It's not enough to laugh at the stupid comments made by the Bush Women. It's not enough to point out the facts on the lack of preparedness, planning, or prevention of the levee failures. It's not enough to wonder what the hell when wrong. In order to really change the culture that led to these failures, we need to frame our questions and statements to speak to a language of `family values'. Not `family values' in the conservative sense, but in the sense as to the language that we use, and how different people listen. Let me explain...
I've been reading some excellent thoughts and analysis lately on Katrina, and have found that this site is the best site for getting up to date news. It's absolutely wonderful to have such a committed community. However, we need to realize that facts and true stories will not change minds, unless we speak to the right frame of minds. We can preach to the choir all we want, but until we speak the language of `Red America', they will write us off and whacky liberals and keep listening to Fox. Recently, I read `Don't think of an elephant', by George Lakoff, while I was backpacking in Denali, which is a great book, that really challenged the way I think about things.
The day that we returned to civilization from our trip, we saw the newspaper headlines that Katrina had hit south Florida and was headed to New Orleans. After being able to digest Lakoffs book for a week while in the wilderness, it really gave me a new perspective on how to communicate with the hordes of conservatives who I work with, especially about this disaster.
The basis of his book goes down to family values, and how that influences ideology. The gist is that people `father dominant' families tend to follow conservative lines, whereas `balanced families' (which he calls `nurturing families' but I disagree with the term), where both parents communicate and are active in child rearing, tend to think more liberally. The importance of understanding this, has to do how messages are framed to resonate with core family values. A `father dominant' view would be that people need to be punished for their failures (i.e. penalize people who don't evacuate, or leave them on their own). A `balanced family' view, however, supports leading by example, and teaching people how to act appropriately. They would support immediate aid to victims, whether or not they followed the order to evacuate or not.
Now, nobody is `strictly one or the other' here, but conservatives have been so effective in speaking to the `father dominant' frame, that as liberals we've been forced to be reactionary, reactionary to the `father dominant' frame.
We've already seen these frames at work with Katrina. The federal response was weak, leaving the state and local governments `on their own'. Indeed, the feds are now saying that it is a local and state responsibility. This is because the states are the children of the federal government, and it's the states job to take care of themselves. Imagine a kid learning how to swim, in a father-dominant frame, you toss the kid in the pool and he'll figure out how to swim... in a balanced frame, you give your kid water wings, swimming lessons, and teach them the skills before they need them.
Onto the issue of the survivors who didn't evacuate. This isn't much different than many fathers across our land who have `cut off' their irresponsible children. They didn't do what I told them to do, so now their on their own. The `balanced family' would still take care of those people, in hopes of making them better through positive examples.
I could go on all day about how the political reactions fit into these frames, but that's not the purpose of this diary. Instead, I really think that we should think hard about how to frame the issues that are coming out. I hear a lot of great proposals, but everyone who is saying them is putting them into the `balanced family' frame. How can we speak to the `father dominant' frame to promote what we're saying?
I've been thinking a lot about this, and don't have any great breakthroughs, but here's what I've been thinking about over the past few days and how they can be applied to those frames?
- Is it right for the government to force you from your home? This speaks to the frame of property rights. Now you can talk about how this response if different than any other disaster. Military is forcing people from their homes, this is more like Baghdad than America...
- Should we value property over life? Why were search and rescue operations suspended to focus on looting? This speaks to `culture of life'.
- To what level of responsibility do our elected officials have to provide general protection and general services? The winger will say, none, everyone for themselves, less government... then ask how that view applies to Iraq? If we're all `on our own' then why are we fighting a war on terror and the war in Iraq?
- What level of personal responsibility rests with the victims, the local officials, federal officials? Should we hold leaders accountable for failures in the system? Who is more responsible, the victim, or the president? You might not get an answer that you want here, but you can engage in a dialouge of responsibility and accountability.
- Are we in a better position trying to prevent damage from disasters or only acting once they've happened? Is the social situation of New Orleans an underlying cause to the damage and death toll? The frame is set with the first question, most conservatives will say that the people of N.O. were part of the reason for the violence, looting, and failure to evacuate... indeed this is where the wingers are aiming their fire... so this is where you bring up poverty, and ways we can combat it... throw in the `ounce of prevention' argument, but don't start by using the word poverty, because that invokes the idea of welfare, and you'll lose who you're talking to.
We're in a good position here, because we've got the republicans on the defensive, but until we start speaking in multiple frame, we're only going to contribute to the political firestorm, the battle of ideology, and drive the fence sitters back to the wedge issues, where we'll lose them.
So let's use this thread to talk about ways to frame the issues that we're seeing.