Working the Crowd

I have never watched a Trump rally for any length of time, but I understand that he works the crowd, not unlike what Hitler used to do.  I read a book about Hitler once, and it said that he learned the technique from observing evangelical preachers.  All preachers don't preach that way, the Baptists are famous for it, the Methodists not so much.  The idea is that you start out soft and mellow, then you gradually increase the intensity until you've got everybody shouting "amen", "hallelujah", "heil Hitler", or whatever.  I suppose some people have a natural ability for this sort of thing, but it's also a skill that can be learned.

An equally impressive skill is the ability to take a crowd that's already worked up and gradually calm them down so that they don't even realize you are doing it.  I saw an African guy once at the Bliss Fest do it both ways.  I don't remember what his medium was, some kind of music or dance, but I saw him take a calm crowd, work it up to a frenzy, and then work it back down to being calm again, all in less than an hour's time.

Another Blistonian that I knew was a professional entertainer who played in bars a lot.  Bar crowds are among the toughest to work, but this guy had it down to a science.  He would evaluate the crowd early on and meet them wherever they already were.  From there he could work them up, work them down, or keep them level.  He operated his own sound system, and would reach over to tweak it every now and then, right in the middle of a song, without skipping a beat.  He told me that a common problem was that people would ask him to turn up the volume, and then just talk louder among themselves so that nobody could hear the music any better than before.  Rather than argue with them, he would crank it way up and then, after a few minutes, start incrementally turning it back down.  Before long the volume would be back to its original level, as would the conversation of the audience, and nobody would know the difference.

That said, I have to be suspicious of Trumps intentions when he does something like that.  I can understand it during a campaign but, now that he's already been elected, who is he trying to impress?