George Lakoff: Progressives need to frame issues in terms of moral values
George Lakoff: Progressives Should Talk About Moral Values
http://truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/12401-george-lakoff-progressives-need-to-use-language-that-reflects-moral-values
"....Mark Karlin: Why are conservatives so successful in "framing" much of the national political discussion?
George Lakoff: They've been working at it for over three decades. They understand the importance of morally-based framing, the importance of language, the importance of repeating language, the importance of not using the opposition's language, and the importance of an extensive communication system that operates daily everywhere, election or no election.
Mark Karlin: Can you explain how this played itself out in the public perception of the Affordable Healthcare Act (which the Republican Party successfully branded as Obamacare). In particular, can you explain why most Americans support a large number of the specific provisions of healthcare reform, but resoundingly have opposed the bill as a concept in polls?
George Lakoff: The specific provisions of the act were chosen (via polling) to be provisions that most Americans (60-80 percent) liked - and they still like those provisions (e.g., no preconditions). Conservatives never attacked those provisions. For example, they never said there should be preconditions. Instead, they shifted to a different part of the brain, changing the framing from a practical medical care framing to a moral framing. They used two moral frames: freedom and life, with the slogans "government takeover" and "death panels." They repeated these slogans over and over, until their moral framing came to dominate the public discourse. Less than half of Americans support the whole plan, while 60 to 80 percent support its provisions.
Mark Karlin: What are the limitations of rational discourse and presenting public policy proposals as reasonable in electoral politics? How do certain narratives ignite an emotional response that overrides a logical argument?
George Lakoff: The question presupposes a classical view of "rational argument," namely the use of classical logic (e.g., mathematical logic) in the service of self-interest.
But that is not how real rationality works. Political argument starts with moral framing - what is assumed to be right, not wrong or morally irrelevant. Conservatives and liberals differ on what is right. Real rational argument uses the logic of frames and metaphors, as well as the use of emotion in setting goals. For example, poor conservatives may care more about their moral identity as conservatives than about their financial self-interest. This is not "irrational;" it is a matter of what is most important to a given individual — moral identity or financial self-interest.
Mark Karlin: You've talked and written repeatedly about progressives and Democrats reinforcing and thus legitimatizing conservative memes and concepts. You refer to this as bringing the elephant in the room. How does this play out in the creation of the parameters of the national political debate?
George Lakoff: Over three decades, conservatives have framed taxes not as money that is required to be spent so that our citizens as a whole can thrive, but rather as money taken out of individuals' pockets by the government and wasted on people who don't deserve it. More recently, the deficit has been framed in terms of two conservative metaphors that define a conservative frame. The metaphors are:
1) The Nation's Wealth Is the Government's Wealth,
and
2) The National Budget Is a Family Budget.
Right now, America is at a peak of wealth: American individuals and corporations, collectively, are richer than they have ever been. But most of that wealth is concentrated at the top, and the most wealthy want to keep as much of that wealth as they can, rather than to yield a fair portion of it to provide what is needed to the citizenry as a whole, whose work has provided that wealth.
In a family, when you have a great deal of debt, it is usually wise to spend less. The metaphors define a conservative frame for economic policy.
But in a government, it is wise to spend more on what expands the economy - public works, education, and basic research. Economic expansion of this sort, rather than a cut in spending on those things, is what economics recommends for a government, as liberals have observed.
Mark Karlin: Many of us on the left tend to think of political conversation as taking place on the verbal level only. But as a species, we absorb and process information through a variety of ways. One key additional impact on us - especially in politics in the television age - is gesture and visual image. Was Reagan a model of this - sort of the apogee of metaphoric narrative, visual image (including his Hollywood look and carefully staged sets) and gesture?
George Lakoff: Reagan understood what voters found important in a president: moral values, connection with the public, clarity of communication, the appearance of authenticity (saying what he believes), trust that he will do what he says, strength of character, and a personal identification with him. This is often mistaken by liberals as "likeability."
Image plays an important role in these matters. Do your gestures match what you are saying? If not, then you're not saying what you believe and your inappropriate gestures give you away. Al Gore, for example, had gestures that did not fit what he was saying, which allowed conservatives to attack his veracity in general......."
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An editorial expressing similar points:
".......Part One:
It's Not About "The Economy, Stupid."
Voters are not basing their decision primarily on the unemployment rate and the performance of the economy. When you look at the polls, as The New York Times reported, "disaffection with the economy didn't translate into support for Mr. Romney." In fact, those who suffer most when jobs disappear - the poor, single women, people of color - are most likely to support Obama. Those who suffer least - the white, the married, the rich and solidly middle-class - are the only groups giving Romney a majority of their votes.
The states with the highest unemployment rates (California, Rhode Island) are solidly blue; the states with the least unemployment (North Dakota, Nebraska) are solidly red. If this were simply a referendum on Obama's economic stewardship, the polling data should be exactly the other way around.
That's not to say the economy is irrelevant. But the mass news media blow it out of proportion. They earn their name by focusing on what's new. So they have to find a story that makes this election look different than the last. And they trumpet every shift of one or two percent in the polling (which may be due to economic news) as a huge event.
Meanwhile, they ignore what should be the most important story of this election: how little has really changed. The electorate remains virtually split between the two major parties, as it has been for decades. And it's split along the same old demographic lines.
Republican presidential candidates garner a majority among Southern whites and, in the rest of the country, among white men and white married women in the middle to upper classes who don't have graduate degrees. (For at least a quarter century, Democrats have held a solid majority of voters in the lower third on the income scale.) White married voters are more likely than other whites to be religious, and, as always, the GOP does best among whites who call themselves "very religious." These groups have been voting Republican for a long time.
Some stereotypes that emerged from past elections turn out to be less true. Whites without college degrees do not tilt toward the GOP unless they live in the South. (Over the last 36 years, Democrats have actually done best among voters who never finished high school, as well as among those with graduate degrees.) On the other hand, whites with college degrees (but not grad degrees) are as likely to vote Republican as Democrat. Though Romney will surely do well among over-65 voters, and Obama well among young voters, historical data on age do not show people voting more Republican as they get older. And the age gap may be closing a bit in recent months. So, education and age correlations are not so important.
The racial, regional, marital and religious divides are as strong as ever. But they don't make news. Instead, the demographic map is treated as an obvious fact of political life, not worth discussing because it's assumed that nothing will ever change. Yet it's the supposedly "obvious" truths that deserve the most attention. If we don't lift them up for analysis and interrogation - if they go on being treated as inevitable - they will indeed remain unlikely to change.
So, this election season should send us back to the question that has plagued liberals and progressives for so long: why do so many people of middling economic means vote consistently for the party whose policies would redistribute wealth upward to the rich?
The problem should be more acute this year than most. Obama has staked his claim as champion of the middle class. So why can't he establish a solid lead beyond the polling margin of error? It's time to ask again Thomas Frank's memorable question: "What's the matter with Kansas?"
What Does "Kansas" Really Want?
Frank's Kansas is the popular metaphor for those millions of white voters who seem to vote against their own economic best interests. Talking to these folks, Frank found that they treated economic life as if it had nothing to do with politics. For them, politics is symbolic action. It's a way to express their enraged feeling of being victimized by elites from the Northeast and the West Coast. By voting Republican, they stick it to the effete (and Democratic, they assume) snobs....."
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12385-whats-still-the-matter-with-kansas-and-the-democrats
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