A brief caveat...this diary is my 1st and was written over a week ago. I held it back because of the subscription rules at Kos necessitating a 1 week delay for new subscribers. And wouldn’t you know it, in that time George Lakoff and many others--including even Bill Maher last night--have already beaten me to the punch on many of the points I wanted to make. Kudos to them and many of you—I’m piggybacking on the shoulders of giants. However, because my piece is less tactical and more strategic I think I still have something interesting to add-- so I’ve decided to go to go ahead and post it.
This diary is obscenely long and really is not for the faint of heart. If you didn’t make it thru Professor Lakoff’s recent epic 24-point piece I recommend you turn back now. But if you are truly a minutia geek and fancy yourself a budding democratic strategist like I do, follow me below the fold...
Alright, I’ve had enough. We’re getting our butt kicked in the message war again and I’m thoroughly disgusted. How can the DNC and other democratic bigwigs be so unprepared for this corporate republican propaganda onslaught after what has happened to us in the last twenty some-odd years? I’m so frustrated that it has motivated me to chime in with my 1st diary.
I’m just a normal person, about as smart as the next guy I guess. I’ve got a degree in psychology and sociology with a decade of on-ground experience-- so I suppose I’m reasonably well-educated in that area. And perhaps it is because of that background that I (and I suspect many in the Daily Kos community) can see something politically and psychologically important in our current debate that the good people at the DNC may be missing.
We are smack-dab in the middle of a full-scale propaganda war with our foes on the Right.
I know what you’re thinking...duh! But tell it to the DNC.
When I use the term "100 Year Propaganda War," what do I mean?
Well, the number of years is open to interpretation. To be honest I pulled it out of my behind. The point is that the war is ongoing and indeterminate. It could last 20 years or 500 years (if we last that long as a country).
And by "Propaganda War" I mean that one side-- the rightwing media infrastructure in conjunction with corporate interests-- is more than prepared to embellish, spread false information, smear, tell deliberate falsehoods, and yes, tell the Big Lie to millions of uninformed Americans to achieve a political objective—while the other side is apparently prepared to lie down and take it. (That would be our stratigists)
Actually, perhaps "Propaganda Massacre" would be a more appropriate term to describe what I see happening right now.
The point is, until the Democratic Party can develop a long term effective strategy to deal with this incredibly powerful rightwing propaganda machine, it will struggle to enact its agenda even with a popular democratic president and overwhelming majorities in Congress, and that’s even when juxtaposed with a very recent, disgracefully corrupt and incompetent republican White House (heaven help us when we lose power again if this doesn’t change).
I don’t think I’m the only democrat frustrated by this noxious situation. How can our political foes get away with this yet again?
Because the DNC and other powerful Dems don’t understand the brain. The lizard brain, to be exact. It’s just that simple.
Democrats are sure you can win the day with a good argument. We worship logic and facts and are moved by them. But not all (or even most) brains operate that way. Republicans seem to have an innate understanding that emotion—i.e. the lizard brain-- usually rules the day politically, and the republicans who don’t understand it employ Frank Luntz.
Take the recent health care debate and the discussion of "death panels." Now, I know there are no death panels in any proposed democratic bill. You know there are no death panels in any proposed democratic bill. In fact, most people know there are no death panels in any proposed democratic bill. But none of that matters. That’s all cerebral. Every time the death panel lie is debunked, it ironically reinforces the idea that there are indeed death panels in some mysterious democratic bill. And that activates the lizard brain. And politically-speaking, a lizard brain lie will whip a cerebral truth every time.
Now I know this is counter-intuitive to the logical mind, but studies have shown that that’s the way the brain works in many people. The point is to activate the lizard brain and tell the cerebrum to take a hike. Republicans understand this and know how to do this as easily as they respirate. For democratic strategists, coming up with an effective counter-strategy to this is like trying to put a round ball into a square hole. Their logical brains can’t seem to conceive of what motivates ol’ lizard brain to vote. That’s why no matter how badly republicans f**k the country up, there’s always a BIG REPUBLICAN LIE just around the corner to engage the lizard brain and drive truth (and the democrats) into the gutter after only a few years in the wilderness. By next November Katrina will be nothing more than a distant memory. Did it really happen? Not sure...no, don’t think it did.
Anyway, the crux of the story? You cannot repeat and debunk a lie without reinforcing it cognitively. (Unless you can perform the mental gymnastics of debunking the lie without repeating it in some way—very hard to do, even for a pro).
To wit: I’m afraid President Obama has completely failed to effectively counter the death panel charge. And he’s supposedly the best of the best at communication. But his attempt at debunking the charge in New Hampshire last week was excruciating to watch.
First, he repeated the charge—perhaps necessary in this instance but not desirable—and then, instead of displaying the normal human emotion of outrage at such a ridiculous accusation at the very outset and declaring in no uncertain terms that it was false, he spent the next minute and a half explaining instead where the lie had its genesis in the House bill. The answer was so long, winding and ineffective that news outlets found themselves forced to edit it—finally getting to the part where he belatedly admits "I am not in favor of that" (I.E. death panels).
Now if I had scripted the worst response to an outrageous charge that I could possibly come up with for the president, I’m not sure I could have topped that one. And he had several days to come up with it, not exactly on-the-fly. Who do we have advising the president?
You will also note that many liberals and progressive talking heads were convinced that Obama’s response was devastatingly effective because it was both logical and true. However, that simply is not the case. It was not effective whatsoever. And nothing could better illuminate the reality chasm we face as a movement and party than this example.
Logic and facts do not always win the political day, folks—especially if you professorially and stoically repeat a conservative accusation and it takes you a full 90 seconds to finally deny it, and without the proper and appropriate righteous indignation that such an outrageous accusation deserved.
It rivaled his ineffective response at an earlier AARP town hall when this question was initially broached by a woman calling in. In that case Obama joked that we probably don’t have enough government employees to send to everyone’s homes to pull off what she was afraid of. Funny. Funny perhaps to people who understand satire. However, has Obama ever been told that studies show that the conservative brain is likely to take a response like that literally, and that he might actually have scared the living sh*t out of that woman and millions of others like her? Tone deafness does not begin to describe that response.
No, his response instead indicated that he might indeed send govt employees (I.E. death panels) to seniors’ homes if he just had the manpower. Now, I’m normally a fan of satire in the right setting, don’t get me wrong. But at an AARP meeting discussing death panels?
That response also indicated to me that Obama’s staff is not serving him well at times because he seemed oblivious as to how widespread the death panel rumor had actually become. So I’ve got to tell it like it is—Obama’s death panel "debunking" in each of these two instances was almost lame beyond belief.
For another example of message ineptness, take Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ recent denial that President Obama is employing an "enemies list." Actually, all the White House is attempting to do is debunk the health care lies emanating from many quarters by answering questions on the Net from regular citizens like you and me. I know that. You know that. Most people in this country know that. But republican Senator John Cornyn accused Obama of using the website to compile an "enemies list" (a stretch even for him). So a reporter naturally asked Gibbs for his response. His response (and I paraphrase), "No, we are not compiling an enemies list."
Uh, well Robert, you are now. At least in more peoples’ minds you are, thanks to that response. See the conundrum?
Folks, is it not completely apparent by now that the Republican Party—as a matter of strategy-- is completely prepared, willing and able to hurl any accusation, any lie, any distortion, against any number of democrats, for any number of reasons, for any length of time, and that it is likely to work like a charm for the foreseeable future unless we develop a counter-strategy?
The wingnut strategy is simplistic and devastating:
- Republican makes outrageous false accusation against democrat.
- Corporate media reports and repeats accusation.
- Democrat repeats, then completely debunks accusation.
- Democrats all over country (and especially in DNC) are convinced logic has prevailed and lie is debunked.
- Rest of country internalizes false accusation.
This simple plan of propaganda will work for a hundred years if we don’t devise a long-term strategy to combat it. You simply cannot spend time debunking one outrageous claim after another—one, because it isn’t effective and actually reinforces the accusation in the mind; and secondly, because it distracts from the desired progressive agenda.
My proposed counter-strategy is simple. It’s a form of jury nullification. If you cannot negate the lie by debunking it, negate the person and especially the party making the accusation. This strategy is so patently obvious to me that I am almost sore-amazed that someone at the DNC a great deal smarter than I am hasn’t employed it.
Let’s take the example of death panels. A reporter might say to a democrat, "Sarah Panel has just written on Facebook that President Obama is planning to employ ‘death panels’ in the healthcare bill. How do you respond to that?"
The proper response?
"You know, judging by what I’ve seen over the last few years, I’m not sure there’s a republican politician left in this country who knows how to tell the truth. It’s like they live in a different universe—every day is ‘opposite day.’ I guess I’d have to ask Governor Palin why she and all her republican friends continue to make things up. To me, it looks an awful lot like a coordinated republican strategy to confuse people by misleading them."
See how easy that was? I didn’t reinforce the republican false accusation by attempting to repeat and debunk it, but instead, used my own frame to reinforce a truism that republicans lie early and often, perhaps as a coordinated strategy.
Now, let’s revisit the question to Robert Gibbs about an enemies list. The proper response?
"That accusation is ridiculous and false and I’m not going to dignify it with a response. But I do think it’s interesting that Senator Cornyn had a chance to defend civil liberties during the previous republican administration and chose instead to enable its worst transgressions in that area with his own votes."
"What do you mean by that? Do you care to elaborate?"
"I stand by that statement."
What I have done here is not repeat the republican accusation, but instead, use the frame that Cornyn has told an untruth and is also a republican hypocrite by enabling a corrupt republican administration to abuse civil liberties while accusing democrats of doing the same thing. These 2 things have the added value of being demonstrably true, making them even more effective.
Robert Gibbs has a very tough job and I don’t mean to pile on. I sure couldn’t do his job. But he needs to get better. And if Obama is tying his hands against going after republicans, he needs to wise up.
Here’s what we’ve learned so far:
- Never repeat a republican accusation. Do not engage in the specifics of the accusation. Do not engage a republican frame.
- Turn the accusation against your opponent by developing your own frame—"this person is a republican, years of republican misinformation to the American people has proven republican politicians cannot be trusted to tell the truth," or some variation thereof.
- Shame the media (not yet discussed). This one probably requires a whole new memo, but Dems should loudly demand that the media report the truth and not act as a platform for republican falsehoods. The side that doesn’t work the ref doesn’t get the calls, and republicans have been working the refs for a half-century with little or no coordinated democratic pushback.
Anyway, this is the jury nullification theory as counter-strategy. The wingnut strategy can now be altered into this:
- Republican makes outrageous false accusation against democrat.
- Corporate media reports and repeats accusation.
- Democrat does not repeat said accusation and instead makes counter-accusation of republican politicians lying en masse as a coordinated strategy.
- Republican screams bloody murder and in subsequent hoopla Media is forced to arbitrate by "truth-squading" both accusations.
- Country is left with 2 countervailing impressions; the original republican accusation and "republicans are liars."
So as you can see, this would not be a perfect strategy, at least not early on. At best we get a tie. Republicans will still be able to make their accusations and get them repeated by the media. They will also within weeks attempt to distract and muddle and defuse our counterattack by doing what they do best—project. "We’re not the liars, you are!" they will scream. But we can’t worry about that. At least we will have given the public a competing frame that is based on the truth—"the Republican Party is full of liars." They will make their adjustments but we must show "sticktuitiveness." We must stick to our guns. We must have faith that a frame based on truth will win out in the long run.
So in short and to sum up, the idea is to over time create a competing mental frame with ongoing republican false accusations—that republicans are congenital liars as a matter of both constitution and coordinated strategy. If successful, republican accusations will begin to lose their effectiveness because people will begin to tune the accuser out. The idea of chronic republican lying will become widespread in American cultural ethos. Latenight comics will do jokes about it, further reinforcing it. And after years of democratic and media repetition, most people will surely believe republican politicians are, or may be, liars.
The Jury Nullification Strategy in action.
(Just to clarify, what we are really talking about here is persuading independents and wobbly conservodems—the middle of the political spectrum. The conservative movement has spent years developing a media infrastructure that enables them to create a false reality—a "Bizzaroworld of Liesville," if you will, where the ignorant go to play make-believe. People who get all their info from this world and do not deviate from the bubble are probably beyond persuasion. Thus, the Republican Party will always have a base of ignorant zombies to do their bidding—we just can’t let them out-message us with the people that ARE persuadable.)
We as a party can easily begin to use this simple and effective counter-strategy by emulating one thing the republicans do very well—develop a set of talking points from a centralized area, disseminate them to democratic members, and STICK TO THEM. Kudos to Bill Maher for mentioning this last night.
The DNC should hire a good cognitive scientist like George Lakoff, give him absolute power to develop an effective message, and then educate, train and whip the democratic caucus until they follow his talking points (frames) religiously and to the letter. Why is this so difficult? Every democrat—or almost every democrat—needs to be on board with this strategy and follow the talking points and frames consistently, though, or it is unlikely to work.
The thing we have to remember is that whatever we do, this is a battle that will likely last for many years. Democrats need to develop a long-term strategy for this battle and stick to it. There are also other very effective frames to use against republicans that I will discuss at a later time, one that was enumerated by Kos himself.
Alright, I’ve said my piece. What I really want to hear is a counter-strategy from others in this community. I’m sure you guys can beat what I’ve come up with. Whatever we get, I’ll print the whole thing out and send it by post to the DNC. I can no longer abide this lack of long-term democratic strategy as our agenda goes up in a flame of republican lies. This could ultimately be a 100 year propaganda war. It’s time we realize that, develop an effective, long-term counter-strategy, and fire back.
So let’s hear it, folks. What’s your long-term strategy to beat these guys back?