The politics of language are rich here as they advance a multicultural, conservative, colorblind racial agenda that imposes contemporary standards onto the past in an effort to remove the grounds of historical grievance in the present. Melvinia did not give birth to a “biracial” child. She was raped and had a black child who would be considered human property unless freed by his “father.” The Slaveocracy and America’s racial order was based on the “one-drop rule” where a child’s racial status and freedom was determined by that of the mother. Thus, a white man (and slave owner) could rape, exploit, and do as he wished with black women (and men). The children would be born slaves. The logic of hypodescent was also operative as well. Race is not about the reality of genetic makeup and admixture. Racial identity is about perceptions by the in-group regarding who belongs and who does not. Slavery, Race, and Reunion: The NY Times White Washes the Rape of Michelle Obama’s Ancestors (Again) ☀
rhetoric
Obama’s strategy is to pin the Bush economic disaster on Romney, with good reason, since Romney has essentially the same policies as Bush. Since Obama has not consistently pinned the blame on Bush over the past four years, he comes off as defensive.
Romney’s strategy is to pin the disaster on Obama. He uses the Caretaker Metaphor — Obama has been the national caretaker, so the present condition is his responsibility. Since Obama started out assuming a caretaker’s responsibility, it is difficult for him to escape the frame now. He should have avoided it from the beginning. Pinning the disaster on Bush is possible, but it will take a lot of repetition, not just by the president, but by Democrats in general. Not just a repetition of economic facts, but of the moral differences that led to both the Bush disaster and the Obama attempt to recoup.
Perhaps the most important omission from the Obama speech was any overt mention of The Public — everything that our citizenry as a whole provides to all, e.g., roads, bridges, infrastructure, education, protection, a health system, and systems for communication, energy development and supply, and so on. The Private — private life and private enterprise — depends on The Public. There is no economic freedom without all of this. So-called “free enterprise” is not free. A free market economy depends on a strong Public. This is a deep truth, easy to recognize. It undercuts Romney’s central pitch, that is it private enterprise alone that has made our country great, and that as much as possible of The Public should be eliminated.
Romney calls free enterprise “one of the greatest forces of good this world has ever known.” In reality, America free enterprise has always required The Public.
Romney attacks The Public, speaking of “the heavy hand of government” and “the invisible boot of government.” The contrast is with the putative “invisible hand” of the market — which leads to the good of all if everyone follows their self-interest and the market’s natural force is not interfered with. Romney’s “invisible boot” evokes the image of a storm trooper’s boot on your neck. The government is the storm trooper, your enemy. You are weak and in an impossible position. You can’t move — a metaphor for being held back and not being able to freely engage in the economy. Romney uses the frame consistently: “The federal establishment,” he says,” has never seemed so hostile.” The Public is an “establishment” — an undemocratic institution — which is the enemy of the people. It is implicit in this frame that the government is not the people.
Romney’s assumption here is that democracy is based on the “liberty” to seek one’s self interest with minimal regard to the interests or well being of others. People who are good at this will succeed, and they deserve to. People who are not good at this will fail, and they should. In Romney’s speech, ”The Freedom to Dream,” he used the word “freedom” 29 times. This is what he means.
Although Obama intends to argue against this understanding, he unintentionally feeds it. He does so in three ways: First, by accepting and reinforcing many of Romney’s central frames (often by negating them); second, by moving to the right in his own argumentation; and third, by not spelling out his own moral principles explicitly right from the start.
To take root in deeply religious America, evolution needs to be a better myth. Edward O. Wilson, one of our greatest living scientists and certainly no champion of creationism or any sort of religion, has gone so far as to say we need to appreciate the scientific story of origins to the point where we can “worship the evolutionary epic.” While “worshipping the evolutionary epic” might sound absurd and even meaningless, we must not be too quick to throw out Wilson’s provocative proposal. Wilson understands, in ways that many of us do not, just how hard-wired we are to seek purpose in the world. He understands that we may not be able to simply abandon our traditional creation story without some sort of replacement. And evolution, as a full-blown origins myth, is not a satisfactory replacement for most Americans. Karl Giberson ☀
Consider, then, what it must be like to be a true-blue Rush Limbaugh fan, or someone who thinks Michele Bachmann is a serious lawmaker with a grasp of the issues – put yourself into that person’s shoes for a moment, and consider what a nightmarish landscape the world around them must represent:
The White House has been usurped by a Kenyan socialist named Barry Soetero, who hatched an elaborate plot to pass himself off as a citizen of the United States – a plot the media refuse to even investigate. This president doesn’t just claim the right to assassinate suspected terrorists who are beyond the reach of law enforcement – he may be planning on rounding up his ideological opponents and putting them into concentration camps if he is reelected. He may have murdered a blogger who was critical of his administration, but authorities refuse to investigate. At the very least, he is plotting on disarming the American public after the election, in accordance with a secret deal cut with the UN and possibly with the assistance of foreign troops.
Again, these ideas are not relegated to the fringe of forwarded emails. Glenn Beck talked about FEMA camps on Fox News (he later debunked them, which only fueled charges of a media coverup); dozens of Republican elected officials have at least hinted that they are birthers, while an erstwhile front-runner for the GOP nomination has repeatedly claimed that Obama is not eligible to be president. The head of the NRA, and the GOP’s presidential nominee have both claimed Obama is plotting to take Americans’ guns.
In reality, Americans are safer and more secure today than at any point in human history. But inhabitants of the world of the hard-right are surrounded by danger – from mobs of thugs at home to a variety of powerful and deadly enemies abroad.
So to attack that “belief” through logical or reasoned argument, and thereby expect it to vanish and cease to exist in a brain, is really a rather naïve idea. Certainly, it is not the wisest or most effective way of trying to “change brains,” as Berkeley cognitive linguist George Lakoff puts it.
We’ve inherited an Enlightenment tradition of thinking of beliefs as if they’re somehow disembodied, suspended above us in the ether, and all you have to do is float up the right bit of correct information and wrong beliefs will dispel, like bursting a soap bubble.
Beliefs are physical. To attack them is like attacking one part of a person’s anatomy, almost like pricking his or her skin (or worse). And motivated reasoning might perhaps best be thought of as a defensive mechanism that is triggered by a direct attack upon a belief system, physically embodied in a brain.
What’s most disorienting is how elaborate motivated reasoning can become, especially among those who are knowledgeable or sophisticated. If we like to pretend that politics is rational and based on reason, it’s in part because we can’t believe that a think tank scholar with a Ph.D. could actually be arguing from emotions as he or she rattles of facts and statistics, or composes an entire book.
‘Conservative’ is a magic word that applies to those who are in other conservatives’ good graces. Until they aren’t. At which point they are liberals. the Internet’s smartest liberal blogger, Digby ☀
Liberals tend to underestimate the importance of public discourse and its effect on the brains of our citizens. All thought is physical. You think with your brain. You have no alternative. Brain circuitry strengthens with repeated activation. And language, far from being neutral, activates complex brain circuitry that is rooted in conservative and liberal moral systems. Conservative language, even when argued against, activates and strengthens conservative brain circuitry. This is extremely important for so-called “independents,” who actually have both conservative and liberal moral systems in their brains and can shift back and forth. The more they hear conservative language over the next eight months, the more their conservative brain circuitry will be strengthened. George Lakoff ☀
The Santorum Strategy is not just about Santorum. It is about pounding the most radical conservative ideas into the public mind by constant repetition during the Republican presidential campaign, whether by Santorum himself, by Gingrich or Ron Paul, by an intimidated Romney, or by the Republican House majority. The Republican presidential campaign is about a lot more than the campaign for the presidency. It is about guaranteeing a radical conservative future for America. George Lakoff ☀
“After expressing his support for the GOP budget that shreds Medicare, Sullivan told his constituents in Bixby, Oklahoma on Wednesday that killing Democratic Senators may be the only guarantee of it’s passage unless Democrats take heavy Election Day losses this November.
“Like I said, after this last election, the first order of business is pass a budget,” Sullivan declared. “Now, I believe that. I supported the Paul Ryan budget and sent it over to the Senate. Now I live with some Senators, I yell at them all the time, I grabbed one of them the other day and shook him and I’d love to get them to vote for it — boy I’d love that. You know but other than me going over there with a gun and holding it to their head and maybe killing a couple of them, I don’t think they’re going to listen unless they get beat.”
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll ☀
“Restoring American Exceptionalism” has recently become an important Republican slogan. It’s a featured theme for Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Glenn Beck. Mitt Romney and Ron Paul at least bow in its direction, as do Rick Perry and Sarah Palin. Last month, there were hundreds of “Restoring American Exceptionalism” events during National School Choice Week (Jan. 22-28, 2012), under the leadership of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, founded by David H. Koch.
The odd thing about this is that “American Exceptionalism” was originally a Communist doctrine motivating a moderate and reformist approach to revolutionary organizing, developed and fiercely argued in the 1920s and 1930s; and the term was revived, with a similar meaning but a different motivation and emphasis, by liberal political scientists in the 1950s.
I could harp on forever as to why we need to push the little ones in to falling in love with the written word, but let’s draw to a close with this. The written word has a huge advantage over what we say. By that I mean the writer gets to convey exactly what they really want, exactly how they want to convey it. And one of its many and appealing secrets is that it allows us the luxury of consideration, of almost sounding better than we really are. Of course it’s still entirely us but I can’t tell you how many published authors I have met who can barely string two words together. Give them a keyboard and they can take on the world. Chris Evans ☀
Today, what are you creating with your words? Are you longing for and opening yourself up to being the creative word of God with skin on in your teaching, preaching, leadership and conversation? Or are you open at this moment to the possibility of setting earth-scorching forest fires with the way you approach your words? Words Were Meant to Make Things ☀
Right now the national argument about progressive framing seems entirely focused on what story President Obama or the Democrats should be telling. But we could all do a lot better when we tell our stories. One way to start is by paying more attention to the fact that the American heart really is broken right now.
Professor Reich has described the situation as “mass cynicism” about any help coming from our government, a “weapon of mass destruction” launched years ago by Republicans.(1) Another way of describing it is as an “epidemic,” a “sickness” of the heart that requires radical healing. Today, a large part of the American public feels betrayed, disgusted, frightened, despairing, stymied and stopped at every turn. They are puzzled about what to do with our situation now. All the branches of our government seem to be controlled by a completely irresponsible corporate elite. That elite also backs unprecedented levels of savage Republican sabotage against any decent legislative measures to help our country get back on its feet. Our pundits tell us we’re in decline, we’re on the way down, we’re broken, and that China is eating our lunch and dinner too.
Faced with all of this, we progressives need a lot more than our usual communication M.O.(2) Our new story needs to be one that can reach and heal the sickened heart of America. We must start out by showing that we know and sympathize with the patient’s real condition. That means using empathic, feeling-toned language. Only after that will it be possible to guide the frustrated anger that is still largely under the surface. George Packer captured the tone of that reality in his September 12 New Yorker piece, when he interviewed a worker in Mt. Airy, North Carolina. The roiling, angry discontent still under the radar was well expressed by the man who said:
“All hell’s gonna break loose by the end of the year. We can’t take it anymore. This is the Corporate States of America…Everybody across this country’s lost their homes, took pay cuts. Who’s lobbying for us? Nobody. Who’s making laws for us? Nobody… .Something’s gotta break sometime.” (3)
The story we need should tap and channel this tide. It could evoke earlier eras in our history when it looked like selfish elites had sewn the country up into a bag they were draining into their own pockets. Those were the eras when progressives pulled themselves together and fought back in successful ways, regaining control of the levers of government and the norms of society. Our story should point the way to what will actually work today, under current conditions. It must be credible, not just more of the same old election year promises. It should re-empower the American people to take our country back.
Our story must also emphasize the need to “rebuild it better” or “to make it new,” the imperative to “reinvent America.” Just rebuilding what we had before isn’t quite enough these days, and moreover, what we had before wasn’t that fair to everyone anyway. Most Americans respond better to the idea of adding something new than to just rebuilding the same old thing. Modern global economic realities also suggest that “making it new” is the only way we are going to really “save the American Dream.” Finally, as Van Jones has made clear, Rebuild America is a meta-brand. That means all of us working on our own issues can connect to it; it doesn’t replace what we already do. So ask yourself, how will what you are working on “save the American dream?” And then think about how to tell that story in a way that can tap and transform public anger, using the short phrases, familiar political metaphors and key words that quickly evoke tried and true American themes! (4)
Most would agree that heroism and freedom are fundamentally good things. But the terms “heroisch” and “freedom” have been appropriated for purposes that do not have much connection with the virtues of their original meanings. Whatever one thinks of the wisdom of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it is difficult to have a reasoned debate about its costs and benefits when the invasion itself is called “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Similarly, whatever one thinks of tax-cuts, or the estate tax, it is difficult to engage in reasoned debate when they have been respectively relabeled “tax relief” and “the death tax.” It is difficult to have a reasoned debate about the costs and benefits of a policy when one side has seized control of the linguistic means to express all the positive claims. It is easy to say “a tax cut is not always good policy,” but considerably more difficult to say “tax relief is not always good policy,” even though “tax relief” is just a phrase invented to mean the same as “tax cut.”
(via kohenari)
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