Persuasion Nation

WoW favorite, George Lakoff, has a new piece about the current state of the 2012 election campaign: "Why the GOP Campaign for the Presidency Is About Guaranteeing a Radical Conservative Future for America."

According to Lakoff, much of the Liberal community (media, blog, print, commentariat, punditocracy, pols, etc.) is on about how Santorum is a whack job, his policies irrational, anti-woman, etc. About how the State legislatures are engaged in a rear guard action against the inroads made in civil, feminist, and gay rights over the last couple decades. And about how gasbags like Rush Limbaugh are engaged in a 'war on women' and should be banned from the airways. All true enough.

The way this is conveyed, though, is by repeating their outrageous statements and 'gaffes', often in tones of outrage and incredulity, then refuting them in piecemeal fashion. This, Lakoff, argues merely 'catapults the propaganda' (to borrow George W. Bush's immortal phrase): it repeats and even boldfaces the Conservative point then goes small print point by point to refute it. It has the effect of reinforcing the underlying Conservative moral values without asserting any counterbalancing Liberal/Progressive morality.

Moral values, he asserts, are more powerful in the public discourse than political or policy points. They are loaded. They carry emotional heft. Intellectual arguments, logic, do not move people politically. Appeals to the emotions do.

For example, President Obama and his allies argued that Health Care Reform would benefit people with pre-existing conditions and children in college, etc. Again, all true. His opponents, meanwhile, were railing about the intrusion and even the takeover by big government of our freedoms, about the assault on our very souls by 'Obamacare's' contraceptive requirements, about 'death panels'. Bogus, I know. But they appeal to people's gut. "Hey, I don't want BIG gov'mint intruding in my life, taking away my freedoms. Why do they hate my religion? Is some faceless Washington bureaucrat gonna' kill my granny?" When it's Big Heartfelt Values vs. insurance policy regulations who's going to carry the day?

As long as liberals are arguing about the absurdity or inanity of Conservative values, they are fighting on alien territory, accepting the Conservative 'frame'. Lakoff identifies the Conservative frame as 'authoritarian' ground: the province of the "good father" who must discipline us for our transgressions but who, in the end, knows what's best for us.

Lakoff suggests that communication matters and that Liberals must not simply reject Conservative arguments, they must re-frame the debate and assert their own countervailing moral values, the values of empathy and responsibility—and, I would add, fairness. Arguing piecemeal against a coherent worldview (however inane or repellent) can never prevail.

The Santorum Strategy is not just about Santorum. It is about pounding the most radical conservative ideas into the public mind by constant repetition during the Republican presidential campaign, whether by Santorum himself, by Gingrich or Ron Paul, by an intimidated Romney, or by the Republican House majority. The Republican presidential campaign is about a lot more than the campaign for the presidency. It is about guaranteeing a radical conservative future for America.

I am old enough to remember how liberals (me included) made fun of Ronald Reagan as a not-too-bright mediocre actor who could not possibly be elected president. I remember liberals making fun of George W.Bush as so ignorant and ill-spoken that Americans couldn't possibly take him seriously. Both turned out to be clever politicians who changed America much for the worse. And among the things they and their fellow conservatives managed to do was change public discourse, and with it, change how a great many Americans thought.

The Republican presidential campaign has to be seen in this light.

So, sure, let's have at it with the goons and thugs on the Right who are attempting to rewind the feminist revolution back to the 1950's 'Father Knows Best' era and roll back civil and voting rights to the pre-Johnson era and stick all you gays back in the closet. At the same time, it's important to boldface the values we hold and share with our fellow Americans and our fellow human beings.

Every person should have the same opportunity as every other person to pursue happiness in our society; the playing field should be level in every instance. If people, through no fault of their own, fall behind, we as a society stand ready to give them a hand. If people cannot afford healthcare or food or housing, we as a society will make sure they will not starve or suffer needlessly. Everyone is entitled to be treated equally before and as a matter of the law. No one is entitled to preferential treatment. Corporations and the phenomenally wealthy, say, are not entitled to more rights than a pregnant woman or a gay person or minority member of society and should not be allowed to buy political power against the will of the people.

Another way of stating Lakoff's point: it isn't enough to be critical and argue negatively, Liberals must be seen to stand for something, not nothing. Progressives aren't nihilistic, but they come across as such if they don't have a positive point of view—and by that I don't mean a Pollyanna-ish, pie-in-the-sky, glass-half-full idealism. I mean a forthright, articulable set of values. Liberals must also establish an emotional connection with the people who make up this country. Sure, policy and politics need to be intellectually coherent and consistent (something that doesn't trouble many Conservatives, it seems). But they must also adhere—and be felt to adhere—to people's sense of fair play, honest dealing, and, yes, compassion. And be passionate about them. Often, it seems, Liberals are ashamed to be seen as such, adopting an attitude of irony. Irony, however, simply will not close the deal.

A Slumgullion of Linkage

Wisdom of the West's Man of the Year, Julian Assange, has, despite his legal troubles,* done it again. Wikileaks has published a devastating set of files documenting the use of surveillance technologies by governments world-wide: "Mass interception of entire populations is not only a reality, it is a secret new industry spanning 25 countries. It sounds like something out of Hollywood, but as of today, mass interception systems, built by Western intelligence contractors, including for ’political opponents’ are a reality. Today WikiLeaks began releasing a database of hundreds of documents from as many as 160 intelligence contractors in the mass surveillance industry..." It may not be that anyone is actively monitoring what you do at any given moment, but if someone with access and reason wanted to find out say, at some point in time, where you were and what you were doing at any given moment, they might be able to discover it via your smartphone or PC or GPS.


[* Agreed. Sexual assault is sexual assault. If Assange is guilty of same, he must answer for it. Same with Herman Cain^—who, as an establishment Republican, will never be treated as shoddily as Assange, despite the very real evidence of his behavior. What evidence? you might ask: Cain's employer, the National Restaurant Association, a U.S. lobbying firm for mostly fast-food, unhealthy joints had to pay settlements to not one but two female employees totaling some $80,000, who claimed Cain sexually assaulted them when he was the head of that company. Gag orders were imposed as the price of these agreements. That being said, Assange is not seeking election to the highest office.


{^ Does anyone not see the telltale, semi-covert, yet ham-handed machinations of Karl Rove (and his Crossroads SuperPac) all over the serial character assassinations of Mitt Romney's opponents (Palin, Trump, Bachmann, Perry, & Cain) in the Republican Presidential primary race? Really?}]


Meanwhile, Bradley Manning, who allegedly gave Wikileaks access to tens of thousands U.S. diplomatic communications—documents which Wikileaks released—is still somewhere under a jail awaiting formal court procedures.
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Speaking of criminal activity,

"Amnesty International is calling for the arrest of former President George W. Bush while he is traveling overseas in Africa.

The human rights group issued a statement Thursday calling for the governments of Ethiopia, Tanzania or Zambia to take the former president into custody. According to Amnesty, the 43rd president is complicit in torture conducted by the United States during his administration and should be held pending an international investigation. 

"International law requires that there be no safe haven for those responsible for torture; Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia must seize this opportunity to fulfill their obligations and end the impunity George W. Bush has so far enjoyed," said Amnesty senior legal adviser Matt Pollard in a statement."

Good luck with that.

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Yeah, the Bush administration. Seems that Hank Paulson, Bush's SecTreas, acted in concert and collusion with the 'too-big-to-fail' Wall Street banks without Congressional knowledge and/or oversight by giving them a heads-up about forthcoming government action w/r/t FannieMae and FreddyMac and providing bailout monies of over $7 trillion, ten times more than was disclosed to the public. This from that radical news org. Bloomberg News. It isn't surprising that Paulson's buddies used these taxpayer funds to enrich themselves while the U.S. and, in fact, the world economy tanked.

Is there a crime there somewhere?

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While we're on the topic of finance, here's a good Reddit discussion about the advantages Hedge Funds have over retail investors. It's a Wall Street type who's in sync with the Operation Wall Street crowd. The comments are particularly instructive and should be read. One interesting point is Warren Buffett's standing bet that an S & P 500 index fund will beat any hedge fund's returns over a ten-year period. The point being: if you're going to do any investing as an individual (and some of you might have that option in a workplace 401k, e.g.), a buy-and-hold strategy is best, and one which sits in a fund that apes the returns of the S & P 500 is about as good as you can get.

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While we're on the topic of OWS: whither thou? OWS has become part of the news landscape. It's almost become like following the local weather. Rather than fade away, WoW hero George Lakoff recommends that the movement translate its cultural influence into electoral power much the same way the Tea Party exerted itself: to wit,

"gain power within the Democratic Party and hence in election contests all over America. All they have to do is join Democratic Clubs, stick to their values, speak out very loudly, and work in campaigns for candidates at every level who agree with their values. If Occupiers can run tent camps, organize food kitchens and clean-up brigades, run general assemblies, and use social media, they can take over and run a significant part of the Democratic Party.

To what end? All the hundreds of the occupiers' legitimate complaints and important policy suggestions follow from a simple general moral principle: American democracy is about citizens caring about one another and acting responsibly on that care.

The idea is simple but a lot follows from it: a government that protects and empowers everyone equally, a government of the Public - public roads and buildings, school and universities, research and innovation, public health and health care, safety nets, access to justice in the courts, enforcement of worker rights, and practical necessities like sewers, power grids, clean air and water, public safety including safe food, drugs, and other products, public parks and recreational facilities, public oversight of the economy - fiscal and trade policy, banking, the stock market - and especially the preservation of nature in the interest of all.

The Public has been what has made Americans free - and has underwritten American wealth. No one makes it on his or her own. Private success depends on a robust Public."

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In local news, the Atlanta Fulton County Sheriff refused to carry out an eviction order against a 103 year old woman. Bravo, dude. Score one for the good guys and humanity.

By contrast, former Republican Sheriff of the Year, Patrick Sullivan of Colorado was arrested for selling meth for gay sex and was sent to the eponymous Patrick J. Sullivan Detention Facility. You can't make this stuff up. I mean, if I attempted to use this story for a novel, it wouldn't pass the laugh test.*

[* More on my latest project—and the cool serendipity that generated it—later. Or not.]
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Now some rockin' toons:

The Burden of Persuasion: Why Rhetoric Matters

Safety is the Cootie Wootie.

"The mechanism of intimidation is framing, not just the use of words or slogans, but rather the changing of what voters take as right as a matter of principle. Framing is much more than mere language or messaging. A frame is a conceptual structure used to think with. Frames come in hierarchies. At the top of the hierarchies are moral frames. All politics is moral. Politicians support policies because they are right, not wrong. The problem is that there is more than one conception of what is moral. Moreover, voters tend to vote their morality, since it is what defines their identity. Poor conservatives vote against their material interests, but for their moral identity."

...

"To a large extent, Democrats don't understand this. They think that language is neutral and that reason works by logic. If you just tell people the facts and reason logically, everyone should be convinced. But they aren't, because language works by framing and by brain mechanisms. Framing is just the normal way people think and talk. Conservatives tend to understand this. They avoid using liberal language. They frame issues very carefully to fit their goals. Democrats need to do the same - avoid using conservative frames and instead frame the issues with their own values.


...

"We Americans care about our fellow citizens, we act on that care and build trust, and we do our best not just for ourselves, our families, and our friends and neighbors, but for our country. Americans are called upon to share an equal responsibility to work together to secure a safe and prosperous future for their families and nation.

The conservative consolidation of power violates this most basic of democratic principles. It replaces social and personal responsibility with personal responsibility alone. It approves of the government over our lives by corporations for their own profit, and hence sees government by, of and for the people as immoral and to be eliminated.

The conservative move to defund government is a means not an end. What conservatives really want is to run the country and the world on conservative principles: to control reproduction (no abortion); to control what is taught (no public education); to control religion (conservative Christianity); to control race and language (mass deportation of Hispanic immigrants); to guarantee cheap labor (no unions); to continue white domination (no affirmative action); to continue straight domination (no gay marriage); to control markets (eliminate regulation, taxation, unions, worker rights, and tort cases); to control transportation (privatize freeways); to control elections (institute bars to voting)."

George Lakoff, 9/11: Intimidation by Framing.

Feck! Feck! Feck!

My online dictionary defines 'feckless' as lacking in effectiveness or vitality. This pretty much describes the public image of Congressional Democrats.

From its inception, WoW has urged them to use effective rhetorical framing of the sort advocated by George Lakoff and Drew Westen (full disclosure: a personal acquaintance and professional colleague of Wisdoc). Many felt it was precisely the Obama campaign's and Howard Dean's Democratic Party's campaigns' uses of positive framing that produced their stunning electoral victories in November, 2008.

Now we read that Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's Chief of Staff, who has written an entire chapter of a book criticizing Lakoff, is urging Obama and the Dems to ignore framing issues and concentrate on making Harry Reid-type legislative deals a la Sens. Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu. This, of course, is the same

Rahm Emmanuel, the man who tried to kill the 50 state strategy before it started, the man who insisted with the DLC that we should ignore the progressive base to try and win moderates, the man who is probably the reason Dean got fired from the DNC.

If the Democrats again choose to make their case like John Kerrys and Harry Reids, they are going to suffer a similar setback as Kerry did in a very winnable 2004 election.

And, guess what? The opposition hasn't stopped trying to frame their way back into power.

Nine months after he penned a memo laying out the arguments for health care legislation's destruction, Republican message guru Frank Luntz has put together a playbook to help derail financial regulatory reform.

Here were Luntz's ten frame points for defeating healthcare:

THE 10 RULES FOR STOPPING THE “WASHINGTON TAKEOVER” OF HEALTHCARE

(1) Humanize your approach.

(2) Acknowledge the “crisis” or suffer the consequences.

(3) “Time” is the government healthcare killer.

(4) The arguments against the Democrats’ healthcare plan must center around “politicians,” “bureaucrats,” and “Washington” … not the free market, tax incentives, or competition.

(5) The healthcare denial horror stories from Canada & Co. do resonate, but you have to humanize them.

(6) Healthcare quality = “getting the treatment you need, when you need it.”

7) “One-size-does-NOT-fit-all.”

(8) WASTE, FRAUD, and ABUSE are your best targets for how to bring down costs.

(9) Americans will expect the government to look out for those who truly can’t afford healthcare.

(10) It’s not enough to just say what you’re against. You have to tell them what you’re for.

Sound familiar?

Now here's Luntz's latest position paper on killing financial reform, along with comprehensive energy reform the next big Democratic legislative push. The idea is to frame the legislation as a big government program, excessive bureaucracy, a give away to special interests, potentially corrupt, full of earmarks and backroom dealing, anti-freedom, anti-populist, anti-small business owner, tax and spend, another big bank bailout, etc., etc. We've seen this approach time and time again by the right. Demagogue the debate. These are emotional issues with many voters. Defending the move with talking points about what it does and doesn't do, what it does and doesn't contain will not work. And that approach very well may have lost health care reform.

Democrats do not seem to have learned: there is a real marketing angle to getting significant legislation passed. Everyone must be on board. Essentially, it takes a movement. Lakoff argues this point here:

the movement must already have:

* A popular base;

* organizing tools;

* an overall narrative, with heroes, victims and villains;

* a generally accepted, morally-based conceptual framing;

* a readily recognizable, well-understood language;

* funding sources;

* and a national communication system set up for both leaders and ordinary citizens to use.

The base is there, waiting for something worth getting behind. The organizing tools are there. The rest is not there.

This is basic Communication 101. To be effective, there must be a moral component: reform is fundamentally right because [...] and its opponents are fundamentally wrong because [...]. And, connected to this, there must be an emotional component; the arguments must touch people where they live; bread-and-butter, kitchen-table, passion-arousing issues. Having logic and facts and good policy on your side is a plus, but it is not sufficient to win the day. You must be persuasive.

Classical, Greek rhetoricians understood this and had a word for it: enthymeme. In the parlance of our times, looking simply at the English cognates, we could translate this as using "memes" which enthuse our audience. Here is an excerpt from my draft, unpublished non-fiction treatise: The Burden of Persuasion.

"According to Aristotle, the basic unit of factual argument is the "enthymeme". Etymology: Gk: en- in, thymos mind. Thus, "to establish in the mind." An enthymeme is an informally-stated syllogism which omits either one of the premises or the conclusion from a standard syllogism. The omitted part must be clearly understood, felt, or believed by the audience. Whenever a premise is omitted in an enthymeme, it is must be either a truism or an acceptable and non-controversial generalization. By making the audience supply the missing premise or conclusion, i.e., work out the syllogism for themselves, you impress the conclusion upon them, yet in a way gentler than if you spelled it out in so many words. The audience must supply the missing term for itself.

Of course, this is the ultimate aim of argument: persuading the audience not only to agree with what you are saying (the point of rational, logical, syllogistic-type arguments), but to actually believe that what you are arguing is what they have been feeling and thinking all along. Not just saying what you feel you need to say (and saying it well)—which often comes across as lecturing or arrogance or talking-down-to-them—but persuading your audience by arguing from a common set of assumptions. When you argue from common ground, you identify with the audience, its passions and beliefs, and they instinctively feel you are one of them and will more easily be led to agree with you."

The Democrats seem not to have learned this lesson in basic communication. They come across as feckless. And so long as they rely solely on Kerry/Reid-esque wonkishness, they will continue to argue amongst themselves about minute and ultimately negligible policy differences, meanwhile losing the larger battle for the hearts and minds of the very electorate they want to rehire them later this year and, again, two years hence, an electorate that is beginning to demonstrate a fair amount of discontent. This article from the BBC, "Why do people often vote against their own interests?" makes this very point: the people do not like being lectured to by people who feel like they know more than them. My response is that 'what we have here is a failure to communicate'—a failure Obama seems to have tackled head on by meeting with the Republican congressional delegation at their annual retreat in Baltimore on Friday.

Here then is a big 'feck you' for the Congressional Democrats: listen to the electorate; identify morally and emotionally with their fears and concerns; don't get defensive, but share their outrage; you don't have to demagogue the issues, but don't lecture them or preach to them or try to tell them what you think is best for them; establish common ground; frame your policies and programs in the terms of what they already feel, believe, and think (in that order!)—because this is what you, too, truly feel, believe, and think; be real: go with what you feel and believe, not with figures and charts (that stuff is back-up support for when you're challenged by knowledgeable opponents; you must have it and you must know it and be able to deploy it appropriately, otherwise you're just demagoging); show how the opposition's policies and programs (to the extent they actually have them) are simply not consonant with what the majority of the electorate truly feel, believe, and think; and, most importantly, don't use Capitol Hill jargon and double-speak and policy-lingo—not only use arguments from common ground, but also use language that shows you share their concerns—that is, be relevant!

Incredible

I am baffled. Everywhere I turn, it seems, I read or hear some opinionated commentator either attacking or defending President Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the upcoming vacancy on the United States Supreme Court.

The degree of abject ignorance on the issue of what a judge does and what, beyond that, an appellate judge does is astounding. What's more, even seemingly bright people who should know better resort to canned, irrelevant arguments. They have formed their opinions before all the facts are in. Their feelings lead.

This is precisely the opposite of how a judicial opinion is formed. These knee-jerk commentators, however, assume that because that's how they work (they form their opinions based on how they feel about things [politics, culture, self-interest, etc.] and then argue based on their beliefs—ignoring or misconstruing facts that provide counter-examples to their opinions) they assume that because that's how they operate that's how judges work, how they decide cases. This is another species (the political variety) of the obstinate ignorance I blogged about just below.

I recall a series of questions on the LSAT about credibility. They went something like this:

Who is more credible? 

1. a conservative plumber expounding on the debt financing crisis of the 21st Century; 
2. a liberal clergy person explaining particle physics and String Theory; 
3. a lesbian chemist discussing theories of moral reasoning; 
4. a spokesman for the oil industry arguing against proposed environmental regulations; 
5. a famous actor who plays a doctor on TV asking you to purchase a certain medication; 
6. a white journalist tracing the effects on former slaves of Reconstruction legal decisions; or
7. a Mexican historian describing the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam among Lee's generals.

Obviously, this is only an approximation of the type of question, but it is illustrative. The point is:  there are relative degrees of credibility.

People who might really know how to read and critique a poem or a novel, or how to launch an effective PR campaign, or how to attack liberal politicians on TV are taking sides on the Sotomayor nomination—mostly attacking her. She used such-and-such words in a speech ten years ago. She is ethnic, maybe even Mexican. She belonged to some community group I know nothing about. She is a woman. She has a funny name. She eats funny foods. She is not like me. She is empathetic.

It's preposterous. Plain and simple: None of these flacks knows how to read a judicial or appellate opinion. They have no concept of legal reasoning. They have never tried to extract a rule or principle of law from a diverse or even contradictory set of cases. They don't know how a set of facts is properly established in a trial setting. They couldn't apply a statute or rule or even an established legal principle to a complex fact pattern, much less decide between applicable but conflicting legal or statutory or statutory or Constitutional priorities. They have not critically read all the historical decisions of the Supreme Court on any given Constitutional issue. Nor, most likely, has any of them clerked for Judge Sotomayor or argued before her or observed her courtroom manner or read all of her opinions (including the arguments that were before her).

Yet they are attacking her.

I personally have never argued before Judge Sotomayor, though I have prepared briefs for senior lawyers who have. I have read any number of her opinions (often in preparation for writing just such a brief so I could see what sort of arguments she found persuasive).  However, I simply don't have an opinion about her fitness for the Court. As I indicated in my previous post, this is why I could never be a pundit or a TV talking head. I don't form knee-jerk opinions based on my own predispositions or political predilections.

I suspect, however, because President Obama was famously a professor of Constitutional Law at one of the premier law schools in this country, that he has a sense of the caliber of her judicial mind. (I could never give the MBA president the same benefit of the doubt for reasons I've articulated a number of times in this blog. His picks were more overtly political in nature [think Harriet Myers], I felt. He wanted certain outcomes from his picks. Obama, if I read him right, is more interested in the process and the legal reasoning than the outcomes—which, to the uninitiated is the heart and soul of the law! Something they can never quite comprehend.)

Eventually, some commentators will appear who've made the effort to read all, or at least most of, her decisions. There will be attorneys who've argued before her—winners and losers. There will be her colleagues from the Southern District of New York and on the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals (arguably the pre-eminent such court in the country) who may or may not have something to say about the way she has dealt with them on the panels and en banc, who understand how she approaches the decision-making process. It is important to listen to such arguably quite credible sources—especially the winners who are against her and the losers who are for her and don't have some sort of political axe to grind.  Read some of her opinions (you can find many of them on line).  Listen to the Senate hearings.  Take all points of view into consideration. Try to understand the rationales of both sides. Assess their relative credibility. Judge for yourself.

Just recognize, a judicial opinion is not like "I like Coke better than Pepsi" or "I pull for the Tar Heels" or "I always vote Republican" or "I hate Winnipeg."  It's a lot more complicated and involves a process in which both sides on any given issue have had an opportunity to give it their best shot in an adversarial proceeding; and the judge has taken their relative contributions into consideration, weighed the arguments against the appropriate legal standards, and rendered a decision with the sort of legal reasoning that can be applied again and again (except, of course, in cases like Bush v. Gore, but that's a post for another day).  And those who don't know this or don't understand this or refuse to acknowledge this—they are simply not credible, no matter how loud they shout or blog or Tweet.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

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Btw: If you're interested, here's an essay by George Lakoff concerning that whole "empathy" matter. I've posted plenty about agápē and Max Scheler and humanism and the (un-)wisdom of crowds, among other things, if you want to know my own view.

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UPDATE: Here's a great piece by another of my favorites, Stanley Fish, on this issue. Sorry I missed it the first time around. He makes the distinction between a decision that seems to be technically legally correct and yet seems unjust and one that is just but doesn't necessarily appear to follow the legal precedents strictly. On the surface, this is a valid distinction. But at the time many of the law review articles he cites were written, there simply weren't that many precedents to draw on. Since, say 1984, we've witnessed an explosion of case law of almost geometric proportions. Frankly, any good judge can find a precedent or even a thread of legal reasoning that conforms with his notion of justice; you just have to know how to frame the issue and do your research. What's more, a really good judge looks at all the precedents and then attempts to derive sound principles from them, especially where there are conflicting rulings—asking: what principle are these rulings attempting to inculcate?—and then applies the principle (not the strict legal precedent) to the case at hand. Harmonizing conflicting or even hostile legal rulings thus is a high-powered legal skill. Having a sound, consistent, and coherent set of principles and knowing how they apply and, importantly, when to apply them is the mark a great legal mind. And this, as I've argued above, is quite different from simply having a knee-jerk political reaction ("I'm pro-business", "I'm anti-abortion", "I'm anti-gun control", "I'm pro-States Rights"—that's you, Justice Thomas) and basing one's decisions on one's predilections or interests.

The Po-Mo Prometheus

Sorry if my last post ended on a glum note. After writing it, I wondered where that bit of pessimism came from in me.

I had to think, questioning some of my basic assumptions about my expectations for Obama's presidency. If you look back over the last year of posts here on WoW, you'll find a number of feuilletons railing against what I believe to have been war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Bush administration. Other, more connected, more important people (including some in Congress) have taken up the mantle. Let's hope they keep at it.

I needed a frame of reference because that sort of came out of nowhere. Now, I'm not necessarily a Jungian or a Joseph Campbellite depth psychologist, but I do believe mythology often supplies us with narratives to help us understand our experience—as, of course, does literature. So, as I've done in the past, I looked to mythology for a template. My likening of McCain/Palin to the Narcissus/Echo myth is Exhibit A. So, thinking in terms of myths, I suppose I wanted Obama to be like Hercules and clean out the Augean stables of the muck and shit left behind by the prior administration.

Lakoff's piece, The Obama Code, threw me off my frame. What Lakoff seems to be saying—and, again, forgive me for using a mythological narrative as an interpretive tool—is that Obama is more like Prometheus; he is trying to bring the fire of moral conscience to society. Let me explain:

Briefly, the familiar story of Prometheus: he was one of the Titans who sided with Zeus against his own kind. In some versions of the story, he was the creator of the human race. He tricked Zeus into accepting animal sacrifices of fat and bones, allowing humanity to eat the meat. He stole fire from the immortals and brought it to the human race. Zeus punished him for this, first by sending Pandora with her box as the first woman, then by having him chained to the Caucasus Mountains where an eagle or vulture came every day and feasted on his liver (which, of course, regenerated every night).

The symbolic act that stands out, of course, is the bringing of fire. In some versions of the story, Prometheus stole it from the sun; in others, from the Olympian gods themselves who had been hiding it from humanity. In Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, he also is claimed to have rescued humanity from destruction and taught them the arts of civilization. For this act of defiance against the gods and for his choosing to side with humanity against the gods, Zeus exiled him, imprisoned him, and subjected him to eternal torture.

My pessimism, I think, stemmed from this myth. The learning is that consciousness-raising is invariably a painful psychological upheaval. That's at the individual level. But, in the social arena there's a parallel: The elite, the status quo, the powers-that-be (=the gods) cannot abide the lower classes (=mere mortals) having the same privileges (=fire) they enjoy. When one of their own—preferably a newbie—effects such a betrayal by enlightening those they consider their lessers, they will surely try to bring him down.

This is what Obama, if I read Lakoff aright, has done.

The mantra of the religionist reformer has always been that you have to change the inner person before you can effect behavioral and, indeed, societal change. That is the aim of 'conversion'. But we live in a secular society and politicians are not priests.

From 20th Century analytic philosophy, we glean that understanding the way the mind works can only truly come about through understanding the way language works: again, the model of consciousness. Changing the rhetoric of politics would represent, then, on this model, an attempt to reform politics, in specific, and society, in general.

What Obama is attempting to do, according to Lakoff's Obama Code, is inculcate a moral conscience in the consciousness of the nation: social responsibility and accountability. The resistance to this has been fierce among certain groups already, principally those who cannot see beyond their own noses: that is, those for whom there is no greater and no other morality or accountability than that of the individual. To make people aware of their own collective responsibility is a Promethean transgression akin to stealing fire from the gods and bringing it to humanity. And it is sufficient to invite their everlasting animosity.

There is some reason for hope, however; again, hewing close to the interpretive power of the myth: Prometheus was eventually rescued from his torture and exile by...drumroll please...Hercules! So, on our interpretation, it may, indeed, take a cleaning out of the Augean stables—prosecuting the Bush administration for its crimes and cleaning out the Constitutional muck they left behind—to save Obama from their wrath.



Do you think this is stretching it?

The Obama Code

There was something very different about Pres. Obama's speech to the nation and, incidentally, to the assembled bicameral legislature Tuesday night (24 Feb. 2009). For roughly 24 of the past 28 years (ignoring the truculent George Herbert Herbert Bush), these speeches have felt more like performances: there have been stock muggings and pauses for applause lines, there have been rote coded 'dogwhistle' turns of phrase geared to excite certain key constituent bases, there has been preening egotism and petulance. I could go on.

Obama claims he wants to change the tone of the rhetoric on Capitol Hill. Of course, so did GWB and Clinton. Clinton, I think, tried but failed. GWB, as per usual, lied. Obama, on Tuesday, sounded like a roll-up-his-sleeves-and-get-to work problem-solver, something I've asserted here. This is different—at least for now. We can only hope he doesn't become corrupted by the status quo.

One of Obama's advisers, George Lakoff, Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, gave us fair notice of what Obama was hoping to accomplish "because tens of millions of Americans--both conservatives and progressives--don't yet perceive the vital sea change that Obama is bringing about." Thus, we have what he calls: The Obama Code. It's been all over the Web.

Briefly, Lakoff asserts Obama is focusing, first, on values over programs. Obama has a vision of the fundamental values of this country and with his budget he is looking to implement, cut, or expand programs based on the values they inculcate. Second, the key value behind our avowed national emphasis on freedom, fairness, and equality is empathy:

"empathy-based moral values are the opposite of the conservative focus on individual responsibility without social responsibility. They make it intolerable to tolerate a president who is The Decider--who gets to decide without caring about or listening to anybody. Empathy-based values are opposed to the pure self-interest of a laissez-faire "free market," which assumes that greed is good and that seeking self-interest will magically maximize everyone's interests. They oppose a purely self-interested view of America in foreign policy. Obama's foreign policy is empathy-based, concerned with people as well as states--with poverty, education, disease, water, the rights of women and children, ethnic cleansing, and so on around the world."

{Seems to me like he takes to heart the values inscribed in the Declaration of Independence and is not a faux Constitutional strict constructionist.]

The third aspect of Obama's appeal is "biconceptualism". Essentially, this means he can work with, let's say, Sen. X on economic matters because they share the same values even though they have to agree to disagree on foreign policy or other issues. This builds a fluid, issue-based web of value constituencies which excludes only the most ideological 'my way or the highway' hardened partisans.

The fourth idea reconceives the role of government as two-fold: protection and empowerment. "The idea is that government has twin moral missions: protection and empowerment. Protection includes not just military and police protection, but protections for the environment, consumers, workers, pensioners, disaster victims, and investors." Obama recognizes there are more stakeholders in the role of government than the party in power and its base. [We discussed this idea of broad base of stakeholders here.]

The fifth idea is a recognition that budgetary and economic priorities represent moral choices. The Bushes and Reagan never got this, or else their morality was perversely skewed to aid multinational corporations and the wealthy elite on the backs of the lower and middle classes. Don't kid yourself: there has been a transfer-of-wealth class war going on in this country, with little respite, since the Reagan days. It's just that the assets of the public sector have been pillaged by the well-connected, moneyed classes who, in turn, further received favorable marginal tax rate cuts. Viewed as a moral issue, this is reprehensible—and any honest religionist will tell you so.

Further, according to Lakoff, Obama recognizes the 'big picture' aspects of economics and government: there are systemic causes and systemic risk. That is to say, we as a society have a social responsibility to the rest of the world not to consume all its natural resources and destroy its environment, for example. No single SUV or carbon dioxide spewing factory is going to destroy the global environment, but the collective risk of doing nothing about the totality and proliferation of such things is huge. To ignore this is not only morally bankrupt, it could be suicidal.

Finally, because Professor Lakoff can say it so much better than I—and because it sounds suspiciously like it ties into a theme I've been pursuing lately here at WoW—I quote:

"As President, Barack Obama must speak in patriotic language. But all patriot language in this country is "contested." Every major patriotic term has a core meaning that we all understand the same way. But that common core meaning is very limited in its application. Most uses of patriotic language are extended from the core on the basis of either conservative or progressive values to produce meanings that are often opposite from each other.

I've written a whole book, Whose Freedom?, on the word "freedom" as used by conservatives and progressives. In his second inaugural, George W. Bush used "freedom," "free," and "liberty" over and over--first, with its common meaning, then shifting to its conservative meaning: defending "freedom" as including domestic spying, torture and rendition, denial of habeus corpus, invading a country that posed no threat to us, a "free market" based on greed and short-term profits for the wealthy, denying sex education and access to women's health facilities, denying health care to the poor, and leading to the killing and maiming of innocent civilians in Iraq by the hundreds of thousands, all in the name of "freedom." It was anything but a progressive's view of freedom--and anything but the view intended in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.

For forty years, from the late 1960's through 2008, conservatives managed, through their extensive message machine, to reframe much of our political discourse to fit their worldview. President Obama is reclaiming our patriotic language after decades of conservative dominance, to fit what he has correctly seen as the ideals behind the founding of our country.
"Freedom" will no longer mean what George W. Bush meant by it. Guantanamo will be closed, torture outlawed, the market regulated. Obama's inaugural address was filled with framings of patriotic concepts to fit those ideals. Not just the concept of freedom, but also equality, prosperity, unity, security, interests, challenges, courage, purpose, loyalty, patriotism, virtue, character, and grace. Look at these words in his inaugural address and you will see how Obama has situated their meaning within his view of fundamental American values: empathy, social and well as personal responsibility, improving yourself and your country. We can expect further reclaiming of patriotic language throughout his administration."

Again, Lakoff, echoing my previous post:

"The conservative message machine is huge and still going. There are dozens of conservative think tanks, many with very large communications budgets. The conservative leadership institutes are continuing to turn out thousands of trained conservative spokespeople every year. The conservative apparatus for language creation is still functioning. Conservative talking points are still going out to their network of spokespeople, who still being booked on tv and radio around the country. About 80% of the talking heads on tv are conservatives. Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are as strong as ever. There are now progressive voices on MSNBC, Comedy Central, and Air America, but they are still overwhelmed by Right's enormous megaphone. Republicans in Congress can count on overwhelming message support in their home districts and homes states. That is one reason why they were able to stonewall on the President's stimulus package. They had no serious media competition at home pounding out the Obama vision day after day."

Indeed, language matters. Policies matter. Budgets matter. Values matter.

David Brooks, the credentialed conservative columnist for the New York Times, called Lousiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's response to Obama's speech an "insane", "nihilist" "disaster". That sounds about right. Obama is seeking to be transformative, and Lakoff's Code, if accurate, represents nothing other than a true "transvaluation" of the so-called values that have driven this country's and, in point of fact because of our power and influence, the world's economy and environment into the toilet. They hate him. They will try to tear him down; it's what they do.

Socrates is wise

The whole politics thing is baffling to me. So much of what goes on in campaigning is based on emotional appeals. Images are created and marketed, or branded—think of the 'W' campaign, particularly in 2004, targeted particularly to the aspirant middle class—while opposing images are tarnished—think of the Kerry 'flip-flopper' and 'coward, hippie, war-protester' assault that same year. In 2000, George Bush was marketed as the guy most Americans would like to have a beer with, while Al Gore could never overcome the 'stuffed-shirt, policy wonk' image he was cast as.

Candidates must have policies. And they, or their retainers, must have thought these policies through (you'd think). There is a certain rationality to whatever policies they have; whether it is 'this is the policy we need to hold to correct a certain problem' or 'this is the policy we need to hold to get elected' or 'this is the policy that best serves the interests of our constituents and pleases our partisans.' These are all rational, practical political calculations. And, indeed, certain people pay attention to these things and make decisions based on them.

But it seems to me that the vast majority of the American electorate is ignorant of the actual policies and positions of the candidates seeking office. They are easily fooled by the emotional appeals of the images sold to them by those seeking office—if they care, or even vote. One partisan analysis of this feature of American politics struck me as spot on: Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas looks at the reasons rural, agrarian Kansans voted against their own economic interests and sided with plutocratic Republicans in the 2000 election. Another analysis, this one by a psychologist, Drew Westen's The Political Brain, agrees that emotional appeals to values—the use of rhetoric—has been a major factor in swaying elections in recent campaigns because our brains are hard-wired to be susceptible to our gut-level responses. And George Lakoff, a linguistics professor, has demonstrated how political marketers (can) use "frames" in their craft—the careful selection of words and terms for their connotations, allusions, and emotional appeal—to communicate subtle values that appeal not to the brain but the gut (or heart).

Lest you think I'm being overly partisan here, Frank Luntz, the conservative Republican pollster and consultant, has written a major book on precisely this topic: Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear.

If that all feels like too much reading, you can see Lakoff, Westen, and Luntz discussing these issues in a terrific forum from the New York Public Library back last November here.

But if you want to get back to the roots of this age-old issue, you need look no further than Plato's depiction of Socrates in his debates with the sophists—the teachers of rhetoric and political oratory of his day.

The opinion of the majority about knowledge is that it is not anything strong, which can control and rule a man; they don't look at it that way at all, but think that often a man who possesses knowledge is ruled not by it but by something else, in one case passion, in another pleasure, in another pain, sometimes lust, very often fear... . Protagoras 352b3-9.

Bottom line: The appeal to the emotions—to greed or fear, pleasure or pain, love or hatred—is strong medicine and often causes people to vote against their own rational interests (knowledge).

This leaves us with the question for future postings: Is demagogy the best or, indeed, the only way to win a heavily contested election in this country?