You need to look at this through a psychological point of view; that not everything is intellectual; some “frames,” whether they are verbal or visual, bypass the higher parts of the brain and go to the more primitive parts.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B: Clear Skies Initiative – Leave No Child Behind – Patriot Act …etc

What the USG found out through the Advertising firm Young and Rubicam is that in WWII the most effective and affective advertising, was the advertising that was aimed at those at the bottom 30% of IQ of the American population.

What the Republicans are doing is using verbal and visual frames to manipulate the American people. It’s classic propaganda and psyops

Think they don’t use it? Click here and here

What Professor Lakoff is proposing, is that Progressives/Liberals/Democrats recognize this and act accordingly. Not to “trick” voters, but to be better able to communicate those ideas that we all agree on.

The war has struck fear in other nations with a hostile show of American power.

Not that conservatives (or the corporate kleptocracy) don’t see it that way. And not that it hasn’t caused other nations to sidle away at our show of powertemper. But given the way the war is going, doesn’t it really say about the U.S. the same thing last summer’s bombardment of Lebanon said about Israel?

Israel succeeded in bombing Lebanon’s economy back twenty years, but it didn’t succeed in cowing Hezbollah, or indeed any of their other original goals. For the first time its mighty army is now seen as something other than unbeatable. Likewise, the U.S. toppled Saddam’s government, but it can’t control the insurgency.

States and governments may fear the U.S. now, but terrorists and non-state actors have only seen how impotent we are against them.

I think all the points in the post are solid. One issue that’s missing is that framing often does not take because we have not invested enough time rooting our efforts in the history of American rhetoric.

That, I believe, is the next direction framing will take moving forward–framing that draws not only on the insights of social scientists, but also on lessons from the history of American speaking.

Thanks for the heads up. In college, Hiedegger was often cited but I don’t remember Cassier being mentioned. I’ll see if I can find a copy.

Ummm, in the framing of Cons, one thing has to be remembered.

Failure is failure, and attempting to glean some cheery fragment out of failure is both pathetic and a waste of time.

The difference between a conservative ideologue and an American with conservative tendencies is that the American knows whan to intervene in a bad situation and the ideologue does not. Because the ideologue does not know when to intervene, he/she doesn’t do so. If you don’t intervene, you never have to be responsible for anything. The loss of New Orleans and the widespread misery inflicted upon the Gulf Coast is no victory for Conservatism, it is a tesimonial to failure.

Lakoff, like the devil raging at God in the sky, shaking a bloody lingum in his hand, is less a voice telling us about the victories of Conservatism than he is a pathetic image of screaming expiation.

America is poorer and worse for the experience.

This is the message that I would give when asked about ideological conservatives.

Here’s Wikipedia’s Cliff Notes version:

Cassirer’s last major work was The Myth of the State. The book was published posthumously in 1946 after Cassirer’s sudden death. Cassirer argues that the idea of a totalitarian state evolved from ideas advanced by Plato, Dante, Machiavelli, Gobineau, Carlyle and Hegel. He concludes that the Fascist regimes of the 20th century were symbolised by a myth of destiny and the promotion of irrationality.

Not that they are Fascists – they’re not, but it is possible that repug’s have used the same ideas of myth creation and irrationality and the marketing of such within a working democracy in which to gain, and seek to hold on to, power.**

I for one argued prior to the election that it was enough for Dems not to be Repugs, since the myths upon which repug marketing and election success were based were all exposed as lies, and you can’t market or sell lies once they are exposed. I think I was proven right.

I don’t think voters are dumb, and I don’t think they are more flaky or distracted then in the past (hey, votes were once sold for beers). Perhaps voters were inattentive or gullible (though they were lied to by their gov’t), but that seems to be ending. And I think when you look at the election voters voted against repug myth and its attendant symbolism and metaphor. And what they voted for was reality (be it Iraq, Katrina, a fairer economy, whatever).

Cause when you talk about symbolism and metaphor in terms of repug marketing, you are really talking about myth creation and the marketing of myth. And myth isn’t reality (that’s why its myth), and dismissing reality rarely leads to good governance, and dismissing reality is what led to repug failures in November. Which is why Schwarzenegger’s victories really don’t prove anything, as Commander Codpiece was and is every bit the fictional Terminator that Arnold was on film, and the Commnander lost.

Repugs needed myth b/c their policies laid bare weren’t salable to a majority – they had to lie their way to power, and they did.

Rather than asking how repugs were successful in lying their way to power and how Dems might do the same through their own myth creation, Dems would be better off simply promoting and seeking to implement policies that better the lives of the vast majority of the country who are not conservative, who probaly care a great deal whether they have a well paying job, can pay their bills, afford a home, college for their kids, etc., who don’t like being lied to by their gov’t, who today don’t think Iraq makes us safer and wonder why Americans (let alone Iraqis) are dying, who don’t base their votes on alleged social decay issues, and who don’t believe in that the apocolypse is upon us either from social issues here or the fact that some people overseas don’t like us. Personally, I’m tired of phony symbolism and bad metaphor.

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* Nothing against John Dean (who I think is both smart and courageous) or Prof. Altmeyer (or Lakoff, whoever he is), but Cassirer wrote about this subject 50 years ago, and the book is considered a true classic of political science.
** One of the reasons I don’t hang out here so much anymore is b/c of the “Fascist” (i.e. Totalitarian of any political stripe) rhetoric. Its wrong, and I think most of you know it is (but not all – you know who you are) and use it as Orwell said synonymously with asshole, but for those who don’t, how do we know its wrong? We only have to go back one month to know that you weren’t living in a Fascist state, cause, well, gee, the “opposition party” in a Fascist state (assuming there is one, let alone a choice of ruling party candidates) doesn’t displace the Fascists from power in a free election. I got more, but we can save that for another post, or not.

Bush IS incompetent- it isn’t a “frame” WHATEVER THAT IS.

I have two reactions to this discussion:

1) If dems pay more attention to substance and less attention to STYLE- they’ll be LOTS better off.

2) Success is all about timing.. The messages that won in 2006 wouldn’t have won in 2004-when the war was still young and hopeful and when 9/11 was fresh in the rear view mirror.

It is a HUGE mistake to spin the “permanent principles of politics” after the most recent defeat or victory- you’ll end up with a strategy that is like stale bread- and basing what you do on the perceived strengths of your opponent is a losing approach- what do you do after you beat him and he looks more like a pathetic mouseturd than a dominating titan?

Sure it’s a good idea to make sure that you are packaging your message in a way that it will be received well- but if you start confusing the packaging with the message- yer in deep doo-doo (in my opinion).

well said, rw.

twolf1 @ 52

chimp on cnn – report did a good job on showing what is possible. congress wont accept every recommendation of isg report, neither will the administration

FU Bush

At least he’s consistent. A consistent fuckup and failure.

“a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds”
ralph waldo emerson

Maybe you remember this bumper stickers from the 80’s: “If you like the post office, you’ll love national health insurance.” The point being, of course, that government is just sooo inept that everything it does will be run as badly as the post office.

Never mind that our mail service is actually pretty good. When you send a letter, you can be reasonably sure it will get there in a few days — not something you can count on in other parts of the world. Still, when the post office does make a mistake, people roll their eyes, and say something like “The Post Office. You know how they are. What’re ya gonna do?”

And now it’s FEMA. I cringed at every post-Katrin FEMA joke told on the late night talk shows — because that was bringing us closer and closer to this goal of the conservatives. “Of course [your city here] was destroyed. It’s the federal government. You know how they are. What are ya gonna do?”

If you don’t want your city to be destroyed, then maybe next time you should pick a place where there are no hurricanes.

Or tornadoes.

Or floods.

Or earthquakes.

Or droughts.

Or blizzards.

Or thunderstorms.

Or…