9/11, Intimidation via Framing (George Lakoff)

[struggle4progress]

By George Lakoff, Reader Supported News
11 September 11
The use of 9/11 to consolidate conservative power: Intimidation via framing.


y wife, Kathleen, and I stood gaping at the TV as we watched the towers fall. Kathleen said to me, "Do you realize what Bush and Cheney are going to do with this?" We both realized very well. Until 9/11, the Bush presidency was weak. On 9/11, Cheney understood that the attack was an opportunity to take control, and take control he did. Colin Powell recommended calling the attack a crime. But Cheney understood that if it were framed as an act of war, then Bush and Cheney would be given war powers. So war it was, a metaphorical "war" on terror. The American people, intimidated by the vision of the towers falling, accepted the framing. Democrats, seeing the reaction of their constituents, went along with the framing. Except for my congresswoman, Barbara Lee. I ran to my computer to be the first to congratulate her on her no vote.

Terror meant everyone should be afraid of terrorists. Throughout the Midwest the predictable happened. A highly memorable event raises one's judgment of the probability that it will happen to them. All over America people started being afraid of terrorists. Bush asked for and got unlimited war powers and the Patriot Act.

From 9/11 on, the American people have been subject to conservative intimidation by framing. I've now written five books explaining how framing works in the brain and what citizens could do about it - Moral Politics, Don't Think of an Elephant, Whose Freedom?, Thinking Points, and The Political Mind. The books were based on results from the cognitive and brain sciences on how reason about social and political issues really works - primarily in terms of morally-based frames, metaphors, and narratives, and only secondarily, if at all, in terms of policy, facts, and logic. Those books were widely used by Democrats in the 2006 and 2008 elections - and they helped.

But since the 2008 election, conservative intimidation of the electorate via framing has come back big time, with no adequate Democratic defense against it. With a Democratic president in office, Democrats, both citizens and office-holders, turned their attention to policy and logical, fact-based arguments for the policies. In response to the president's health care policies, conservatives attacked on the moral front, choosing two moral values from their value system: freedom ("government takeover") and life ("death panels"). Knowing well that morality trumps lists of policy details, lists of facts, and logic, conservatives won that framing encounter, and have kept winning. Why? Because people, using their real reason, normally think unconsciously in terms of morally based systems of frames, metaphors, and narratives ...

http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/291-144/7393-focus-911-intimidation-via-framing

[WhiteTara]

1. I wish he would give solutions rather than state the problem

yet again. We know these things, but what is the way to frame reality so that crazy people will want to join in rational actions? :shrug: George we need your answers and guidance.

[bananas]

2. In the article, he gives the solution

"The main voters you want to affect are the bi-conceptuals, those who are conservative on some issues and progressive on others; that is, those who have both conservative and progressive moral worldviews, but on different issues."
...
"Democrats need to do the same - avoid using conservative frames and instead frame the issues with their own values."