The republicans have been really amazing at re-framing debates, while us progressives have seen the politcal ball stolen from our hands and run down the other side of the field. I'll give you an example of how they do it.
I'm sure you've all heard of the death tax. You know that scary thing that double taxes your children after you're dead and are just trying to leave them the family farm or business. You know what the death tax really is- it's estate tax and it only applies to people with very large estates (there is a measure in Washington state to eliminate the estate tax on estates over 2 million dollars- there are only 250 families in the state who would get the benefit. Don't forget to vote in November!). But it sounds like double taxation. It sounds like this tax is going to leave your greiving widow and crying children destitute to the tax man after your death. Calling it the "death tax" brings to mind some Dickens plot where formerly stable families are forced to rummage though landfills after big, bad, mean government has turned them into the streets.
How about "pro-life"? Are any of the prominent people declaring themselves pro-life trying to abolish the death penalty? Or get nationalized healthcare to improve our atrocious infant death rates? No. So what is it about them that is actually pro-life? Not much except the name. But because they have the name- those of us on the other side of the arguement must be pro-death. So we need to learn how to re-frame the debate so that our ideas are ressonate with the rest of the population.
Many Americans, however, are what Lakoff calls "biconceptual." In some parts of their lives -- at home, say -- they behave according to the nurturant-parent model, while in others -- perhaps the workplace -- they're more strict-father. The point is, they swing both ways, although in recent years, conservatives have done a much better job at persuading them to the strict-father view of things. This has happened, Lakoff believes, because conservatives really worked at it. Finding themselves out of power in the '60s and '70s, they did some serious soul-searching and consolidated their moral view of American political life. They invested heavily in the think tanks, educational institutions and media outlets that figured out how to hone their message so that it penetrated to the very heart of the American political imagination.
If progressives would only do the same thing -- get a better grasp on the moral frames that unite them and concentrate on how to express those frames properly -- Lakoff believes they could arouse the nurturant-parent models that lie dormant in the minds of most Americans. And they wouldn't have to betray their ideals or pander to centrists by "skewing right." They can win back the public (or at least the biconceptuals) "honestly, using framings, both deep and surface, that we really believe and that reveal the truth about our social, economic and political realities." That's why much of "Why Freedom?" is devoted to explaining how classic progressive issues like social welfare, universal healthcare, improved public education, fair trade, labor unionization and a less warlike foreign policy can be articulated as forms of freedom.So back to the marriage equality debate (and that is what it should be called instead of gay marriage). We need to remind people that it is not a special right, it is not creating a class of people who ge to have more access or benefits than you. It is allowing people to have the same benefits as you without diminishing anything that you already recieve.
This is why I use phrases like "forced-pregnancy" instead of "pro-life": to re-frame the debate and to call the opposition what it is instead of what it wants to be seen as. The more we use these terms - the bigger part of the lexicon they become and so do the ideas behind them.
(oh the spellcheck still ain't working right- dooda dooda)
4 comments:
This is exactly what I had in my mind when I presented my poorly framed argument for "sacrificing" gay marriage to win elections. It is about being smart, using all resources available and not just assuming because people have rights to equal treatment that the general public will accept those assumpstions without debate. Gay marriage is what it is, but without majority support from the public the battle is Sisyhpian.
I do question the phrase "pandering to centrists". Not everyone has the experience or upbringing to accept what we on the left hold as sacred. A centrists can be someone who is socially liberal, but fiscally conservative or the reverse. I see centrists as those who are potentially leftist (haha). My point is that centrists are people that we can work with to move social forward.
Every group has good ideas, left, right or center. To see working with those in the center as pandering falls right into the polarization trap the right has laid out for us. It doesn't need to be us versus them, when it could be us with them.
But you make the argument less Sisyphian by re-framing it. That's what the right has been doing forever.
A million years ago (ok- 28 or so) my hippy parents and I lived in an old hotel in the middle of nowhere, west virginia. Our nighbors were another couple of hippies that grew pot on thier farm. They were arrested. This was conservative land all the way and pot smoking free love hippies were the work of the devil. But the issue got reframed into a property rights issue at court. The West Viriginian tobacco farmers on the jury took it as a personal affront that the government could come onto someone's own land and arrest them for growing what they chose. The hippies were aquitted.
So we just need to find the right framework to make other people (call them centrists) see why marriage equality, nationalized healthcare, pulling out of iraq, and reproductive rights ect. are their beliefs too.
(hahah- my verification word is iwhor)
Totally agree. I wasn't smart enough to say these things during our tiff, but somewhere in the subterfuge I meant to something that comes close to reframing .
The word verifier should have said: I whore myself everytime I have to hold my nose to work for the "man', but that would be too much to type in the little box
I quote from your quote, cause i'm all quote-y like
"In some parts of their lives -- at home, say -- they behave according to the nurturant-parent model, while in others -- perhaps the workplace -- they're more strict-father"
I venture the worst problem that plagues our political sytem on both ends of the spectrum may be the concept of "government-as-parent" in the first place...
Post a Comment