Angry Tea Parties... Healthcare Death Panels... Birthers... Blatant racist slurs directed at the President... Multitudes voting and demonstrating against their own better self interests... A major political party leadership purposely fanning the angry fires of nascent fascism...What the hell is going on in America?
How can a nation founded on the highest principles of reason and enlightenment devolve into such raging politics of fear and intolerance? Why do we find so many disadvantaged people acting aggressively against reforms which would actually help them to live better lives? What media source is responsible for promoting this dismal state of affairs? Why has responsible journalism metamorphosed into a new brand of "balanced" news, where lies are given the same, and therefore more, credence than truth, where the forced drama of a sound bite sells political product at the expense of fuller exposure to real issues and ideas? Is this just rampant stupidity or are there reasons for this madness?
At first blush I am inclined to go with rampant stupidity. After all, a person must indeed be stupid to act against his own better economic well being. How could anyone unable to afford health care be against receiving affordable health care as a part of government services? How does a person go to a government run school and call a government run fire department, or accept government Medicare treatment and government Social Security payments for that matter--and then turn around and rage against government reform of a health care system that is totally broken, a system that already excludes tens-of-millions of citizens and severely constrains the treatment of everyone else except the super rich. This is insanity! It goes against common sense! If you’re like me you’ve got to be asking yourself, "What am I missing here? Am I living in the ‘Twilight Zone’?" Health care reform is a no-brainer, and yet far too many people are not getting it. Could it actually be that these people don’t want to get it, that they don’t really care about the truth or about helping themselves or others to live better lives? Or could it be that they are victims of a grand scheme of political framing by Fox News and the Republican propaganda machine that has succeeded in causing them to see black when all is actually white and white when all is actually black—God forbid even remotely dealing with the gray areas?
In recent years George Lakoff and Karen Stenner have offered explanations for this irrational madness which, when considered together, provide very valuable insight into the underlying motivation for this bizarre behavior.
George Lakoff is Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. His latest book is The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics. He is probably best known in political circles for his book, Don’t Think of an Elephant. In a recent posting for Daily Kos on February 21,A Good Week for Science Lakoff summarizes his argument that
[C]onservatives and liberals have opposite moral worldviews structured by metaphor around two profoundly different models of the ideal family, a strict father family for conservatives and a nurturant parent family for liberals. In the ideal strict father family, the world is seen as a dangerous place and the father functions as protector from "others" and the parent who teaches children absolute right from wrong by punishing them physically (painful spanking or worse) when they do wrong. The father is the ultimate authority, children are to obey, and immoral practices are seen as disgusting. Ideal liberal families are based on nurturance, which breaks down into empathy, responsibility—for both oneself and others, and excellence: doing as well as one can to make oneself better and one’s family and community better. Parents are to practice these things and children are to learn by example.
While there are certainly many people who strongly fit into one side of this moral political polarity or the other most of the time, there are many according to Lakoff who are biconceptualists. These individuals have both conservative and liberal moral responsiveness depending on the context and political framing of an issue. For instance there are many individuals, about 15% of the populace to be exact, who react liberally when asked to respond to gays and lesbians but go ultraconservative the moment you bring up the word homosexual. These are people who have relatives who are gay or lesbian that they have some real world empathy for, but who also have a deep seated "strict father" moral aversion to homosexuality. And that’s exactly why the conservative propagandists almost always frame the issue in terms of homosexuality rather than in terms of gays and lesbians.
So, according to Lakoff, the moral worldview of many individuals consists of both "strict father" and "nurturant empathizer" metaphorical responders in the brain which can be triggered one way or the other by the manner in which an issue is framed to appeal to either moral view’s subconscious connection. Lakoff stresses that this connection is a visceral, gut level response that has absolutely nothing to do with rational conscious thought. If an issue is framed the right way, then, it is quite easy to see where people might be misled by lies and carefully crafted political framing to respond strongly against there own better interests if they "feel" the issue at hand is a threat to their moral well being.
But this feeling of moral well being is especially strong for the conservatives since the highest of conservative values is the preservation and empowerment of the conservative moral system itself. Belief contradictions and outright lies are secondary issues for the conservative moral worldview. Anything goes as long as it promotes the "strict father" cause. The end justifies the means. Father is always right! It’s a black and white world. But in the progressive world view the highest progressive value is to grow, be nuturant and achieve excellence. Here, father isn’t allowed to always be right. Obviously truth, consistency, and logic are primary considerations in this view which does not have to protect and preserve the given established answer but promotes instead the freedom to decide for one’s self. While liberal empathy is not rational or logical in its basic emotional circuitry, it does promote a conscious consideration of logical solutions to problems rather than visceral commitment to protecting existing, sacred answers. Liberals, then, tend to be more logical, more rationally conscious of their own better interests.
Unfortunately, this logical belief in the betterment of oneself and others comes at a price for the liberals. With their heads held high in the mental cloud of reason, they almost always underestimate the real emotional danger in conservative moral framing. Progressives tend to believe everyone makes decisions based on the truth and are prone to support actions which contribute to their own well being. Lakoff calls this "false reasoning." While conservatives have battened down the hatches to protect their emotional moral world view at any cost and by any means, the progressives have tended to take the higher mental road, believing that truth will prevail and that most people will support actions which are beneficial to their own well being. For this reason they have tended to ignore their own emotional moral values as effective framing tools to promote their own agendas, relying instead on common sense and rational discourse--often even letting the conservatives set the agenda by accepting conservative emotional frames as starting points in a discussion. It’s a bit like Mr. Spock trying to apply detached logic to sway the angry and upset Doctor McCoy on the original Star Trek series. "This isn’t a "government take over," the liberal Spock will say, bringing to the forefront a negative conservative frame that immediately activates the conservative side of the biconceptual McCoy citizens who hear it. As Lakoff puts it,
[E]very word is neurally connected to a neural circuit characterizing a frame, which in turn is part of a system of frames linked to a moral system. In political discourse, words activate frames, which in turn activate moral systems. This mechanism is not conscious. It is automatic, and it is acquired through repetition. As the language of conservative morality is repeated, frames are activated repeatedly that in turn activate and strengthen the conservative system of thought—unconsciously and automatically. Thus conservative talk radio and the national conservative messaging system are powerful unconscious forces. They work via principles of real reason,
where "real reason" is the subconscious conservative emotional frame which easily works its way into the unconscious conservative mental receptors of those listening.
In summary, Lakoff argues that the conservative view promotes the protection of a given set of "strict father" moral world values which take precedence over truth, consistency or personal well being. Reasonable behavior becomes irrelevant for the conservative once something has been successfully framed as a threat to this given set of moral values. And progressives fail to understand this conservative mental state at their own peril.
"Some people will never live comfortably in a modern liberal democracy," says Karen Stenner at the beginning of her book, The Authoritarian Dynamic. Her work
[F]ocuses on a particular type of person: one who cannot treat with natural ease or generosity those who are not his own kindred or kind, who is inclined to believe only "right thinking" people should be free to air their opinions, and who tends to see others’ moral choices as everybody’s business—indeed, the business of the state. It is about the kind of people who—by virtue of deep-seated predispositions neither they nor we have much capacity to alter—will always be imperfect democratic citizens, and only discouraged from infringing others’ rights and liberties by responsible leadership, the force of law, fortuitous societal conditions, and near-constant reassurance.
Such people have an innate authoritarian disposition, a disposition of obedience to authority, moral absolutism and conformity, intolerance and punitiveness toward dissidents and deviants as well as aggressive animosity against racial and ethnic out-groups
.
Stenner measures this disposition through a simple survey concerning child rearing values. The survey measures ideal child rearing values, not actual documented application of those values in observed child rearing practice, since many authoritarians do not walk-the-talk when it comes to such ideals and the raising of their own children. Authoritarians want children to follow rules and respect authority more than they want them to follow their own conscience and think for themselves. They’re more comfortable with words such as "obey," "rules", and "obedience" than with words such as "question," "progress,’ and "curiosity." Authoritarians are most comfortable when they feel "oneness" with their community and are reassured that everyone is the same. They are most uncomfortable when they see their community exercise the freedom to differ and to be inclusive of such differences.
While the Authoritarian disposition as measured by Stenner’s survey is always lurking beneath the surface in an authoritarian, the actual expression of this intolerance comes out aggressively only during times of "normative threat," those times when the norms of "oneness" and "sameness" are threatened. During times of calm political stability, where everyone seems to be on the same page, authoritarians are hard to spot, blending in with everyone else—even exercising considerable levels of tolerance and good will. However, when this normative environment is threatened, particularly by great dissension in public opinion and general loss of confidence in political leaders, the exercise of intolerance rises to the surface with a vengeance.
Stenner goes to great length in her book to prove that, although authoritarians tend to sway toward social conservatism most of the time, they are not one and the same with conservatism. While social conservatives are resistant to change, authoritarians can sometimes welcome change if "we’re" all doing it together and it will help ensure the future stability of "oneness’ and "sameness." In addition, Stenner points out that laissez faire conservatism is actually in direct opposition to authoritarianism since it promotes basic individualism over group comfort. So, while authoritarians can support anything that promotes "oneness" and "sameness" at differing times in differing cultures (even very liberal changes), at the present time in America--with today’s political dissonance and loss of confidence in leadership-- they are swinging their intolerance strongly behind the conservative camp.
It only takes a little bit of political "noise" to get the authoritarians riled up-- and riled up they are in today’s politic. What’s most interesting about Stenner’s observations is this: If there is a dissonance of values that disturbs an authoritarian, it matters not what particular "truth" is involved, or whether change might actually benefit the authoritarian economically. All that matters is that there is dissonance (normative threat). So, getting these people to act against their own better interests only takes the perception of dissension in public opinion and general loss of confidence in leadership. They really don’t care about themselves at all and are only concerned about the "sameness" of values in the community and general obedience to these values. Manipulating these people is a piece of cake. For instance, while the great town hall shout-outs against health care reform that took place in the late summer of 2009 involved relatively insignificant numbers of fringe elements, they were amplified by the media to become overwhelming evidence of normative threat to the authoritarians. The authoritarians were easily manipulated to view healthcare reform as an attempt by "outsiders" to take over the normative order of society. The authoritarian’s reaction had nothing to do with healthcare and everything to do with "us" and "them," where "they" are socialists and death panelists and "we" are red blooded patriots who want to protect our common normative values.
So what are we to make of Lakoff’s and Stenner’s explanations for why people turn against their own better self interests and politically chew off their own legs, so to speak. Lakoff says it is the result of an effectively framed conservative moral world view and Stenner argues, contrarily, that it is an authoritarian reaction to great dissension in public opinion and general loss in confidence of political leaders (normative threat) that has little to do with conservatism as a moral world view, but happens to be aligned with conservatism this time around. For Lakoff it is the preservation of the strict father family morality. For Stenner it is the preservation of normative order regardless of political affiliation (normative order in China is far different from normative order in the USA, for instance). For both it most certainly has something to do with family values, be they strict father disciplinary actions or child-rearing ideals.
I believe they are both right in different ways. Stenner’s authoritarian disposition makes more sense to me than Lakoff’s strict father conservatism. It doesn’t take much to meld Lakoff’s strict father attributes into Stenner’s authoritarian dynamic. For instance, authoritarians find the world to be a dangerous place where the normative order (whatever that may be in differing societies) protects citizens from "others" and teaches them right from wrong. It enforces the common morality and brands acts of immorality as deviant. It performs the same functions for the authoritarians as the "strict father" does for Lakoff’s conservatives. But it does so in a universal manner that transcends conservatism as a unique American political force. And, most interestingly, it is only when this order is threatened that intolerance gets out of hand. The point to keep in mind here is that it’s not the conservatism that gets out of hand, it’s the intolerance.
Lakoff, on the other hand, does an excellent job of explaining how the framing of issues can assuage intolerance or fan its flames. One need only remember the different impact that the use of the words "gay" and "lesbian" has over the use of the word "homosexual." Gays and lesbians are people we know in our own families, homosexuals are deviant others to be shunned and avoided. So framing is very important. But contrary to Lakoff’s explanation, I would argue that effective framing is not just a competition between a liberal and conservative world views but an even more complex and sinister struggle between the forces of "sameness" and "normative threat," where normative threat has become the agency of democracy itself.
If Karen Stenner is right, and the evidence she shares is compelling, then modern democracies such as the United States are faced with far greater challenges than just a race to see who can better frame their causes-- the liberals or the conservatives. This is a struggle of really diverse, progressive societies trying to overcome the negative impact of an ever-growing diversity on their uneasy authoritarian citizens. If at least 40% of the populace has authoritarian tendencies (as Stenner’s studies seem to indicate), this uneasiness can get out of hand in a hurry as is happening now in the United States.
So, again, if Stenner is right, it’s really important that we understand what’s going on with the authoritarians and focus not just on framing the issues in terms of being "nurturant," but also with greater emphasis on our "common" interests and goals as citizens all moving together to improve our lives. In other words we need to calm these people down, we need to assure them that we’re all seeking the same goal when we promote critical social changes, that the outcome of our actions will be to ensure commonality and "sameness," where all Americans will live together in harmony. Additionally we must understand, in spite of the obvious need for improvement, that cultural diversity is extremely challenging to these people and we need to accept some limitations on the length of the steps we can take at any one time. We have to accept that we may not be able to take a giant step towards progress, but rather that we can take lots of little steps along the way to our goal. This is not a new reality. Social Security wasn’t passed in its current form in one fell swoop. Nor was racial equality legislated in one congressional session. It took the blood of over half a million soldiers and another hundred-plus years to get even close. The main point we must keep in mind here is that we must make concerted attempts to keep our diversity from being exploited into an "us" and "them" mentality within our own society. If there must be a "them," lets keep "them" outside the USA.
And how, you might ask, are we going to do this? We can start by acknowledging that President Obama seems to instinctively be trying to pave the right path by continually emphasizing our similarities as American citizens and deemphasizing our differences. His problem with the healthcare crisis, though, has been that he wasted a whole year doing backdoor bipartisan deals that the American people distrusted before he finally changed course and began providing the presidential leadership the crisis deserves by directly addressing the American people and explaining the common good promoted by the proposed changes. While this was too little, too late, it was a step in the right direction. His willingness to showcase commonality with Republicans, while at the same time exposing their unwillingness to help solve a crisis for the betterment of all, has begun to slightly loosen the "normative threat" driving the authoritarians to mistrust him and his party. But the fact remains that so much damage was done while he was away behind the scenes that his credibility has been severely diminished.
So we need to give the President some credit for instinctively understanding the need to promote "oneness" and "commonality." It is hard for progressives to acknowledge this. They’re disappointed that he has been too accommodating and not forceful enough--and they’re right about the lack of forcefulness, but wrong about the over accommodation. If the President had been out in front with the American people from the very beginning about health care reform, as he was with them during his campaign, his emphasis on accommodation would not have appeared weak and ineffective, but would have encouraged more authoritarians to believe that we were all working together on a common cause searching for a common solution. This would have reduced the opportunity for those media czars who want control of the political agenda from so thoroughly exploiting his year-long lack of leadership and absence.
And what to do about the media czars who want to control the political agenda, the Fox Noise Machines and talk radio maniacs of the right? They’re bad enough by themselves, but we also have a mainstream media that lets them frame the issues and then stands back and provides a "balanced" view of opposing sides without any assessment of the truth, allowing the maniacs to win the argument by producing the most noise. What do we do with these guys? Even if Obama had done the right things from the very beginning, they still would have created enough noise (normative threat) to raise the hair on an authoritarian’s back. This is where Lakoff’s recommendations come in really handy. The progressives really do need to understand Lakoff’s suggestions for framing the issues in a way that reduces tensions for the authoritarians. We need to listen to Lakeoff and take heed of his advice about promoting nurturant values, but also take heed of Stenner at the same time, and understand that these nurturant values need to connect with the demand for "sameness" and "oneness" that authoritarians put before anything else. And it wouldn’t hurt at all if the progressives pulled their heads out of the clouds and began to build their own media machine, a machine that could enhance and expand the efforts of the Rachel Maddows and Keith Olbermanns of the media world into a massive vehicle of their own, one that could promote effective action implemented in a way that frames the issues in terms that authoritarians are most comfortable with.
In any case, it is imperative that more research be performed on this dangerous and confusing issue. If pure reasoning and common sense will not work with the conservatives and authoritarians, it’s extremely import that we learn more about what, if anything, will!