Framing is a concept best explained in the works of George Lakoff. To put it too simply it explains how the right has learned to control the debate effectively and to get people to vote and act against their best interest. He illustrates the concept with the title of one of his books: Don't think of an elephant. The examples are myriad: tax relief, liberal agenda, freedom, pro life, etc. These buzz words and phrases trigger a response in the listener and once it has been triggered that instinctive response becomes the basis for how they think and feel about the topic of discussion. Rational argument has little effect on them after that. It is a way of conjuring up images if you like. "Tax relief" conjures up the image of someone putting a burden on you from which you need "relief". Coupled with other framed images the picture evolves quickly. The Democrats are bullies in Washington who come to get your hard earned money so they can spend lavishly on their pet projects. The fraqming of the word "cost" needs special attention. Read on below to see why.
You must have asked yourself by now how it is possible for all the discussion about budgets, spending, cuts, debt,etc. can ignore the impact of the Bush crimes. It seems clear it is not there anymore for it never gets mentioned. This is the result of successful framing. The old buzz words have been reactivated and we are back where we were before the Bush crimes. If you need more to convince you that framing is important I have it, but let's go on.
My first consciousness about false ideas about cost, at least as far as I can remember, was while on my postdoctoral fellowship at the Weizmann Institute in Israel during the period 1963-1965. One of my postdoctoral mentors was working on desalination using membranes. We were into membrane biophysics. He was sitting at lunch reading a scientific equipment catalog. He suddenly pulled out a pad of paper and began calcullating. He then got all excited. He had figured out that by using disposable "glassware" in the lab he could let go one technician/dishwasher and save grant money.
What is wrong with that picture? The "cost" to his grant goes down. However, the cost to the rest of us begins to mount. Today we know where the false savings were paid. Heaps of plastic and depleted petroleum reserves. Now to get to the heart of the matter. Why did the system change? What drove this new "cost" reduction?
The answer is standard. My mentor would now purchase things again and again to replace the disposable stuff. Profit increased.
Lets see if we can visualize this in a framing sense. Every time we opt to "save" by buying into one of these schemes we are helping move money to stockholders rather than people like my mentor's dishwasher. Oh you can carp at the details of this very simple minded, exaggerated example, but my point should be crystal clear.
Today we have WalMart and as Reich makes clear if it were no WalMart it would be something else. They sell at lower prices taking the money from workers and suppliers and making stockholders and us consumers very happy. They get profit that is real and we get false savings at more cost to us in the long term.
The word "cost" needs to be carefully framed with pictures like this. The poor guy on the street is being led to believe that by paying less the world is better for him. Meanwhile he gets poorer and poorer and the fat cats get fatter.
Oh and then there is congress. What a hoot this one is! Educating our children, creating jobs with a living wage that can't be exported, making our infrastructure work again, keeping us healthy, preventing poison from damaging us and especially our unborn children, and so on are all to "expensive". They "cost" too much. In other words there is not enough profit in them especially for immediate gratification. War is very profitable. Scaring the population about terrorism is very profitable. These cost nothing really.
If we can not create images and frames that make these things clear it is because too many of us are really convinced that too much change will hurt them. Too many of us are the stockholders and consumers that make the WalMart syndrome possible.
As people like Lakoff point out what is going on others of us make use of this valuable information. During the Obama campaign it clearly worked. Then it was apparantly forgotten. Or was it? Are we so smart that we can go on flinging facts and figures and losing? I wonder which side we are really on here.