The rich and powerful are not worried about the afterlife. They truly believe that they can buy their way into heaven much like jihadists who believe that they will be greeted by many virgins when they kill non-believers. Delusional till the end. So sad. Christian? You’re kidding, right? You can’t cherry pick the Ten Commandments including “Thou Shalt not bear false witness.” Anyone who deliberately lies for a living to cover the lies of others cannot possibly be a Christian. Sarah Huckleberry is a typical Southern Talibaptist preacher’s kid.
So here’s the thing you need to really, really understand about “Christian” conservatives™ / Republicans / Libertarians / conservatives … there are a few terms that they viscerally respond to, on a subconscious level. After years and years of conditioning by Fox News, Reddit and Brightbart, they’ve been trained on a deep, Pavlovian level to immediately agree or disagree with certain GOP talking points and catch phrases, almost without any additional context.
If, for example, you say the words, “Second Amendment Rights,” it almost doesn’t even matter what other words are before or after. That’s an “up” phrase that rallies the troops. Same thing if you use the magic words “Christian,” or “choice,” or “job creators,” or “tax cuts,” or “freedom,” or “free market,” … it doesn’t matter if they can’t define what a “free market” is, and it doesn’t even matter that they aren’t wealthy enough for any Republican tax cuts – somehow they all just instinctively know they love those things, with no further explanation needed.
Conversely, there are a litany of “down” keywords that they instinctively know to hate: “regulation,” “government,” “public schools,” “equal rights,” “Obama,” “Obamacare,” “Clinton,” “Islam,” “social justice” …. conservatives have literally—LITERALLY—trained their supporters to behave like well trained dogs who sit up, roll over or bark at the slightest mention of a few well placed words.
While progressives are giving dissertations and trying to explain complex concepts, conservatives only have to utter a few simple code words, and they’ve already convinced everyone on their side. If anybody walks into a conservative setting and yells out, “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED!” they automatically win the argument. What argument, you ask? What’s the full quote? What are their supporting arguments? Silly you. It doesn’t matter. Someone said the magic words, and they already won. And I’m not being the slightest bit hyperbolic.
This is why conservatives dislike “liberal” universities that teach students independent thought, or to question authority, or to question the status quo. And this is why overly simplistic Republican talking points can easily fit on a bumper sticker – as long as you use the proper dog whistles, the intended recipients will completely understand the unspoken commands.
What I’m describing here is essentially brainwashing, via propaganda and the magic of 24/7/365 mass media. There are already several generations of devout conservatives who have been weaned on it, and you cannot un convince them with logic and reason, because logic and reason weren’t used to convince them in the first place.
This can be used as a propaganda technique, but more directly this is an example of the GOP using framing to their advantage.
Just like @odinsblog just covered, Conservative’s have short simple messaging that gets across their ideas with few words. You hear tax relief and you immediately think that they are trying to cut taxes, primarily on the wealthy and Corporations under the false premise that lowering taxes will cause the economy to grow so much that the government will have more money to spend even under the lower tax rates. This claim cuts through and resonates with people even though that has never happened in our history.
After a simple two-word propaganda technique, those of us on the left then have to use a paragraph to explain our vision. So, how does the right seems to be able to get a full idea across with so few words?
The answer simply is that they take advantage of framing.
Honestly, Framing is a complicated idea to grasp. Technically, frames are mental structures that shape the way we see our world. They are the ideas that are conveyed to you through outside stimulus. For example, when someone says the word dog, your brain automatically and without your control, begins to bring to mind things that are related to a dog. You think about how they bark, or are “man’s best friend” maybe about how they are furry and friendly. Your mind begins constructing a mental image of a dog.
Just like if you hear the name Donald Trump you may think: Angry Creamsicle, fascist cheetto, short finger vulgarian or fuckface von clownstick. This is all to help you create an idea of what a Donald Trump is.
A great political example of this is Republican usage of dog whistle rhetoric. These are short phrases used to invoke something other than their actual proclaimed statement. For example, Inner city means impoverished minority neighborhood. This becomes evident when you realize that politicians never call lower Manhattan the inner city, no matter how central a location it is in its metro area.
In this instance, we can see that words invoke ideas. We do not define the word for something so much as our mind accesses existing frames to convey an idea of what those words are meant to say. This is further exemplified by the fact that when we hear a new word, we ask what it means far more often than we ask someone for a definition.
If this is how language is processed by our brain, how can we take advantage of this?
Lakoff discusses in his book “Don’t Think of an Elephant” how in he does an exercise with his Cognitive Science 101 class at Berkley when they begin studying frames. I would like for us to try it together. It is a really simple exercise, all I want you to do is to not think of an elephant. Just don’t think of an elephant
As you may have noticed, that no matter what you do, you cannot keep yourself from thinking of an elephant. The minute the word elephant is heard the frames in your brain activate, you begin thinking about floppy ears and a trunk, grey skin and that they are afraid of mice. Even the negation of the statement by telling you to not think of something, cannot keep your brain from doing this automatically. When we negate a frame, we invoke that frame.
This gives us our first rule of framing, Do not use the language of the opposition.
By using their language you inadvertently put peoples minds exactly where you don’t want them to be. Even if you argue against an idea using the opposition’s framing, for example, by using their wording, you make people think about the problem in the exact way the Republicans want them to.
We have a great example from the George W Bush administration of how the left tends to hurt their own cause by using Republican language. Bringing back the same topic we dealt with earlier in tax relief. George W Bush began using the term “tax relief” when talking about cutting taxes for the wealthy. It sounds neutral until you begin breaking down what it is really saying. To have relief from something there must be a hardship that must be overcome. Also, those that are fighting on behalf of ending that affliction are Heroes, while those that fight against it are the villains.
When GW added the word “tax” to relief, he then identified the scourge that must be overcome.
After not too long, the news, and not just Fox news but CNN The New York Times and MSNBC began calling it “George W Bush’s Tax Relief Plan.” and not too long after that even the Democrats start calling it tax relief, shooting themselves in the foot by filling the “villain” role just like the framing intended.
So then, George W Bush is the Hero, the Democrats the villains and as we know, “tax relief” for the wealthy gets passed.
GW Bush showed us exactly what framing is about. It is about finding the language that fits your worldview. It requires using language that invokes the ideas that you want your audience to understand. The ideas are what we are trying to convey, the language we use is just the vehicle to transmit those ideas.
Cognitive science has shown that we understand our general society through our more common smaller societal groupings, namely family. We have founding fathers, daughters of the American revolution while we send our “sons to war" to be brothers in arms, Lakoff offers a theory. That there are two major views of our American Family. One is called the Strict father model and the other the nurturing parent model. This is the framing through which most members of the two major parties see the world.
According to Lakoff, people who subscribe to the strict father model believe, “The world is a dangerous place, and it always will be, because there is evil out there in the world. The world is also difficult because it is competitive. There will always be winners and losers. There is an absolute right and an absolute wrong. Children are born bad, in the sense that they just want to do what feels good, not what is right. Therefore, they have to be made good. What is needed in this kind of a world is a strong, strict father who can: • Protect the family in the dangerous world, • Support the family in the difficult world, and • Teach his children right from wrong.”
On the other hand, he states that subscribers to the nurturing parent model believe, “Both parents are equally responsible for raising the children. The assumption is that children are born good and can be made better. The world can be made a better place, and our job is to work on that. The parents’ job is to nurture their children and to raise their children to be nurturers of others. your moral responsibility to teach your child to be a happy, fulfilled person who wants others to be happy and fulfilled”
We can begin to see how each of these worldviews affect the policy positions of each party. If you believe that a father figure is needed to define right from wrong, you would advocate for laws that restrict things you believe are wrong or support the nations father figure, our beloved cheetto in chief, in deciding what is right or wrong. If you think freedom is more important, you advocate for the removal of laws that do not have anything but a moral barring.
Over the past 40 years, conservatives have been very effective in getting their message out. They have ridden it to electoral victory, leaving them in control of a majority of state legislators, governorships, house and senate seats in addition to the presidency. In order to see the way forward, we need to look and see their successes, currently and where they stood prior to this wave of victory, and see how we can use these same strategies ourselves.
One thing that we need to do as progressives, is to look and see what we can learn from victories and failures on both sides. We must understand that we have the advantage of having the facts, the science and ultimately the better policies for all Americans, if we take advantage of the strategies that the Republicans have used to win with their shittier ideas, we will be unstoppable.
Bring it on home, Tony!
Never accept *their* framing to deliver *your* message. And always, always, always challenge their premise.
ugh 