[Peace-discuss] Fw: Re: George Lakoff on Republican choice of Sarah Palin

[Jenifer Cartwright]

An exchange betw and AK friend and me...

--- On Thu, 9/11/08, Jenifer Cartwright  wrote:








First and foremost, McCain and (esp Palin) are waving the flag, simplifying and reassuring everyone that any doubts they might have had about the war and the military are ridiculuous. Sarah's got TWO relatives -- son and nephew -- heading to Iraq (which trumps Biden's one son), and she's happy and proud to see them going over there to fight evil!! It's rah rah WW ll (and immediately post 9/11) all over again: This country is the best, can do no wrong, McCain and Palin are the best for the country and world... Not sure the Dems can fight that, except discrediting McCain and Palin themselves, showing them for the liars they are... and then (maybe) the rest of the patriotic BS goes w/ it... 
 
Do the Repub handlers have McCain on thorozine these days? He's ...  soooooo .....  caaaaallllllmmmmm......
 --Jenifer 

--- On Thu, 9/11/08, Helene Feiner wrote:

George Lakoff argues that the Republican choice of Palin makes total  
sense if you truly understand the strategy of the Republicans in this  
election.  Lakoff is the author of The Political Mind: Why You Can't  
Understand 20th Century Politics With an 18th Century Brain (2008) and  
Don't Think of an Elephant: Know your Values and Frame the Debate  
(2004)



The Palin Choice
The Reality of the Political Mind
by George Lakoff

This election matters because of realities-the realities of global  
warming, the economy, the Middle East, nuclear proliferation, civil  
liberties, species extinction, poverty here and around the world, and  
on and on. Such realities are what make this election so very crucial,  
and how to deal with them is the substance of the Democratic platform  
<http://www.demconvention.com/assets/downloads/2008-Democratic- 
Platform-by-Cmte-08-13-08.pdf> .

Election campaigns matter because who gets elected can change reality.  
But election campaigns are primarily about the realities of voters'  
minds, which depend on how the candidates and the external realities  
are cognitively framed. They can be framed honestly or deceptively,  
effectively or clumsily. And they are always framed from the  
perspective of a worldview.

The Obama campaign has learned this. The Republicans have long known  
it, and the choice of Sarah Palin as their Vice-Presidential candidate  
reflects their expert understanding of the political mind and political  
marketing. Democrats who simply belittle the Palin choice are courting  
disaster. It must be t aken with the utmost seriousness.

The Democratic responses so far reflect external realities: she is  
inexperienced, knowing little or nothing about foreign policy or  
national issues; she is really an anti-feminist, wanting the government  
to enter women's lives to block abortion, but not wanting the  
government to guarantee equal pay for equal work, or provide adequate  
child health coverage, or child care, or early childhood education; she  
shills for the oil and gas industry on drilling; she denies the  
scientific truths of global warming and evolution; she misuses her  
political authority; she opposes sex education and her daughter is  
pregnant; and, rather than being a maverick, she is on the whole a  
radical right-wing ideologue.

All true, so far as we can tell.

But such truths may nonetheless be largely irrelevant to this campaign.  
That is the lesson Democrats must learn. They must learn the reality of  
the political mind.

The Obama campaign has done this very well so far. The convention  
events and speeches were orchestrated both to cast light on external  
realities, traditional political themes, and to focus on values at once  
classically American and progressive: empathy, responsibility both for  
oneself and others, and aspiration to make things better both for  
oneself and the world. Obama did all this masterfully in his nomination  
speech, while replying to, and undercutting, the main Republican  
attacks.

But the Palin nomination changes the game. The initial response has  
been to try to keep the focus on external realities, the "issues,"
and  
differences on the issues. But the Palin nomination is not basically  
about external realities and what Democrats call "issues," but about 

the symbolic mechanisms of the political mind-the worldviews, frames,  
metaphors, cultural narratives, and stereotypes. The Republicans can't  
win on realities. Her job is to speak the language of conservatism,  
activate the conservative view of the world, and use the advantages  
that conservatives have in dominating political discourse.


Our national political dialogue is fundamentally metaphorical, with  
family values at the center of our discourse. There is a reason why  
Obama and Biden spoke so much about the family, the nurturant family,  
with caring fathers and the family values that Obama put front and  
center in his Father's day speech: empathy, responsibility and  
aspiration. Obama's reference in the nomination speech to "The
American  
Family" was hardly accidental, nor were the references to the Obama and  
Biden families as living and fulfilling the American Dream. Real  
nurturance requires strength and toughness, which Obama displayed in  
body language and voice in his responses to McCain. The strength of the  
Obama campaign has been the seamless marriage of reality and symbolic  
thought.

The Republican strength has been mostly symbolic. The McCain campaign  
is well aware of how Reagan and W won-running on character: values,  
communicatio n, (apparent) authenticity, trust, and identity - not  
issues and policies. That is how campaigns work, and symbolism is  
central.

Conservative family values are strict and apply via metaphorical  
thought to the nation: good vs. evil, authority, the use of force,  
toughness and discipline, individual (versus social) responsibility,  
and tough love. Hence, social programs are immoral because they violate  
discipline and individual responsibility. Guns and the military show  
force and discipline. Man is above nature; hence no serious  
environmentalism. The market is the ultimate financial authority,  
requiring market discipline. In foreign policy, strength is use of the  
force. In fundamentalist religion, the Bible is the ultimate authority;  
hence no gay marriage. Such values are at the heart of radical  
conservatism. This is how John McCain was raised and how he plans to  
govern. And it is what he shares with Sarah Palin.

Palin is the mom in the strict father family, upholding conservative  
values. Palin is tough: she shoots, skins, and eats caribou. She is  
disciplined: raising five kids with a major career. She lives her  
values: she has a Downs-syndrome baby that she refused to abort. She  
has the image of the ideal conservative mom: pretty, perky, feminine,  
Bible-toting, and fitting into the ideal conservative family. And she  
fits the stereotype of America as small-town America. It is Reagan's  
morning-in-America image. Where Obama thought of capturing the West,  
she is running for Sweetheart of the West.

And Palin, a member of Feminists For Life, is at the heart of the  
conservative feminist movement, which Ronee Schreiber has written about  
in her recent book, Righting Feminism. It is a powerful and growing  
movement that Democrats have barely paid attention to.
At the same time, Palin is masterful at the Republican game of taking  
the Democrats' language and reframing it-putting conservative frames to  
progressive words: Reform, prosperity, peace. She is also masterful at  
using the progressive narratives: she's from the working class, working  
her way up from hockey mom and the PTA to Mayor, Governor, and VP  
candidate. Her husband is a union member. She can say to the  
conservative populists that she is one of them-all the things that  
Obama and Biden have been saying. Bottom-up, not top-down.

Yes, the McCain-Palin ticket is weak on the major realities. But it is  
strong on the symbolic dimension of politics that Republicans are so  
good at marketing. Just arguing the realities, the issues, the hard  
truths should be enough in times this bad, but the political mind and  
its response to symbolism cannot be ignored. The initial Democratic  
response to Palin - the response based on realities alone - indicates  
that many Democrats have not learned the lessons of the Reagan and Bush  
years.

They have not learned the nature of conservative populism. A great many  
working-class folks are what I call "bi-conceptual," that is, they
are  
split between conservative and progressive modes of thought.  
Conservative on patriotism and certain social and family issues, which  
they have been led to see as "moral", progressive in loving the land,
 
living in communities of care, and practical kitchen table issues like  
mortgages, health care, wages, retirement, and so on.

Conservative theorists won them over in two ways: Inventing and  
promulgating the idea of "liberal elite" and focusing campaigns on  
social and family issues. They have been doing this for many years and  
have changed a lot of brains through repetition. Palin will appeal  
strongly to conservative populists, attacking Obama and Biden as  
pointy-headed, tax-and-spend, latte liberals. The tactic is to divert  
attention from difficult realities to powerful symbolism.

What Democrats have shied away from is a frontal attack on radical  
conservatism itself as an un-American and harmful ideology. I think  
Obama is right when he says that America is based on people caring  
about each other and working together for a better future-empathy,  
responsibility (both personal and social), and aspiration. These lead  
to a concept of government based on protection (environmental,  
consumer, worker, health care, and retirement protection) and  
empowerment (through infrastructure, public education, the banking  
system, the stock market, and the courts). Nobody can achieve the  
American Dream or live an American lifestyle without protection and  
empowerment by the government.20The alternative, as Obama said in his  
nomination speech, is being on your own, with no one caring for anybody  
else, with force as a first resort in foreign affairs, with threatened  
civil liberties and a right-wing government making your most important  
decisions for you. That is not what American democracy has ever been  
about.

What is at stake in this election are our ideals and our view of the  
future, as well as current realities. The Palin choice brings both  
front and center. Democrats, being Democrats, will mostly talk about  
the realities nonstop without paying attention to the dimensions of  
values and symbolism. Democrats, in addition, need to call an extremist  
an extremist: to shine a light on the shared anti-democratic ideology  
of McCain and Palin, the same ideology shared by Bush and Cheney. They  
share values antithetical to our democracy. That needs to be said loud  
and clear, if not by the Obama campaign itself, then by the rest of us  
who share democratic American values.

Our job is to bring external realities together with the reality of the  
political mind. Don't ignore the cognitive dimension. It is through  
cultural narratives, metaphors, and frames that we understand and  
express our ideals.

George Lakoff is the author of The Political Mind: Why You Can't  
Understand 20th Century Politics With an 18th Century Brain





      
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