Perhaps The Times has too much intestinal fortitutde: not content to stand up to its enemies, it felt compelled to give them a stick (and a national platform in an election year) to beat them with. Perhaps the problem is more mundane: the Times outsourced its hiring and its editors thought they were adding Billy Crystal to its election-year commentariat. Or, perhaps the editors fell asleep and the Times is now led by the pod people. My bet is that the Times felt unable to compete and make money, and Rupert Murdoch bought two newspapers for the price of one.

I’ve been trying to get my head around how this happens, which ties into how people reason. So, I will now channel George Lakoff, to the best of my understanding of his perspective. George Lakoff would say that, if we continue to follow the traditional Enlightenment view of reason (i.e. just tell people the facts and figures and they’ll reason to the right conclusion), we are engaging in a naive and dangerous pursuit. He says the Enlightenment view of reason is wrong, and false in every single detail.

To recap, the traditional (and wrong) view states that REASON is:
* Conscious
* Logical
* Literal (fits the world)
* Unemotional (emotion gets in the way of reason)
* Unembodied (mind and body are treated as entirely separate entities)
* Interest-based (it’s there to serve your interests)

The newer and more accurate understanding of REASON is:
* It’s 98% unconscious (no one understands their own system of concepts which affect how they reason)
* It requires emotion (even when/if you aren’t conscious that emotion is affecting your reasoning)
Emotions are essential to reasoning and decision-making.

I would also add from my own study that emotions are essential to manipulation. I distinguish legitimate persuasion from manipulation in this way:

* Persuasion uses the truth, or a truthful framing of reality, to convince a person to support an idea.
* Manipulation uses falsehood, false-framing, and skews/distorts their perception away from reality (i.e. delusion) to convince a person to support an idea. The person’s emotions are abused to coerce that person into supporting the idea. (Most people don’t recognize when they are being manipulated.)

All politics is about morality. Arguments for legislation are always based on moral positions, even for bad legislation. So, one could assume that a moral argument for good or better legislation would be stronger than a moral argument for bad or weak legislation. A moral argument is based on a frame. A weak or false frame should easily be defeated by a stronger, more truthful frame.

Once a frame is activated (truthful or false), you can’t erase it. You can’t get rid of “War on Terror.” The best you can do is either:
* combat it with a powerful alternate frame (invoke frames that are already there with people) or
* you make fun of the original frame and add to it to show its absurdity.

If you merely repeat the frame and negate it (i.e. say it’s not true), you are actually activating the frame and reinforcing it. It’s better to let it whither on the vine and not give it any more attention, unless you are altering it in a powerful way. For example, in Montana being an “environmentalist” has a negative false frame. So, Brian Schweitzer got elected talking instead in terms that have a positive frame with voters like “love of the land” and being a good steward of the environment.

Lastly, people perceive truth through authenticity and trust. Lakoff discovered that 3 elements play into whether or not a person, like a pundit, is trusted by others:

1) Does the pundit believe what he/she is saying?
2) Is the pundit trying to deceive his/her audience in some way that harms the audience or helps the pundit? (The manipulation question)
3) Is what the pundit saying true?

Lakoff said authenticity and trust are determined by number 1 and 2, while number 3 is least important to how people reason. This explains why people can be so easily deluded (i.e. Saddam involved in 9/11).

So, unethical pundits understand that it doesn’t really matter if what they say is true. All that matters is whether they come across as believing what they say and that their audience isn’t picking up on their deception/manipulation.

One of the takeaways from Lakoff is put your issues in terms of your values and already established frames out there. I think the trick is cataloguing all of the existing frames so you know what to choose from.

There it is in a nutshell.

- Tom

In a number of ways HRC reminds me of her former early Senate Rival Rudy (”I don’t care if every sentence is noun/or verb 911 and I helped up the death toll during it by having no communications for firemen who went in and could never have gotten out”) Guilliani. In the crunch, she loves evoking fear and terror. It’s a fitting accessory to her robotic, calculating persona.

I put HRC as way way less acceptable than her two real competitors, and Richardson, Biden, and Dodd who aren’t, but I’d much rather see as President. It has nothing to do with her being a woman for me at all. It is way overdue that a woman should have been President of the U.S. and ridiculous for people to fret about whether a woman can.

If women can be thoracic surgeons and neurosurgeons and every subspecialty in medicine, they sure as hell are capable of being President. Can you imagine Dubya/Junya scrubbin’ on an AV malformation, or managing complex internal med problems? I for one can’t. You don’t get a pocket veto there when Fred Fielding and Gillespie want to fuck with Congress and confuse the issue of Recess Appointments and the *two Supreme Court “pocket veto cases” from 1929 and 1938.

THE POCKET VETO CASE OKANOGAN, METHOW, SAN POELIS (or San Poil), NESPELEM, COLVILLE, AND LAKE INDIAN TRIBES OR BANDS OF STATE OF WASHINGTON
v.
UNITED STATES. 279 U.S. 655 (1929)

WRIGHT v. UNITED STATES, 302 U.S. 583 (1938)

I don’t remember seeing “polls” for what they’re worth pitting the 2nd teir of the Democrats (as to chance to win the nomination) against the mutts who are Rethug frontrunners.

I’d be the most elated if Obama were the candidate, and very pleased if Edwards won.

Ooops, gotta run upstairs….

-G

That’s not Rupert Murdoch’s style, however. See the NY Post. All garbage, everywhere. That’s where I expect the WSJ is headed.
~

It would be much less demeaning.

-G