One of the most famous quotes from
Sun Tzu's Art of War is: "One who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be in danger in a hundred battles." To really know someone you must understand what motivates them. There have been a lot of words expended on this matter, most of them missing a crucial distinction. That distinction is the difference between philosophy and motivation. A philosophy is merely a justification we cook up for the conclusion our motives have already reached. Our values are, similarly, not our motives but the conclusions our motives have driven us to. No, motives strong enough to spur people to action in any large scale sense are more primitive things. In understanding whence the wellspring of the will and desire to behave as a Conservative or a Liberal arises we can more effectively craft our strategy and steer the nation away from the disastrous course it is now on.
George Lakoff is famous on the left for teaching us to craft our strategy and message in terms of activating frames. The basis of the advice is brilliant. He then goes on to explain the Liberal versus Conservative frames in terms of family style. I think that these, too, are results and are missing the meat of the issue. Where Lakoff uses the word "frame," I would use the term "motive." Although I am no expert in either cognitive science or neuroscience, it is a term that I would suspect to be at least as accurate and more clear as to the primary role it plays. "Motive" just has the disadvantage that it doesn't explain how all encompassing they are and how they tend to stick around.
The Conservative motive can be summed up in one word: fear. Fear of those who are different (racism, homophobia), fear of the unknown, fear of terrorists, fear of loss of status, fear of god. Fear permeates the Conservative movement so thoroughly that I find it amazing that the movement's name hasn't already been changed to something more fitting: the phobics, the cowards, the chickenshits. Oh, wait, we already use those names, just not enough.
This, I believe, has already been well established here in the blogosphere, at least here on DKos. What seems to be lacking is a self examination to find the Liberal motivation. Forget summing up the party in three core values - values are the result of applying a motive to a perceived situation. Sadly, because humans are what they are, our most prominent motives tend to be tied to negative experiences. As with the Conservatives, so with the Liberals. Even so, knowing ourselves is equally as critical to understanding how things became the way they are and how to change them. So please understand that I mean no offense when I say that the Liberal motive is probably pain, felt directly or vicariously through empathy. You can see it in our humane policies, our preference for avoiding unnecessary wars, and our desire to spread the benefits of a good economy as broadly as possible. It stares at us in the names our opponents choose to use against us: bleeding hearts, pantywaists, etc. It is obvious when the last Liberal-ish President won on a message of, "I feel your pain."
The explanatory power of these two facets taken together appears at first glance to be incredible. Lakoff's conservative and liberal frames correspond to a parent who protects from fear but inflicts pain and one who protects from pain and teaches to face fear. The political cycle, too, falls right out of the theory - as a Liberal society alleviates pain the people become complacent and are left to focus on their fears, rational or not, and the society swings right, disregarding pain. Whenever pain hits close enough to home to be felt it trumps fear, and thus the spread of pain in a Conservative society society swings it left, forgetting its fear. I almost wonder if elements of the economic cycle could be linked to this (fear -> crashes, pain -> build ups).
Naturally, there are interesting questions to pursue in this avenue. For instance, are there other motives that would create other parties if it weren't for our two party system? It is difficult to say, because even though motives like panic can have a strong effect they cannot last long enough to be the basis of a political movement. Others, like the drive to reproduce, are intertwined with fear and pain - in this case through a proxy, status. Perhaps study of nations with more than two parties would be in order to see if there are more categories or if they can be explained with just mixtures of pain and fear. I would be especially interested if any of the positive motives have the kind of staying power in the human mind necessary to build a movement out of them. It is also interesting to consider the carrot and stick analogy to human motivation. Pain and fear are obviously sticks. Do Liberals and Conservatives have corresponding carrot motives, too?
More important, however, is to apply the theory to the present situation and see if it bears fruit in deciding an effective course of action.
The alliance between the traditional, ratings driven, media and the right wing can be explained. Simply put: pain does not get ratings as reliably as fear does. Sure, a tragic event occurs and they have to cover it, but the audience will grow numb and stop watching. This process is especially rapid for events that happen far away. Fear, on the other hand, can be titillated and, more importantly, doesn't even have to be targeted at anything real. They don't need images of a current event to spark fear, though it helps, they can just tickle the viewer's imagination and probably do a better job than if they had tried to draw a concrete image. Because of that one little fact, a media outlet that plays to fear will be able to generate ratings more reliably than one that plays to pain. There's that and the fact that the traditional media tends to be run by people afraid of losing their status.
That is a part of the problem that needs to be remedied, somehow. One possibility would be to ban the selling of advertisements during any news program so that ratings won't matter as much. That would only partially solve the problem because the commentary shows are the primary source of the fear media. Perhaps a return of the equal time rule?
Going forward to our strategy, this theory suggests that attacking the Republicans for their ineffectiveness and corruption will only yield temporary success. Those are, in the minds of the people, attributes of individuals, and if we don't change their motive they'll go right back to voting for Conservatives. Though it's hard to imagine some chicken shit paralyzed by his fear being effective at anything, that connection with the Republican party has yet to be made. To my mind, the strategies that will have a more lasting effect on those who tend to vacillate in their motive (swing voters) include:
- Call Conservatives on their Motive: always connect the policies of conservatives to their fear. Especially if they're irrational fears, call them on it. 99% of the time Conservatives don't want to address the real problem, so we need to say, "They're just hiding under their bed from their boogyman again," over and over again until people see them for the gutless wonders they are.
- Challenge the People to be Brave: It's telling that FDR's famous line from 1933 is, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Conservatives can only play lip service to courage because it is the antipathy of their motive. It goes to the heart of why the leaders of the Conservative movement cannot call anyone to sacrifice or serve, let alone do so themselves. If we challenge the American People to stand up and be courageous I believe that enough people will respond to swing the pendulum our way.
- Highlight our Motive: The most important aspect of the Liberal motive is this: we give a damn. The Conservative motive is heartless, callous, and sadistic. Hell, I'd go so far as to say that the Conservative motive is downright evil much of the time. The more we can show how out of touch and uncaring the Conservative motive makes Republican politicians, the more quickly people will turn from them. Terms like Compassionate Conservative must be exposed as they lie they are - to the extent that you are compassionate you are following your Liberal motive, not your Conservative one.
- Teach People to Control their Fear: in the long term the most important thing we can do for the public in terms of preventing or reducing the prominence of a Conservative resurgence is to teach people to identify, confront, and deal with their fears. I'm not sure how to do so, but if it could be successfully done including it in the public school curriculum would be ideal.
The time here is now about 2 AM and I'm running out of steam, so I can't really give this a proper wrap up. I'm certain of missed a lot, and may be wrong. I suspect that this is at least close, though. The important take home message is this: the Conservative motive is their weakness, the Liberal motive is our strength. I'm certain that the minds of you out there in the blogosphere can do far more to figure out how to refine the basic idea and leverage it to win.
Just remember: it's the motive, stupid.