There it is again! McCain questions Obama's judgment. It was a drum beat on NPR today. It is ridiculous. George Lakoff must be screaming about it and I am unable to resist ranting here! How does he question Obama's judgment? John McCain is promising that he can bring us victory! Yup, for the first time in world history if we elect this man he will bring us victory in the occupation of another country! He did not tell us what that meant. Incidentally, he framed it as a "war". But GWB declared the war over some years ago. We are into an occupation. Just a while ago we had an increase in our occupying forces. The people who said the war was over some time ago called this increase in troop levels a "surge". Today John McCain said that Obama lacks judgment because he still fails to acknowledge the success of the surge. These are the front lines of the framing wars and Lakoff has warned us about them. It seems that the warning that we can only lose the debate by accepting their framing still needs to be understood. Look below the break and let's try again.
First, let's see that Lakoff saw this coming and told us how to prepare for it. In his book The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th Century Brain Lakoff says this:
I have been struck by the use of the word "victory" by the right wing, especially by its propaganda arm, Freedom's Watch. Usually "victory" is used in reference to a war between countries over territory, where there is a definable enemy. That is not the case in Iraq, where we have for four years had an occupation, not a "war," and there has been no clear enemy, no one to sign a peace treaty with. We have been mostly fighting Iraqis we were supposed to be rescuing. "Victory" makes no sense for such an occupation. And even General Petraus has said that only a political, not a military, settlement is possible. In what sense can keeping troops there for nine or ten years or longer , as Petraus has suggested might be necessary, be a "victory"?
Ask John McCain. Barack Obama please ask John McCain.
The quoted material above comes from the end of chapter 8, Fear of framing, of Lakoff's book. This chapter alone is worth spending a lot of time thinking about. For it is in this chapter where Lakoff makes it crystal clear why we lost the election in 2006. Oooops! Did I just say we lost in 2006? Well in a very real way we did. We got the seats in the House and Senate, but then we blew it big time. Why? Why did we loose on the war funding, the troop withdrawl, FISA, etc., etc.? Because we were afraid! Here's how the chapter begins:
Progressives too often fall into conservative framing traps. Avoiding them takes a new consciousness. The way out takes insight and courage. [my emphasis] Old Enlightenment reason was supposed to be universal, literal, and unemotional. It did not admit that alternative worldviews are normal, that we think in terms of frames and metaphors that fit our worldviews, and that language can be chosen to activate frames, metaphors, and worldviews.
Many democrats in Congress are so accustomed to Old Enlightenment reason that they don't know how to effectively use framing to strengthen the hold of their worldview. The Republicans have become expert at it, and the Democrats often don't know what's hitting them and how to respond. The longer they wait to respond, the harder it gets - and they don't understand why. [my emphasis]
Do we suffer from this? Is it real? Look at the comments to my diaries on some of these ideas and you will see that it is widespread. What does it have to do with the failures of the democratic congress after 2006? Here's some of what Lakoff says:
Democrats in Congress tried to force withdrawal from Iraq at first by sending the president military funding legislation tied to a timetable for withdrawl. The president countered in the court of public opinion with a framing campaign that went as follows:
The United States is at war with an enemy threatening our national security. The president is the "unitary executive," the commander in chief in charge of all use of the military; we can't have five hundred commanders. The Congress is merely a bursar of funds, trying to "micromanage the war," "tell the generals in the field what to do." Withdrawal would be "surrender'" and timetables for withdrawal "told the enemy when we were surrendering."
It goes on, but you should be able to see the line of thought. Today, John McCain used the same frames. Today John McCain was in front of an audience where no further verbiage was necessary. The rest was in their brains. How many other Americans are subconsciously thinking what that audience was? That is a good question. Why did John McCain know the frames were strong and would work well for him? Because enough of those Democrats elected in 2006 and their colleagues told him so. He saw them crushed again and again because they were afraid of those frames. So that is where we are. There is a simple truth stated above. The longer we wait to respond to this stuff, and to do it again and again and again, the more effective it will become.
I was happy Saturday morning at the opening of the new Obama/Warner/Day office in Gloucester, VA when candidate for the VA-01 congressional seat, Bill Day, spoke consistently in frames that were aligned with our values. He spoke of an "occupation", not a "war", for example. This is not a casual thing. It is survival. Please help our candidates where ever they are to understand how important this is. We also need to educate many of the Democrats in office who have failed to understand that they are aiding the opposition by fearing their frames and allowing themselves to be sucked into losing debates by accepting their frames. All we can do is to keep trying to get this across. There is not much time left.