The media is no longer a benefit to democracy

Rachel Maddow gets most of it - and Cenk Uygar describes what is going on in the media. It's more than just what Rachel maddow describes as IOKIYAR (It's OK If You Are Republican.) It's what George Lakoff writes about in his book The Political Mind: Why Your can't understand the 21st-century American Politics with and 18th-Century Brain.

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George Lakoff describes how The brain deals with frames and scenarios. The memory is able to take in things that fit an existing frame in the brain, but things that do not fit an existing frame are discarded. So how are facts that don't fit an existing frame discarded?

That's older psychology. The term Cognitive Dissonance describes it. My previous post Global Warming threatens the very sense of self of conservatives so they reject the science reflexively describes how cognitive dissonance works for people to avoid facts that challenge core beliefs which make up their selves.

This is psychology that has been public long enough to be rather well known. What George Lakoff is writing about is how cognitive dissonance actually works in the brain and how the right wing is using that knowledge to manipulate the American voting public.

Go read the Lakoff book! What is happening in modern American politics is that the conservatives who want power and money are using the ways the human brain works to move to dominate the American voting public. Cenk Uygar describes it in this as it is playing out very well. What George Lakoff does is describe the brain science behind it.

Lakoff explains framing of issues!

What does it mean "to frame an issue?"

This article by George Lakoff provides clear examples of how framing an issue can cause people to either support or oppose it. The article then explains the neurolinguistic basis of the different decisions. First an example of how framing changes voting decisions.

This is the first item:

[But]the NY Times reported last month on a NYT/CBS Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell poll on whether "homosexuals" or "gay men and lesbians" should be allowed to serve openly in the military. Seventy-nine percent of Democrats said they support permitting gay men and lesbians to serve openly. Fewer Democrats however, just 43 percent, said they were in favor of allowing homosexuals to serve openly. That's a 36 percent framing shift on the same literal issue, but not surprising since the words evoked very different frames, one about sex and the other about rights. Newsworthy for the NY Times, but hardly earthshaking.

This is the second item:

But a recent poll by David Binder, perhaps the premier California pollster, showed a framing shift of deep import for Democrats -- a shift of 69 percent on the same issue, depending on the framing. It was noteworthy not just because of the size of the framing shift on the main question, but because the shift was systematic. Roughly, around 18 percent of voters showed that their values are not fixed. They think BOTH like liberals and conservatives -- depending on how they understand the issue. With a liberal value-framing, they give liberal answers; with a conservative value-framing, they give conservative answers. What is most striking is that conservatively framed poll questions are all too often written by Democrats thinking they are neutral. The result is a Democratic move to the right for what are thought to be "pragmatic" reasons, but which are actually self-defeating.

Here is the background.

California is the only state with a legislature run by minority rule. Because it takes a 2/3 vote of both houses to either pass a budget or raise revenue via taxation, 33.4 percent of either house can block the entire legislative process until it gets what it wants. At present 63 percent of both houses are Democrats and 37 percent are far-right Republicans who have taken the Grover Norquist pledge not to raise revenue and to shrink government till it can be drowned in a bathtub. They run the legislature by saying no. This has led to gridlock, huge deficits from lack of revenue, and cuts so massive as to threaten the viability of the state.

Unfortunately, most Californians are unaware of the cause of the crisis, blaming "the legislature," when the cause is only 37 percent of "the legislature," the 37 percent that runs the legislature under minority rule.

The extended discussion in the article provides some of the subtle political implications of this situation.

Then the author goes on to explain the neurological basis for this kind of frame-shift.

There are two political value-systems that voters have, call them Pro and Con. (You might think them as Progressive and Conservative, though no overall views are tested in the poll.) About 40-to-45 percent have a consistently Pro-worldview. About 35-to-40 percent have a consistently Con worldview. About 18 percent have BOTH worldviews, and the understanding provided by language can trigger one or the other, resulting in a shift.

Now things get really interesting. The DBR poll found a way to test this explanation. The respondents to the poll were asked if they found the pro- and con-arguments convincing or unconvincing. On the battery of pro-arguments, an average of 57 percent found the pro-arguments convincing and 38 percent found them unconvincing.

On the battery of con-arguments, 57 percent found the con-arguments convincing and 41 percent found them unconvincing. The same high percentage -- 57% on average -- who were convinced by the pro-arguments were also convinced by the con arguments! As in the shift found in the support for the initiatives, the wording resulted in a shift of about the same magnitude.

The author of this article, George Lakoff, is discussing one poll in depth in order to explain what liberals are doing wrong politically. I strongly suggest reading the entire article as well as looking at the detail of his examples which I have not included here. His final conclusion is an important takeaway for all of us who want to keep the America that lives up to the aspirations of the Constitution.

I have been arguing over the past decade and a half that progressives need to build a communication system of their own to (1) express the values they really believe in, to (2) to communicate the truth, (3) to use their own values-based language to show the moral significance of those truths, and (4) avoid communicating conservative beliefs they do not hold, especially by avoiding the language of conservatism. The poll results just discussed reflect the failure of progressives to do so.

There is no left-wing, right-wing or center, just Progressives and Authoritarians

George Lakoff gets it (mostly) right. The idea that there are political left-wingers, political right-winters and political centrists is a fiction, created by People who do not understand people or politics. The apparent linear spectrum is a creation of ignorant people who want unrelated things to be related.

There are two systems of values and modes of thought -- call them progressive and conservative (or nurturant and strict, as I have). There are total progressives, who use a progressive mode of thought on all issues. And total conservatives. And there are lots of folks who are what I've called "biconceptuals": progressive on certain issue areas and conservative on others. But they don't form a linear scale. They are all over the place: progressive on domestic policy, conservative on foreign policy; conservative on economic policy, progressive on foreign policy and social issues; conservative on religion, but progressive on social issues and foreign policy; and on and on. No linear scale. No single set of values defining a "center." Indeed many of such folks are not moderate in their views; they can be quite passionate about both their progressive and conservative views. [Snip]

Get rid of the very idea of the right and the left and the center. American ideas are fundamentally progressive ideas -- the ideas this country was founded on and that carry forth that spirit. Progressives care about people and the earth, and act with responsibility and strength on that care.

The progressive view of government is simple. Progressive government has two aspects: protection and empowerment. Protection is far more than the military, police, and fire departments. It includes consumer protection, worker protection, environmental protection, public health, food and drug safety; social security, and other safety nets. It also includes protection from the government itself, and hence a balance of powers, openness, fundamental rights, and so on.

Empowerment include roads and bridges; public education; government-developed communications like the internet and satellite communications systems; the banking system; the SEC and institutions that make a stock market possible, and the court system, mostly about contracts and corporate law. Progressive government makes business possible. No one makes any money in this country without the progressive empowerment by government. A progressive foreign policy is not based solely, or even mainly, on the state -- about the "national interest" defined as our military strength and GDP. Progressive foreign policy focuses on individual people's interests as well as national interests: on poverty, disease, refugees, education, women's and children's issues, public health, and so on.

These are simply American values. The progressive movement is a patriotic American movement. People who call themselves "centrists" share progressive views on important issue areas, but have conservative views on other major issue areas. The areas vary from person to person. There is no single moral perspective, no single set of agreed upon issues.

I disagree with Lakoff that there are progressives and conservatives. There are actually progressives and authoritarians. Progressives want to empower other people. Authoritarians, operating from fear of those who are different from them or who are not under their power, want to control and tyrannize others.

People who cannot understand comedy are authoritarians. Authoritarians cannot accept the ambiguity that is the bedrock of good comedy. They base their decisions and actions on fear of being wrong or of losing something, or on fear that someone else will get something they don't have. Authoritarians demand certainty and control of those near them. That's why the authoritarians like Tom DeLay have removed the progressive Republicans from their Party.

We Democrats have strayed too far from Progressivism. Instead of fear, progressivism is based on respect for others, curiosity regarding the unknown and a tolerence for ambiguity (assuming that it will be resolved in its own time.) It is time to return to the roots of America.