     The presumptuous assumption that the listeners will be gullible enough to be fooled by such obvious hypocrisy is in itself an insult to their intelligence. It's as if they are being treated as extremely gullible and naive. Also, how is the audience going to resist the temptation of considering the politician a hypocrite or a person capable of greater dishonesties in order to get what he or she wants.

    The premise of this supposedly-clever strategy, is also glaringly flawed. People who speak the way we do are more trustworthy. Or maybe, "People who go out of their way to imitate the way we speak are more trustworthy?"   That is a logical fallacy and guarantees nothing. Obviously, history presents us with thousands of examples of people who speak alike and who do one another very serious harm.

     The tactic also calls into question the perpetrator's reasoning ability. If indeed the imitator seriously believes this, then what other inanities does the person believe or is capable of believing while in office, is the question. Can a person with such seriously-flawed reasoning be trusted in the position he or she is campaigning for? What decisions will that person make via fallacious reasoning during time in office if elected?  The decisions that this person makes  and which will affect the lives of all who voted him into office might very well be decisions involving life or death of not just the constituents, but of all life on Earth.



So for those reasons, a politician going about feigning accents in order to gain votes is definitely not a good idea