We talk a lot on this site about some very basic electoral science: framing, values, gut vs. head, etc. Most of us have read Lakoff, or have an ounce of common sense, and we know, when we see one of those "debunk the lies" ads, just how fruitless it's going to be. To review quickly, here are Lakoff's 5 things that motivate electoral choices:
1. Values
2. Authenticity
3. Communication and Connection
4. Trust
5. Identity
Lakoff gives us these because Lakoff is a cognitive psychologist and knows that we simians need to operate on chunks of five to seven. One is too simple and fifteen is too many. However, his 5 items can, nonetheless be boiled down to one:
- Bullshit
Need that explained?
"Does he share my values or believe in BULLSHIT?"
"Is he authentic, or full of BULLSHIT?"
"Is he communicating with me, or is this BULLSHIT?"
"Do I trust him, or is he feeding me BULLSHIT?"
"Is he like me, or like the rest of the BULLSHIT?"
People vote on bullshit. Where they smell it, they vote against it. Where it's sufficiently masked with Febreze, they vote for it.
In fact, I would argue, that everything comes down to smell. You know how, when you walk into someone else's house, they have a characteristic funk, made up of their laundry detergent, the specific bacteria colonies living in their basement, their fridge contents, their dog, their basic hygiene and their DNA? One family I knew from childhood I remember entirely by their odor, which I would describe as a wet, less-than-clean, sock. I can't picture their faces, but I'd recognize their smell anywhere.
Without getting into a whole taxonomy of household funk, let me just say that there are many general spheres of funk, within which different households can interact with, tolerate, and possibly even appreciate each other's funk. My friend Don, for example, cooks with a lot of pancetta and garlic, frequently has an expensive bottle of wine open, and has hardwood floors. His house funk is acceptable to me. The sock family, on the other hand, I'm glad I have limited contact with these days.
It doesn't take a physicist to work out that there are two "superspheres" of funk in America. One of these is exuded by those who get weak in the knees over Ferragamo leather and Ben Gay and the other is made by those whose household bouquet also includes books and soap. I would contend that one of Obama's big problems is that he appears be odorless. It's possible that if he showed up to his next event tapping a pack of menthols on his palm he'd get a 6-point bump.
But I digress. What's important to mention here is that there are some smells that, while you might have them in your house, you're not proud of them. For example, when the barometric differential between our basement and the rest of our house is just right, there's a subtle undertone of cat shit that just screams white trash. I wouldn't be friends with me on a day like that.
Last week, a cold front from the north brought a waft of unmistakable aroma into the McCain melange:
"In what respect, Charlie?"
The olfactory formula here is 1 part stupid to 3 parts bullshit, or what I call the "golden ratio" of ignorance. What makes this stench so universal is that it reminds all of us of the shame of our own ignorance, of those moments in our lives which, when we think about them accidentally, we stop what we're doing and involuntarily blurt something like, "PIE BANANA PISS FACE!" (your blurt may vary). Taken together with the context and body language Sarah Palin's little stall might as well have been any of the following:
"Which cookies do you mean, mom?
"Of course I did the homework, I just can't find it."
"I don't see a wet splotch on my pants"
"When you say, 'looked at his answers', what do you mean exactly?"
"No, I have no idea why you stopped me, officer"
"I'll call you."
Today, Americans are watching the wall street side of the economy swirl clockwise toward the leech field. They don't care. Frankly, I don't care - I don't own any stocks and I lack the mental wherewithal to really understand how my retirement annuities are connected to that whole stock market thing. How all of this will affect my livelihood in any way is a mental exercise I simply lack the equipment to engage in.
But, what I can do, is smell the stupid. Watching McCain at his town hall meeting, I heard him explain how, if Obama would just agree to weekly town halls, everything would be okay. I heard him get really angry about the stock market - I could smell the angry - but again, I don't own stocks, so he's just being a grumpy old man as far as I can tell. I heard him say workers are good and decent - okay, that smells nice - and I heard him rail against all those lobbyists and the cast of "boiler room", which would also smell nice (who doesn't like the smell of blamey?) if it weren't for the fact that all those people he's blaming go by another collective title: "The McCain Campaign Staff".
But of course, that last part escapes most people. When you sit in a room with vomit long enough, you stop noticing the vomit. The McCain campaign knows this, which is why they have no shame in carrying around a full deck of lobbyists and crooks.
And so it is up to the media, who I think by now are starting to see that their efforts at creating a horse race might just fuck this country up for a good long time, to cut through the patchouli of the McPalin nonsense and ask them, "what does 'changing the way wall street does business' look like?". Is it new stationery, or is it restoring some of the regulations that Phil Gramm worked so hard to undermine? Because if it's the latter, then McCain instantly loses his real republican base. If it's the former, as we all know it is, then America gets treated to a big noseful of stupid.