Frame Wars

"The conventional view of politics says that people are swayed by words, images, or facts. But that’s false, according to Frank Luntz and George Lakoff, two of the most successful practitioners of political reality construction. They believe that increasingly political forces will clash less over reality than over how it’s shaped. "

It's not facts, folks, it's perceptions. See here.

In this insightful article, the authors show what the spinmeisters are really doing. Not that's it's really news, propagandists have been creating reality for the undiscerning for a long time. Heinrich Himmler went so far as to create a myth based on the Knights of the Round Table and the SS as guardians of the Holy Grail for the Nazi party and the German nation that had the whole world wondering just what the hell those volk were up to.

But it does point out a direction that I think progressives and even moderate Democrats need to go in: a reorganizing of their thinking to recapture the American voting public, if American democracy is to survive the onslaught of the corporate pig.

What's needed here is a new Big Picture; a picture that paints a "reality" of unemployment, endless war, fear of the midnight knock at the door, bread lines and worse. Not that I personally don't believe that another big and really awful depression (not to mention a police state) is just around the corner, because I do, but as I am an optimist, I think we need to use the tools at hand: out-and-out brainwashing.

Yup. Let's attack the sons of bitches with their own weapons; exaggerations, lies, smear campaigns and blackmail. Let's see how they like it.