ABSTRACT
This chapter is about a particular kind of political manipulation, the kind that makes use of what William Riker called “heresthetic.”1 This word, invented by Riker and derived from the Greek for “to choose,” refers to the art of strategically setting up, to one’s own advantage, the alternatives among which others get to choose. The basic idea is that even when one’s choice among alternatives is completely free, the content of those alternatives is determined. The party that determines it is usually a designated leader or agenda setter-not the individual chooser, much less the outsider who later judges that choice, usually in ignorance of who framed the alternatives and why.
