George Lakoff has said this many times before. He updates it here for current events.
Read it at The Huffington Post
The Santorum Strategy
by George Lakoff
This advice also applies to promoting MMT-based policy. Don't promote opponent's frames but rather show why one's own frame is morally superior, which involves feeling, as well as economically superior which involves logical reasoning. The public goes chiefly with feeling rather than logical reasoning unless it is couched in terms of feeling.
6 comments:
golden rule is the golden rule
Brilliant and well worth the read.
" with outrage (their deficit-reduction proposals would actually raise the deficit -- Paul Krugman)"
There's the Unconscious Liberal right on cue advocating to get the deficit down... great job Krugman! Moron.
Damn, but Lakoff is absolutely right! It's not just promoting MMT, but being able to set the terms of the discourse is to have the ultimate control over the conversation. MMT is in many ways a progressive point of view and set of policy prescriptions. If we want to be able to bring it into the public sphere to the extent it needs to be, we need to change the terms of the discourse. And not only in the economic arena, but also in the larger societal sense so we can fight off the Randians and Austerians on the moral level in which they set many of their arguments.
Lakoff is right as far as he goes and makes some valid points but the problems of our political discourse are like an onion with hundreds of layers and he only uncovers the very outermost skin. He's been writing books for 10 years or something on the problem of "framing," saying democrats should do this, Progressives should do that.
Our first problem is the democrats themselves. They've shown nothing but contempt for their activist base since Bill Clinton famously rebuked "Sistah Souljah," much to the delight of the corporate media. Since Obama was elected he has picked up where Clinton left off and loses no opportunity to "Sistah Souljah" his base. When democrats win they (and the corporate media) say they have a mandate for moderation or to "heal the partisan divide," or something. When Republicans win, on the other hand, they divide the spoils among themselves and further rig the system to capture more loot.
There are any number of things democrats could do or could have done to capture a populist narrative, particularly after the GFC. They didn't because they fear and loathe progressive populism more than they care about beating republicans.
I feel that I can win arguments with conservatives all day long, not because I use Lakovian framing, but because I'm as "in your face" about being a lefty as they are about being conservative. I also win the arguments because I actually read and study the issues, while they go home and watch "American Idol." After a while they stop engaging me about politics and look for other liberal victims who will get flustered when they throw out the talking points they got from Limbaugh and Hannity that morning on the ride into work.
Democrats hate the left and to any degree that they are progressive or liberal "inside," they are self-haters. I'm not sure how we can "frame" our way around that problem.
David, some of us have figured out that since the GOP has moved so far to the right since Nixon initiated the Southern strategy, followed by the Reagan, and then Gingrich revolutions, and finally the rise of the New GOP as the John Birch Society, the Democratic Party controlled by its establishment is now the moderate Republican Party. So it is no surprise that the "Democrats" have adopted the framing the GOP and attempted to sell themselves as GOP lite. There is no credible left in the US anymore, as people outside the US, where the contrast is obvious, have noted.
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