Afflicting the Afflicted Krugman

[elleng]

What did we learn from the summit? What I took away was the arrogance that the success of things like the death-panel smear has obviously engendered in Republican politicians. At this point they obviously believe that they can blandly make utterly misleading assertions, saying things that can be easily refuted, and pay no price. And they may well be right.

But Democrats can have the last laugh. All they have to do — and they have the power to do it — is finish the job, and enact health reform.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/opinion/26krugman.html?th&emc=th

[Doctor_J]

1. Utterly misleading assertions?

Is that like lies?

[xocet]

2. Well....

That is a way of implying a certain level of misdirection in Republican statements. In a black and white world, there is truth and falsehood. If shades of gray are allowed, there are statements that are true, statements that are not totally false, and statements that are totally false. The tea baggers are probably not reading Dr. Krugman's column in the New York Times, so there is no need to keep it simple for them given their restricted vocabularies and limited conceptualizations of the world. I think that it is nice to have intelligently written articles.

"Keep it simple stupid", "common sense", "that's just the way it is" and "the plain truth" are slogans that represent a mentality that denies that the world is nuanced. The Democrats should speak tea bagger when trying to convince the tea baggers - that is, everything should be reframed into very simple ideas that reinforce the frames that support Democratic ideas and policies. Complexities can be worked out later after the elections are won. However, I don't think that Democrats need to adopt tea bagger as a party language for internal communications; that would be counterproductive and limiting.

(Maybe I am taking your post too seriously.)