Stylish Bostonians Have Nice Clothes, Lack Self-Awareness
Close to the Edge: Near Death on the Orange Line
This Week In Booze: If You Build It
Randazza Served and Pwnd Glen Beck in 2009
George Lakoff had a nice op-ed in the Globe on Independence Day. The piece summarized many of the points in his his new book, The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain. A linguist and founder of the Rockridge Institute, Lakoff uses the book to argue that our worldviews are based largely on different frames that provide us with structure for our thinking. Because conservatives have framed political debate in their own terms for the past few decades, our country—and its politics—are now based on a conservative worldview. In order for progressives to create change, they must re-frame the way we think about politics, ourselves, and America.
Lakoff divides schools of thought into conservative and progressive in part to avoid making distinctions across party lines, but also to emphasize that you can have both conservative and progressive frames of mind. You can think conservatively on one issue and progressively on another. What’s not rational is taking a conservative standpoint on an economic issue—like, say, taxes—based on conservative social values. The problem is that conservatives have convinced Americans to think in a consistent conservative framework. Recognizing that it is sometimes, even often, rational to hold different types of positions on different issues is one of the first steps in breaking the overarching conservative frame that shapes our nation’s current political outlook.
Progressives have been hurt in recent years because they assume an “Old Enlightenment” perspective that privileges reason and rationality, but fails to take into account that people are not naturally rational actors, and that our thinking is based more on reflex than reason. Consequently, we can be convinced (in part by framing) to do some rather irrational things—including support conservative policies. Lakoff identifies social change as material, institutional, and political, but argues that we underestimate the extent to which this change is influenced by the (often irrational) workings of our brains. Progressives think they can rely on people to use reason to make rational decisions; conservatives know they can rely on framing to make people think conservatively.
One of Lakoff’s first examples of framing (though it could also be construed as an instance of irrationality) is our overwhelming obsession with Anna Nicole Smith. He explains that Smith fulfills a number of (conflicting) familiar cultural narratives, including both the inspirational rags-to-riches social climber and the despicable gold-digger. When she died, Smith fulfilled the maxim "Live fast, die young." Smith fascinated (some of) us because we thought we understood her, and she was controversial because she fit into different frameworks. Ultimately, our understanding of Smith was based only on the cultural frameworks we imposed on her, not on any real appreciation of her as a human.
Perhaps the most important aspect of framing is that it is essentially unconscious. We’re culturally primed to think in certain ways right from the start, so it’s difficult to identify ways in which those frameworks might be skewed. Closely related to framing is metaphor, which Lakoff says affects more of our thinking than we realize. Because framing and metaphor are so intrinsic, it’s difficult to combat them. Consequently, Lakoff doesn’t argue for a “return” to reason, as such a return would be impossible. Rather, he posits that progressives should get better at framing political questions, and fast. More after the jump.
Lakoff provides several searing examples of conservatives achieving dastardly results through framing: the unending “war” on terror, the president as commander in chief and controller of the military (which is actually controlled by Congress), and unchecked wiretapping. By allowing opposition to wiretapping to be framed as “weak on terror” rather than “strong on liberty,” progressives kowtowed to the conservative framing and made us the continued victims of unwarranted government surveillance.
Privatization is a particularly damnable consequence of conservative framing. Sadly, mustering support for privatization doesn’t always require that much framing. Once the conservative view of government as an authority to which the people are subordinate bec, rather than the progressive framing of government as a tool accountable to the people, has become commonplace, the rest simply follows. By letting Blackwater (a private company) dominate “security” in Iraq and framing health "care" in terms of insurance, conservatives have put us in a position where journalists can’t report on Blackwater in Iraq without being protected by Blackwater in Iraq, and where the #1 priority of the health “care” industry is denying care to patients.
At the heart of Lakoff’s argument is a battle (interestingly echoed in a recent Daedalus article by Margaret Schabus) between self-interest and empathy. Lakoff describes the conservative worldview: Government is a disciplinary authoritarian, in charge of keeping us in line, and accountable to no one. Progressives think of government as a protective and enabling force, accountable to the people. In keeping with their opposing views of government, conservatives and progressives frame the general population differently as well.
Lakoff’s most important point, “If you accept the other side’s framing, you lose,” is nicely borne out in a few instances involving Barack Obama, a politician who has displayed some masterful framing in his campaign. The first instance, which Lakoff cites in his book, involves Obama’s response to Wolf Blitzer in a 2007 presidential debate. When Blitzer asked candidates to raise their hands if they believed English should be the official language of the U.S., Obama responded, “This is the kind of question that is designed precisely to divide us ... The issue is not whether or not future generations of immigrants are going to learn English. The question is: how can we come up with both a legal, sensible immigration policy? …when we get distracted by those kinds of questions, I think we do a disservice to the American people.” By calling Blitzer on his biased non-question, Obama reframed the debate in his own progressive terms, and was able to emerge victorious.
Obama’s recent op-ed in the Times likewise starts to re-frame the Iraq War in progressive terms. When Obama acknowledged that “it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks,” he poked holes in the conservative framework of the Iraq War as part of the “war on terror,” which Obama nicely (if still imperfectly) reframed as a more specific "war on terrorism."
Obama also astutely criticized Bush and McCain for calling “any timetable for the removal of American troops ‘surrender,’ even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.” This is a spot-on exposure of conservatives’ efforts to frame any military actions inconsistent with their own goals as “surrender.” Obama went on to say that “those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender. It’s not going to work this time. It’s time to end this war.” Obama revealed how the debate over the war was framed and how that frame was false, offering some hope for a more progressive future.
Though this Bostonist clearly sympathizes with the progressive side of things (as does Lakoff), Lakoff's overarching point still seems worrisome. He stresses that politicians must engineer the public's thought framework on political issues through linguistic framing. Though framing is clearly influential and important, emphasizing its use in politics seems dangerously close to a call for doublespeak—progressive doublespeak, maybe, but doublespeak nonetheless. We’d like to think that citizens should, instead of buying into any particular frameworks, start becoming aware of how we use frames and metaphor in our everyday understandings of the world. Only by recognizing our own "framed-ness" can we start to think outside of these frames in a more rational and independent manner.
On the note of thinking for oneself, the recent New Yorker cover debacle provides an interesting illustration of the framing phenomenon. Is the cover offensive? Only if you accept as legitimate a framework in which black people and Muslims are expected to be evil and anti-American. If you reject that framework, the idea of patriotic U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife as terrorists is exposed for what it is: a laughable absurdity. By buying into conservative frameworks and reacting to the cover with horror, “progressives” are legitimating exactly the type of terror that conservatives want blacks and Muslims to instill in the hearts of “true” Americans. In being offended, liberals are not protecting Obama, they’re protecting a conservative viewpoint and consequently allowing a conservative framework to dominate debate and acquire legitimacy. A little laughter in response to this patently ridiculous conservative framing of minorities could go a long way toward getting it—and other conservative absurdities—dismissed completely.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Post a comment (Comment Policy)