Asymmetric Phrasing
George Lakeoff, lately raised to saint of political language, has repeatedly pointed out the skill with which the right has appropriated language and symbols. The estate tax, a tax supported by many of the founding fathers so entrenched and accepted that it had evaded Republican attacks for decades, was turned into the "death tax," and suddenly became vulnerable. The Republican philosophy may be conservative, but their approach to language has been extraordinarily flexible.
The Republican Party has become the Hezbollah of language, quite willing to bring a rocket launcher into the midst of stale phraseology, and willing to accept the risk this represents.
In contrast, Democratic use of language has been less facile. Much of the terminology we use was fixed in the time of the Civil Rights Movement. We're enthralled by the rolling cadence of Martin Luther King, jr. and the elegant phrasing of JFK. Reaching back several more decades, many Democrats still regard the energetic expressions of FDR with such reverence that they're little short of holy writ.
Like British soldiers astounded that those rag tag American rebels would not line up and put on colorful uniforms, we're appalled at the Republicans willingness to abandon the language of the past. We wave our hands over the deception embedded into their choice of words and sputter over their ability to throw a blanket of fine terms over muddy policies. We're offended by their overthrow of fine old words, and while we're busy being mad, they bloody our nose again.
Even something as overtly silly as turning French Fries (temporarily) into "Freedom Fries" shows the facility the right has adopted in turning words to their service. They recognize that they can marshal the force of phrasing like the aforementioned fries, wave a flag over it, and use it to help fan the flames of the "us vs. them" tribalism which, while it exists in every culture, is particularly strong within the Republican Party. No matter how stupid you feel the "war on all things French" to be, the Republicans were able to use it to add energy to their base and to upset the footing of those on the left.
They don't care that you think it was stupid. In fact, they want you to think it was stupid.
The Republicans are building new phrases that appeal to their base and which have, at least, no deep negative associations to those in the middle. The Democrats are still using terms that have been under assault for years, and which are laced through with all the mud thrown at them over decades. "Affirmative Action" may have started as an overtly positive term, but it's certainly not free from negative connotations today, even for many on the left. It's stained from a hundred skirmishes, as tattered as the Ft. Sumter flag.
Like generals who defend their budgets for conventional forces decades after they have anyone to fight, if we do not show some ability to rethink our approach, we are doomed to watch our cherished ideas subject to one verbal IED after another.
Asymmetric Messages
Not only has the right become adept at choosing their words and keen to tear down aging walls of language with which we have held their ideas in check, they've also shown a willingness to go far beyond the limits previously set on political discourse.
It's common to dig up posters from the election of Andrew Jackson or the mudslinging contests that followed the Civil War, as evidence that political campaigns have always been nasty. They have. And when it comes to Democrats, we're still happily regurgitating the same language that dogged Grover Cleveland. What's the worst thing that left is saying about the right? The very worst? Republicans are corrupt. Republicans are incompetent. Republicans are hypocrites. Republicans are... well, that's it, really.
There's been some discussion on the Internet about the idea of the Overton Window, a means of framing a discussion that -- not incidentally -- originated at a right wing think tank. The idea is that is you want to move a political position from point A to point B, the first thing you need to do is move the national discourse way out to point D. Maybe voice a little support for point E, or M. Keep it up long enough, and B looks so tame even your opponents are supporting it.
In the Overton Window of general political discourse, where are the Republicans? On a line where A starts with "Democrats are my worthy opponents" and B is "Democrats are incompetent" and C is "Democrats are fools," the right is somewhere around P or Q. They've pushed the limits to the point where it's common to turn on a national news program and hear Democrats discussed as "terrorist sympathizers." Have you looked at the bestseller lists? Liberals are traitors. Liberals are "godless." Liberals deserve to die. They should all be lined up and shot.
Like freedom fries, that language may sound silly. However, don't think for a moment that it's not effective in moving the national feeling about the political positions. The language has been so effective that for many people "liberal" and "immoral" have become intractably entangled. It's so effective that a "moderate" Republican senator has no qualms about calling Democrats "appeasers" of terrorists. It's so effective that what Will Rogers once used as a joke -- the disorganization of the Democratic Party -- has become accepted wisdom and as often quoted by those on the left as the right.
When it comes to the battlefield of political discourse, we've surrendered the middle ground. We're fighting full time in Republican territory.
Asymmetric Delivery
There's a reason why the "so-called liberal media" has become such a common phrase that it's one of the most widely used Internet contractions. It's not just that the media is a tool of the establishment and the left is currently disenfranchised. It's not just that the media is a tool of corporations and corporations are captive to the right.
It's that the media is a tool of those who know how to use it, and we refuse to look at the manual.
Reporters are lazy. Don't take that as a slam against journalists -- everyone is lazy. No one wants to do more work than is required to get their job done. It's a rare person who sews his own clothes for the fun or it, or repairs her own car just for an excuse to get under the hood. If someone offered to come along to your office, take notes at all your meetings, keep your desk neat, handle all your email, make you look good for the boss, and do it all for free, would you turn them down?
Republicans -- and their hundreds of well-funded, well-established think tanks -- are always ready to hand the media neatly packaged positions, complete with nice turns of phrase, plenty of supportive statistics, and contacts who will provide great quotes. Republican politicians get their script from headquarters, and even if they don't like the lines in act three, they dutifully trod the boards and deliver information that trimly fits with everything already in the media's hands. They may come off as monotonous. We may squawk about their monotonous adherence to the text. But anyone who tunes into any given five minute period of news gets the Republican position -- and the reporters don't question it because they've already been handed a ream of paper to back it up.
Democrats think they can turn up with a few notes scribbled on the back of napkin and the luminous beauty of their morally superior positions, counting on reporters to fill in any blanks. Worse, all too many Democratic politicians are like the kid who keeps raising his hand in class, even when he doesn't know the answer. They think they're brilliant enough to just "wing it" through an hour of facing some egotistical TV host. Some news for them: a genetic cross between Albert Einstein and Sir Lawrence Oliver could not pull off this trick. But stubborn Democrats just keep trying -- and looking foolish, weak, and unprepared as a result.
If the "mainstream" media is enslaved to the right through simple ease, the rest of the media has no illusions. Fox News, Rush, Savage, Anne, Bill, and all the rest exist only to prop up the Republican script writers. They don't think they're "right" as in "correct." They don't think they're more moral, more just, or accurate than the "mainstream." Like NBA superstars, the right wing pundits know that they're extremely well paid to play a very specific game. And that game is political vilification.
They don't waste time in detailing or defending the Republican positions. Instead, they concentrate on pushing that Overton Window ever rightward. In a sense, their script is as rigid as that employed by the Sunday morning Republican "guests:" constantly repeat that they are "moderate," "nonpartisan," or "independent," then attack the positions of the left with all the vigor applied to a last minute full court press.
In one sense, there's nothing at all new about what the pundits are doing. Their brand of "humor" goes back to the time when it was being carved on clay tablets. They're telling nigger jokes. Anything that was ever aimed at blacks, or before that Italians, or before that the Irish, and somewhere before that the Canaanites or the Trojans, is being recycled with liberals as a target. The job of the right wing media is to solidify the idea that the left is the "other," as far from real Americans as anyone crouching in the caves of Tora Bora. They're pretty darn good at it.
The Limbaughs push the window. The "moderates" deliver the approved message, and every year the middle of the window is more to the right.
Democrats show up to give the same arguments they've been giving for fifty years, and sit back expecting the media to do their work for them, then act surprised when they get handed their hat.
Asymmetric Solutions
Okay, in about two thousand words, I've managed to tell you three things you already knew: Republicans have done a better job at framing issues, they aren't afraid to call Democrats pond scum, and they do a better job of working the media. Now comes the part where I polish up my ego and tell a hundred million Democrats how to get their act together.
Leave behind the words, not the ideas
No matter how much moral artillery you have on your side, regardless of flotillas of facts, winning any asymmetric war is very difficult. The really bad news is, regular armies don't win these things. Those darn rule-breaking insurgents keep pushing, and over time the "good guys" tend to adopt more and more urgent, brutal tactics. The insurgents blow up a police station, and in response the army levels a town. Not only are such tactics unproductive, they're counterproductive. If we think that we can win this by imitating the Republicans, we're absolutely, positively doomed.
To win this fight against irregular Republican wordplay insurgents, Democrats have to be willing to abandon the fortresses of terms they've constructed over the last century. It doesn't matter how much you love a phrase. It doesn't matter if you can still remember how Bobby said it in a way that imprinted the words directly on your heart. Come up with something new. Think, damn it. Cross up the right by feeding them lines that they haven't heard a thousand times before.
To win this fight, we must become as much of an insurgency as the Republicans, but that doesn't mean we have to adopt their tactic of vilification as a primary weapon. Instead, let's model our insurgency on those of Gandhi and King. If you think that means becoming passive, you haven't read your history book. Neither of these movements were passive. They were active, creative, forceful, in-your-face and unrelenting.
Insurgencies win not by being victorious in battle, but by forcing their opponents to abandon all their professed beliefs. We can't let them push us into behaving like Republicans, or into apologizing for our positions. We have to make them cry uncle.
Don't abandon elegance
In crafting new language, the tendency is to aim at the NASCAR dad level. Worse, the tendency is to aim at the perceived NASCAR dad level. It's true that the best oratory doesn't look like it was lifted from the pages of the New Yorker, but neither should we put our words through a scanner to clean out anything above fourth grade reading level. Don't try to be too damn clever, but don't think of your audience as idiots.
Too much of the Democratic language in 2004 was tonally schizophrenic. One part recycled stentorian trumpet calls, one part unconvincing pseudo-ghetto speak. A big part of this is Democratic candidate's continuing madness in hiring and rehiring those people who have coached them to one defeat after another -- people whose view of the man on the street is formed only from statistics. Is it any surprise that their language is just as paint by numbers as their thinking?
Republicans have shown every willingness to combine oratory, street preachin', and locker room humor. It's not just in the particulars of any phrase where they're beating us, it's in their ability to command the full range of language. They're willing to steal from John Cheever, but they're not afraid to snicker at Jeff Foxworthy.
The best oratory transcends diction, grammar, and regionalism. It can be funny, stirring, bawdy, and poignant -- maybe all at the same time. Andy Jackson knew this. Lincoln knew this. FDR, Churchill, and JFK all knew this. Mary Scott O'Connor knows this.
We can't afford to give the Republicans ground when it comes to acceptable speech. Use all your weapons. Before forceful. Don't be afraid to be angry. Don't be afraid to look either crude or smart.
And while you're at it, don't be afraid to write for the angels. Lately, it seems that only the Republicans are willing to write a phrase that looks like it's written for the ages instead of for the sound bites, and watching Bush stumble through these things while Democrats fear words greater than three syllables is ticking me off.
Convert, subvert, and invert
A quick piece of advice to Democrats heading in to face the media: forget everything you ever learned on debate team. I don't care that you successfully defended two dozen propositions that started with the word "resolved" and that you earned yourself a scholarship by besting both Wittgenstein and Popper two falls out of three.
You are not there to debate the host. Jesus.
You're there to wheedle, to tease and joke and charm. You're there to make Chris or Russ or whoever feel like they're on your side. You're going to let them into the club, give them the inside picture. Be agreeable. Be friendly. Be sly. When you leave, you shouldn't be feeling like you won a boxing match. You should be feeling like you sold a car.
Your job is not to best the media talking heads, it's to turn those talking heads into advocates for your positions. You think Bush hands out all those cute nicknames because he can't remember the reporter's real names? Okay, you think Bush does it only because he can't remember the names?
If you climb up onto a soapbox and start preaching journalistic independence, you're going to make yourself a really good target. Meanwhile, the Republicans are going to sidle up the pundits and hand them ammo. Don't whine about how the Republicans pal around with the press, just do it better than them.
Destroy the status quo
And the biggest thing we can do to win this fight is just exactly what you're doing right now -- make use of new media options. If the Republicans have played the role of Al Qaeda when it comes to words, they're still marching with fixed bayonets when it comes to delivery mechanisms.
There's a reason why the right wing devotes so much time to attacking us poor bloggers. It's because they are really, really scared of us. They see that their carefully constructed control over paper, and radio, and television is in digital danger, and they haven't formulated an effective plan to deal with it.
At first they thought they could match the liberal blogs, because they made the assumption that cyberspace would make it easier to sell their lies. However, the ability of bloggers to dig up the truth -- which is rarely Republican friendly -- has baffled them for the moment. They're slinging the mud by the barrel-full, trying to make sure that "blog" becomes as vilified as "liberal." Even so, they know they won't hold back this tide for long.
Everyone in the traditional media, not just the right wingers, is looking at the blogs with a feeling of unease. Like a tidal wave approaching shore, we're barely a ripple at the moment, but everyone glancing this way can see that the water is running out of their bay. Soon enough, they'll be looking up as the wave crests over their heads.
The Republicans are trying to buy time, hoping to devalue the Internet until they can get a good handle on how to control it (which is a big part of what was behind the fight against net neutrality). Don't give them time. Stay on top of this thing. Make sure it remains vital. Keep driving the wing nuts crazy.
And remember to laugh every time they tell you the blogs are worthless.
