There've been several diaries about ACA in the last couple of days [pauses to accept Understatement of the Decade Award, thank you ever so much, be sure to tip your server]. One of the most effective has been bkamr's Rec-listed diary, "Make the Damn Freeloaders Pay Their Fair Share!" which goes into some detail about how to take a right-wing meme and turn it around on them so that ACA suddenly looks palatable to the winger. Those memes include personal responsibility and the negativity of freeloading, or getting something for nothing.
However, despite the demonstrated success of this technique, there have been a number of people who have objected because it reinforces right-wing memes or framing that they don't like.
One of the things I hate most about some of the liberals and progressives I've met is this need to hold up our idealistic ideals as opposition to the tools that actually WORK to get people to vote our way. The phrase "beating one's head against a brick wall" comes to mind when I think of that approach. Sometimes, you have to appeal to their baser natures. If it works, IT WORKS.
So the issue I'm going to address in this diary is how many people find it offensive to use a right-wing meme to create support for left-wing principles and ideals in a right-winger, and how it needs to end. It's a resistance that will hobble us, and it needs to end now.
Beyond the fleur-de-Kos, there is some discussion. Please to follow.
In order to understand why this is a problem, the first thing we need to accept is this: We can't convert them to our way of thinking. As unpalatable as that is, we need to accept that as a First Principle. They will never believe the way we do.
But we can convert them to our way of voting, if we work with their way of thinking.
Three things that research has shown which demonstrate how futile it is to try to change an ideologue's mind come to mind when I think of the people who object to using right-wing talking points to achieve left-wing goals. I'll list them below.
1. Ideological minds reject any evidence that would undermine their belief system.
It's shocking to progressives that not everyone is convinced by evidence. It's more shocking to realize that even progressives are often not convinced by evidence. If you have an ideological mind-set, contradictory evidence simply doesn't convince you.
Commonly called "the backfire effect," what the research on evidence to change minds has shown is that evidence, even contradictory evidence, does not change minds when the person is firmly married to a belief system. It just entrenches that belief system even more. And it doesn't matter whether that belief system is conservative or progressive - try talking a die-hard PETA member out of their belief that fish deserve human rights. It's just as impossible as talking a die-hard Rushbot out of their belief that feminists are all pagan lesbian man-haters. It won't happen.
Therefore, evidence will not work unless it's framed in words that the ideologue already agrees with. We'll get to that.
2. The conservative mind runs on fear (the amygdala). Yet we keep thinking we can convince it with facts and evidence. We can't. We have to speak to their emotions. Progressives generally aren't good with appeals to emotions, but folks, we have to get good with it. We have to go for the gut.
Conservatives are biologically wired to be more afraid. This means they need more safety and more reassurance. One way people find safety and reassurance is in ideology. They depend on their beliefs to protect them.
Since conservatives are naturally more fearful, this makes them more likely to be more susceptible to being angry at anything that's identified as the source of their fear. And right-wing hate radio and propaganda TV are more than happy to identify those sources for them: liberals, Democrats, progressives, women, brown people, gay people, trans people, socialists, communists, pick your favorite target.
You can't convince people out of fear with evidence and logic. You have to appeal to their baser instincts. Accept this now, and move on.
3. Two different frames exist which determine a person's understanding of the way the world works.
Lakoff's work is well known: conservatives want the Strict Father, and liberals want the Nurturant Parent. Strict Fathers are about punishing the bad people. Nurturant Parents are about helping the people who need help. You can see how these conflict. The conservative focus, due to the Strict Father frame, will always be first and foremost on who is the bad person and who needs to be punished for being bad.
You can't talk someone out of their framing of the world. Talk does nothing - which means neither does evidence.
How do we fix this problem?
Well, to start with, we have to realize that we're not going to convince conservatives that our ideals are right. We have to give up that idea right now. It gets us nowhere. We can't convince them that they should love or care about their fellow man. They won't care. We waste time and energy trying to.
Instead, we need to appeal to their baser instincts. Knowing that they are driven by fear and anger, we need to direct their fear and anger towards the right targets, as bkamr demonstrated very successfully in that Rec-listed diary. We need to use their memes and their framing to reach them. Ours don't work.
A lot of progressives are very frustrated that ACA does not mean single-payer. They are furious that it's still health care through capitalism. But we MUST look beyond that, folks. We MUST see the forest, not the trees. We MUST look at the long-term goals, not the short-term annoyances, no matter how big and annoying those short-term annoyances look.
So, we can either insist on everyone believing what we do and thinking what we think, and welcome President Romney to the White House in January, or we can work inside their memes and frankly trick them into supporting our programs and goals.
We don't have to like it. We just have to do it.
As an example: In a comment to one of my recent diaries, a progressive for-Obama canvasser described their encounter with a midwestern family who said "Oh yeah, we're voting for the n*gger."
Now. They VOTED FOR OBAMA. We can either be glad of that or be angry that they used racist terminology, alienate them for doing so, and quite possibly move them to vote against him.
Progressives need to focus on what works, not on what we want people to believe. Get the votes first; change the hearts and minds later.
Here's how.
1. Conflate their framing with our framing. Okay, we need a strict father to punish the bad people. Who are the bad people? The people who are freeloading and not taking personal responsibility for their own healthcare - the ones who make enough money to buy it, but won't pay for it. Keep them angry at those freeloaders.
We'll work on getting them to see the profiteers as freeloaders on the system, but let's start by changing their target at all.
2. Focus on the goal, not the ideal. The example above of the people "voting for the n*gger" stands as a perfect example here. We can either get our knickers in a twist that they are being racist, or we can use that to say "Thank you for your vote." We cannot do both. Doing the first loses the war. Doing the second wins at least the battle.
3. Redirect their anger. Conservatives need someone to be angry with and they will only be angry for self-interested reasons. They're going to be selfish and self-centered. We can't change that. But we can use it.
And frankly, if we keep prioritizing our ideals over winning the war, we're fools, folks.
So here's my challenge: Identify a right-wing talking point, meme, or frame in your comment. Then identify a way to use it to get a winger to support our goals. If we do this, we can change the nation.