[wordup] Let them Eat Myth

[Adam Shand]

This is a great blog posting by Douglas Rushkoff.  Not because it's  
particularly insightful or useful but because it incites conversation  
in a useful way.  By the time you make it through the article and  
comments you've come full circle back to the beginning and still don't  
know what the answer is.  Beautiful.

Adam.

From: http://www.rushkoff.com/2004/11/let-them-eat-myth.php

Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Let them Eat Myth

I'm wondering if denying poor people a mythology - even if we know it  
to be false - is such a great idea. It's honest, and has more  
integrity, but it's a bad strategy for eliciting their support. Poor  
people would rather vote for the myth that they'll be taken care of -  
even if, in reality, it means being further fleeced by the wealthy, and  
sending their children off to die in war.

Plato argued for a benevolent myth. Maybe the better strategy is for  
East Coast intellectuals to cease their effort to develop an honest,  
ethical secular culture, and instead realize that they need to  
communicate on two levels at once. Maimonides did it. Even Bush does  
it, by letting the rich know he'll give them more of the peoples'  
money, while telling the poor that he's their friend in Christ.

Is it time to stifle idealism, and value tactics over truth?

Perhaps not so directly. But on a landscape increasingly characterized  
by emotion over logic (thanks, in part, to the techniques of marketing  
and advertising), we must either find a compelling reason for people to  
re-engage with their logical faculties, or a way to communicate with  
the heart and gut that also happens to do justice to the facts. It's  
hard - even the Bible, which is one of the best efforts so far in this  
pursuit - is now used to justify slaughter and manifest destiny.

So, in the words of the defeated candidate, we must do better.
Where do we begin?

3:27 PM | Link | 12 comments |  

=== COMMENTS ===

  Before you can create such a mythology you have to answer a more  
fundamental question, and that is, what result do you want?

  Paul's dualistic makeover of Christian myth has helped sustain it over  
2,000 years, and make it a perfect companion to the modern "wealthiness  
is next to godliness" message.

Can the left truly create a dualistic message that exists outside of an  
"us vs. them" framework? We come together only when faced with an  
obvious enemy, and the moment that we succeed we fracture. In losing we  
become unified...

Andrew Mayer • 11/03/04 12:50pm

  OK, I want to do it. I want to bring out the serious, mambo-jambo,  
'thought experiment' shit and try it out for a while, because literal,  
good-intentioned, social involvement has done fuck-all to change the  
world.

So... what? We come up with pretty pictures and lay them over the real  
agenda? Starting with what?

Eileen • 11/03/04 02:20pm

  "Tactics over truth" is a little pretentious. I've seen George Lakoff  
argue that there is a fundamental broader stroke present in the  
Republican arguments that is both missing from the other side and often  
overlooked when trying to figure out why these ideas are appealing. I  
was extremely skeptical going into it... Turns out it's a pretty good  
argument. I doubt it's a magic key, but seems like a much better place  
to start than "how do we dupe the idiots?".

His book, "Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think" is a  
good place to find out more.

Jason • 11/03/04 02:34pm

  The Soviets did it in Russia. Stalin really does care for you.

Skavian [skavian at zombieworld.com] • 11/03/04 02:37pm

  came to your blog today douglas hoping for your brand of hopefulness.  
so sad today. how do we challenge an entrenched extremism when it has  
somehow aggrogated the center, normalized itself so that anything else  
is only a pesky "anti" rather than anything in itself? (and even before  
that the problem may be inherent to the paradox of anti-fundamentalism,  
trying to rally around a non-existing center.)
  like your argument about counter-culture reinscribing its  
marginalization in its very mode of resistance -- the left, trying  
defend itself against a perception of anti-americanism, anti-freedom,  
anti-solidarity ends up trapped inside the terms of the accusations and  
and only reinforcing the dominant logic. because religion seems beyond  
critique i agree with you that the trick may be to somehow reclaim it,  
in a way that absolutely reverses what it can justify. if everyone  
votes 'values' the left has to reclaim the discourse of values in a way  
that speaks to more than a merley economic conception of ethics. we  
somehow have to make 'conservative' as dirty a word as 'liberal'  
apparenly is.

brooke • 11/03/04 02:51pm

  Don't forget us liberals on the west coast. The East coast has its  
intellectuals, but the west coast has its free thinkers, and it turns  
out we're coming to the same conclusions. (Although, being a displaced  
east coast intellectual, this analysis may be a bit unfair).

  What I think is interesting is that on the west coast, it isn't  
intellectualization and logic that made those states turn blue.  
(Honest, I teach logic out here. There isn't much.) But it's a serious  
committment to recognizing that the individual isn't the only person in  
the world. I think, sadly, a lot of the religious discourse is what  
clouds the ability to recognize this. And so even without getting  
people to "re-engage with their logical faculties" (although I'm doing  
the best I can to get people to do that!), I think significant ground  
can still be won just by opening the world up a bit to people who see  
only their selfish interests.

Robn • 11/03/04 02:51pm

  i agree with you robn ... the current rhetoric of "the american dream"  
and the "crusade of freedom" are an anti-ethics of absolute  
individualism. could the "real" american ideal and "real" christianity  
be interpreted to support a radically different ideal... a spin-job  
that would pull off change in the mode of non-change, or even return  
(pulling off liberalism in the mode of conseratism)...

brooke • 11/03/04 03:07pm

  So, you're suggesting that theorists encode an esoteric message in  
their writings, accessible to initiates, but masked by an exoteric  
message aimed at the masses? Sounds awfully familiar Doug; you sure  
your sign isn't Leo?

Julian Sanchez [jsanchez at reason.com] • 11/03/04 03:17pm

  Yes, and this illusion of individuality is amplified by the market: we  
narrowcast our citizens into consumer tribes, speak to them as  
individuals, as if what matters most in the world is whatever matters  
to them as individuals. It's precisely what next week's documentary  
(the one I just made for Frontline) is about. Carved into our separate  
demographic tribes, we cease acting as a collective. The individual -  
and maybe his family - become the only things that matter.

  But Brooke aptly restates and extends my main point:
  "because religion seems beyond critique i agree with you that the  
trick may be to somehow reclaim it, in a way that absolutely reverses  
what it can justify."

It's' more than Lakoff's simple take on Neurolinguistic Programming  
(which is all that reframing of language really is) or even Frank  
Luntz's focus-group-determined efforts in that direction ("Death Tax"  
"Climate Change" "Tax Relief").

  I watched students here at NYU while Kerry and Edwards were making  
their farewell speech on TV. It was as if everyone wanted a leader to  
tell them it was going to be okay. And that's when it hit me - we all  
need mythologies to some extent. We all need for others to assume  
roles, so that we can - even temporarily - transfer parental authority  
onto them.

  I believe the reason that the left's logic loses is because of our  
belief that facts and observable reality should be enough to motivate  
appropriate action. It is not. We do need narratives with which to  
understand our roles in a context.

  The trick is to create a narrative that can be understood as truth by  
the simple-minded, and as myth by the more dimensionally inclined. Or,  
perhaps, to take hold of the narrative that people are already using,  
and demonstrate its ability to serve a different purpose.

That's what I tried to do with Nothing Sacred, for Jews. To show them  
that this Torah and Bible are actually anti-racist documents, designed  
to help people get over their addiction to religion. I did it in a very  
direct way, however.

Now, I'm working on recreating the Bible, as the Bible, but also as  
something else. I don't mean to be cheeky, but the project is in the  
development stages so I can't be too specific. But it's an area I think  
might matter right now.

  In any case, and to the point of the election loss, I think our  
quasi-Marxist refusal to engage with myth because of our understanding  
of the way myths are used to manipulate the 'masses' is ultimately  
short-sighted, and costing us influence over the direction of our  
nation.

Rushkoff • 11/03/04 03:27pm

  I would posit that tactics over truth (means justify the ends  
thinking) invites failure. The majority of the body politic lacks the  
intellectual vigor to root out deception, but the leaders of the  
opposition do not. To create straw men of them, and refuse to believe  
they would not expose having their own means used against them is  
ostrich thinking. Moreover, tremendous effort was expended exposing  
deceptions in this campaign, and the majority chose to believe the myth  
instead.

In my opinion, the tactical failure lies in attempting to convince,  
instead of convert. Conversion can be accomplished without abandoning  
reason and idealism. For a myth to be durable it must be both  
internally consistent (logical) and representative of some truth  
(ideal). Myths aren't lies; in their best incarnations, they're  
arguments by analogy. How do we cast the opposition as Titans without  
becoming Olympians?

Dozhee [dozhee at hotmail.com] • 11/03/04 03:40pm

The trick is to create a narrative that can be understood as truth by  
the simple-minded, and as myth by the more dimensionally inclined. Or,  
perhaps, to take hold of the narrative that people are already using,  
and demonstrate its ability to serve a different purpose.

This filmmaker is ready for the task...

David Lanphier Jr. • 11/03/04 04:13pm

  Tactics is too strong a word - and too loaded a strategy for long-term  
success. Interestingly, Michael Lerner has been thinking along similar  
lines. From a letter he sent out today:
---
For years the Democrats have been telling themselves "it's the economy,  
stupid." Yet consistently for dozens of years millions of middle income  
Americans have voted against their economic interests to support  
Republicans who have tapped a deeper set of needs.


Tens of millions of Americans feel betrayed by a society that seems to  
place materialism and selfishness above moral values. They know that  
"looking out for number one" has become the common sense of our  
society, but they want a life that is about something more-a framework  
of meaning and purpose to their lives that would transcend the grasping  
and narcissism that surrounds them. Sure, they will admit that they  
have material needs, and that they worry about adequate health care,  
stability in employment, and enough money to give their kids a college  
education. But even more deeply they want their lives to have  
meaning-and they respond to candidates who seem to care about values  
and some sense of transcendent purpose.


Many of these voters have found a "politics of meaning" in the  
political Right. In the Right wing churches and synagogues these voters  
are presented with a coherent worldview that speaks to their "meaning  
needs." Most of these churches and synagogues demonstrate a high level  
of caring for their members, even if the flip side is a willingness to  
demean those on the outside. Yet what members experience directly is a  
level of mutual caring that they rarely find in the rest of the  
society. And a sense of community that is offered them nowhere else, a  
community that has as its central theme that life has value because it  
is connected to some higher meaning than one's success in the  
marketplace.


It's easy to see how this hunger gets manipulated in ways that liberals  
find offensive and contradictory. The frantic attempts to preserve  
family by denying gays the right to get married, the talk about being  
conservatives while meanwhile supporting Bush policies that accelerate  
the destruction of the environment and do nothing to encourage respect  
for God's creation or an ethos of awe and wonder to replace the ethos  
of turning nature into a commodity, the intense focus on preserving the  
powerless fetus and a culture of life without a concomitant commitment  
to medical research (stem cell research/HIV-AIDS), gun control and  
healthcare reform., the claim to care about others and then deny them a  
living wage and an ecologically sustainable environment-all this is  
rightly perceived by liberals as a level of inconsistency that makes  
them dismiss as hypocrites the voters who have been moving to the  
Right.


Yet liberals, trapped in a long-standing disdain for religion and  
tone-deaf to the spiritual needs that underlie the move to the Right,  
have been unable to engage these voters in a serious dialogue. Rightly  
angry at the way that some religious communities have been mired in  
authoritarianism, racism, sexism and homophobia, the liberal world has  
developed such a knee-jerk hostility to religion that it has both  
marginalized those many people on the Left who actually do have  
spiritual yearnings and simultaneously refused to acknowledge that many  
who move to the Right have legitimate complaints about the ethos of  
selfishness in American life.


Imagine if John Kerry had been able to counter George Bush by insisting  
that a serious religious person would never turn his back on the  
suffering of the poor, that the bible's injunction to love one's  
neighbor required us to provide health care for all, and that the New  
Testament's command to "turn the other cheek" should give us a  
predisposition against responding to violence with violence.


Imagine a Democratic Party that could talk about the strength that  
comes from love and generosity and applied that to foreign policy and  
homeland security.


Imagine a Democratic Party that could talk of a New Bottom Line, so  
that American institutions get judged efficient, rational and  
productive not only to the extent that they maximize money and power,  
but also to the extent that they maximize people's capacities to be  
loving and caring, ethically and ecologically sensitive, and capable of  
responding to the universe with awe and wonder.


Imagine a Democratic Party that could call for schools to teach  
gratitude, generosity, caring for others, and celebration of the  
wonders that daily surround us! Such a Democratic Party, continuing to  
embrace its agenda for economic fairness and multi-cultural  
inclusiveness, would have won in 2004 and can win in the future.  
(Please don't tell me that this is happening outside the Democratic  
Party in the Greens or in other leftie groups--because except for a few  
tiny exceptions it is not! I remember how hard I tried to get Ralph  
Nader to think and talk in these terms in 2000, and how little response  
I got substantively from the Green Party when I suggested reformulating  
their excessively politically correct policy orientation in ways that  
would speak to this spiritual consciousness. The hostility of the Left  
to spirituality is so deep, in fact, that when they hear us in Tikkun  
talking this way they often can't even hear what we are saying--so they  
systematically mis-hear it and say that we are calling for the Left to  
take up the politics of the Right, which is exactly the opposite of our  
point--speaking to spiritual needs actually leads to a more radical  
critique of the dynamics of corporate capitalism and corporate  
globalization, not to a mimicking of right-wing policies).

If the Democrats were to foster a religions/spiritual Left, they would  
no longer pick candidates who support preemptive wars or who appease  
corporate power. They would reject the cynical realism that led them to  
pretend to be born-again militarists, a deception that fooled no one  
and only revealed their contempt for the intelligence of most  
Americans. Instead of assuming that most Americans are either stupid or  
reactionary, a religious Left would understand that many Americans who  
are on the Right actually share the same concern for a world based on  
love and generosity that underlies Left politics, even though lefties  
often hide their value attachments.

Yet to move in this direction, many Democrats would have to give up  
their attachment to a core belief: that those who voted for Bush are  
fundamentally stupid or evil. Its time they got over that elitist  
self-righteousness and developed strategies that could affirm their  
common humanity with those who voted for the Right. Teaching themselves  
to see the good in the rest of the American public would be a critical  
first step in liberals and progressives learning how to teach the rest  
of American society how to see that same goodness in the rest of the  
people on this planet. It is this spiritual lesson-that our own  
well-being depends on the well-being of everyone else on the planet and  
on the well-being of the earth-a lesson rooted deeply in the spiritual  
wisdom of virtually every religion on the planet, that could be the  
center of a revived Democratic Party.

Yet to take that seriously, the Democrats are going to have to get over  
the false and demeaning perception that the Americans who voted for  
Bush could never be moved to care about the well being of anyone but  
themselves. That transformation in the Democrats would make them into  
serious contenders.

rushkoff • 11/03/04 05:01pm

  I think the problem is the underlying attachment to Democratic or  
Republican identity. They are instruments and tools that are being  
manipulated. The way I look at it, Kerry was elected as the runner in  
the Democratic party because he could be reigned in. He was reigned in,  
rather than fighting. The fracture would have prevented business from  
being conducted as usual, and both parties are seen as really being  
interchangeable (which they are in fact if you follow the development  
of American political parties). Under this surface, there is something  
else. I'm working on compiling evidence on this right now, but the  
realization that Karl Rove really wasn't insane and did mobilized 4  
million previously non-voting Evangelists indicates to me we have a  
much larger problem. All this talk about myths is ignoring the  
cancerous network that's spreading out of the mid-west. It's combatting  
science, politics, and freedom of choice. Look into the controversy  
over Intelligent Design, for instance. The overwhelming rancor against  
gay marriage is part of this, and believe you me, it's an indicator.  
I'm advocating digging up these relationships. Perhaps I'm being  
alarmist, but the Democratic Party is a diversion from what is really  
happening in America.

Skavian [skavian at zombieworld.com] • 11/03/04 05:47pm

  DUDE! this is EXACTLY the message of leo strauss and his followers,  
who include Paul Wolfowitz and other high-ups in the administration.  
that the wise should interact directly with reality, and should craft  
"noble lies" such as religion and terrorism in order to maintain an  
orderly predictable populace.

  check it out
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2004/11/some-more-on-leo-strauss.html  
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2004/11/secret-kingdom-of-leo- 
strauss.html

i see what youre saying and understand the frustration, but you gotta  
watch out that you dont slowly become your enemy. i think youre right  
though, in that we need to become better story-tellers. thats always  
what bush and rove have been better at, telling compelling emotional  
stories. and we need to teach people better how to understand and use  
stories, and how to recognize when stories are being used on them

tim boucher • 11/03/04 07:18pm

  Actions speak volumes. After an evolutionary action has already  
occurred, mythological language that diffuses the inspiration of the  
evolutionary action suddenly becomes easy – whereas articulation of the  
vision is usually next to impossible in advance of cognition of the  
evolutionary action. We have a hard time imagining what we have never  
experienced.

An evolutionary myth is needed today, not that aims to illumine truly  
modest distinctions between the Kerry and Bush platforms, but that  
celebrates an efficacious vision to surmount any number of impending  
social and environmental cataclysms – the growing palpable effects of  
which will themselves require little mythology or language for the  
masses to learn … due to their direct disruptions of comfort and  
happiness.

The initial language to ignite an evolutionary myth should therefore be  
found in action. Before then, articulating the myth may be impossible.  
After, myth telling becomes easy.

To my sense, Aikido Activism is the next evolutionary action (  
http://aikidoactivism.xwiki.com/ ). Ironically perhaps (and perhaps not  
ironically), such a prospective evolutionary action seems merely a  
reincarnation of historically-parallel inspired evolutionary actions  
that captured true power – exhibited by empowered and reasoned  
inclusion, stewardship (of others and of our earth home), and the  
restraint of regressive and exploitive applications. After all, isn’t  
the tough part of inclusion the part of including one’s opponent?

  Personally, I find comfort in realizing life is the same as choice, so  
my life’s very existence requires competition (amongst choices at  
least). My hoped-for myth is the progressive global diffusing of  
awareness and understanding so that empowered inclusion is as inspired  
as possible – so that competition might involve far less bloody  
conflict or economic oppression with far more natural selection based  
on noble inclusion.

In this myth, competition becomes less a battle, more a dance.

Burkhart • 11/03/04 08:11pm

  Actions speak volumes. After an evolutionary action has already  
occurred, mythological language that diffuses the inspiration of the  
evolutionary action suddenly becomes easy – whereas articulation of the  
vision is usually next to impossible in advance of cognition of the  
evolutionary action. We have a hard time imagining what we have never  
experienced.

An evolutionary myth is needed today, not that aims to illumine truly  
modest distinctions between the Kerry and Bush platforms, but that  
celebrates an efficacious vision to surmount any number of impending  
social and environmental cataclysms – the growing palpable effects of  
which will themselves require little mythology or language for the  
masses to learn … due to their direct disruptions of comfort and  
happiness.

The initial language to ignite an evolutionary myth should therefore be  
found in action. Before then, articulating the myth may be impossible.  
After, myth telling becomes easy.

To my sense, Aikido Activism is the next evolutionary action (  
http://aikidoactivism.xwiki.com/ ). Ironically perhaps (and perhaps not  
ironically), such a prospective evolutionary action seems merely a  
reincarnation of historically-parallel inspired evolutionary actions  
that captured true power – exhibited by empowered and reasoned  
inclusion, stewardship (of others and of our earth home), and the  
restraint of regressive and exploitive applications. After all, isn’t  
the tough part of inclusion the part of including one’s opponent?

  Personally, I find comfort in realizing life is the same as choice, so  
my life’s very existence requires competition (amongst choices at  
least). My hoped-for myth is the progressive global diffusing of  
awareness and understanding so that empowered inclusion is as inspired  
as possible – so that competition might involve far less bloody  
conflict or economic oppression with far more natural selection based  
on noble inclusion.

In this myth, competition becomes less a battle, more a dance.

Burkhart • 11/03/04 08:55pm

  As leftist intellectuals-free thinker-etc we often fall prey to our  
own mythology, in which we assume that we are above-beyond the  
(transcendent) power of myth. The question should not be: Should we, or  
should we not, allow poor people their myths? But, rather: What myths  
are we actively producing-performing, and should we continue to do so?

The myth of pure reason, and "an honest, ethical secular culture" need  
to be interrogated and challenged. We re-enforce the Cartesian dualism  
between mind and body, thinking we must appeal to the pure, rational  
mind, or, the emotive, passionate body. What if we didn't attempt to  
make that choice? What happens when we embrace the flows of affect and  
embodiment? We need to act as if we understand that the mind is  
immanent in the body. We are already in the myth business when we  
attempt to maintain the illusory separation between them.

The right has understood this for a long time. Brian Massumi, in  
Parables for the Virtual, performs a brilliant reading of Reagan as a  
master of affective flows, through his beautifully resonant voice.  
Bush-Rove is far more blunt about the manipulation of affect, and not  
nearly as skilled as Reagan, but until we stop denying our own need to  
channel affective flows, we cannot effectively counter the Right.

das kindt • 11/03/04 09:36pm

  Douglas, what do you mean by "recreating" the Bible?

  Kerry ran such a weak campaign that it was like he wanted to lose. I  
honestly wonder if Kerry wanted Bush to win. I mean that last line  
LITERALLY.

j • 11/04/04 03:07am

  das kindt, that's some smart talk there.

  For iconoclasts, the job always seems to be to discover what myth one  
is operating under and then break it and move beyond. The illusion, of  
course, is that breaking the myth moves you beyond all mythological  
context, when all it's really done is move you into a new one.

  I can't really share about the Bible thing. Think of it more as if I  
said, the bible isn't something that happened in some historical past;  
it's happening in present, all the time.

rushkoff • 11/04/04 05:19am

  Returning to Mr. Rushkoff's comments about re-imagining the Democrats:  
I'm not a firm supporter of the two-party system in any case, and I  
registered as 'decline to state' several years ago, abandoning the  
Democratic party. I like the idea of fostering a religious, spiritual  
left, but I think that more needs to be done. If the Democrats need to  
be infused with myth, the Republicans need to be infused with social  
conscience.

The right/left split is hurting America. I'm never going to be able to  
support programs that hurt people, like the bans on gay marriage that  
passed so overwhelmingly, but I can undermine the divide between right  
and left, Republicans and Democrats, that leave people on either side  
of the fence unable to imagine the perspectives of the opposition.

And I'm going to do that by registering myself as a Republican today.

When this idea first occurred to me it was so unthinkable that I knew I  
must be on to an interesting experiment of some kind. I expect this  
admittedly small contribution to have two effects:

1. My absentee ballot is much more likely to be mailed to my house in a  
timely manner.
2. When the Republican party polls the opinions of its members, my  
lefty, rationalist point of view will be right there in the mix. And if  
enough people did this, the party would have to acknowledge our  
pespectives in their platform eventually.

Come on... none of you really believe you're being served by a  
two-party system, do you? So why not change it from within? One of the  
wonderful things about our political system is that, no matter how you  
register, you're allowed to vote for whomever you like. For now.

Eileen • 11/04/04 07:46am

  We also have to come to the realization that "America" the monoculture  
as such is a myth (or monomyth) in and of itself. There is not one  
"America", but lots of little "Americas", each with its own particular  
worldview and needs. The Northeast and the South might as well be  
separate countries at this point, just as an example. But even that is  
too simplistic a view. Within each region, there are communities that  
tend to lean towards one viewpoint or another (look at how Austin  
compares to the rest of Texas). Then it breaks down even further, to  
the individual level.

  I think that perhaps its about finding out which myths work well  
together. Co-operative myth-making. It worked for the right-wingers.  
Why not for the rest of us?

Binyamin • 11/04/04 10:03am

  Eileen, the problem with abandoning the two-party system, as  
antiquated and anachronistic as it may be, is that it's the  
progressives, most of whom skew left, who are more willing to strike  
out on their own, while the conservatives cling together as an egoless  
mass. Any attempt to inject shades of grey into the discussion results  
in a Nader situation. I supported Nader in '96 and '00, and I don't buy  
the argument that if not for him Gore would've been elected in '00, but  
I couldn't in good faith this time because his presence on the ticket  
could only weaken the left, which the right fully understood and  
encouraged. No right wing candidate is able to attract nearly that  
percentage of defectors because they are far more comfortable with  
their lack of individuality than is the left.

Bill Hicks had a joke about founding the "People Who Hate People"  
party, which unfortunately could never coalesce precisely because its  
target demographic disdained group definitions. It's an extreme  
caricature of the left (and certain elements of the right, to be sure),  
but the shoe fits. The problem that the Democrats have had for a very  
long time is that they are afraid of being attacked, and thus don't  
stand up for many issues unequivocably, which then of course lends  
towards attacks of being "wishy-washy," "flip-flopping," "waffling" and  
pandering. Greater confidence in their platforms is key, and in order  
to accomplish that a myth like the one the right has created about "The  
Liberal Media" or "Liberal Elitism" has to be formulated and virally  
spread about right through the less obvious channels that reach the  
geographically and memetically isolated and connect with their hopes  
and fears. Put the right on the defensive again, and you're one step  
closer to victory.

Ken A. • 11/04/04 12:00pm

  Ken,

Point taken, but I'm not exactly trying to infuse shades of gray into  
the equation. I'm trying to turn black into white and white into black.

I never said I was going to vote Republican. I'm going to vote my  
conscience, I'm just going to identify myself as a Republican as I do  
so. And that word will mean whatever I choose it to mean from now on.

I strongly suggest that you do so as well. Its very liberating to me  
not to place myself on the opposite side of some unassailable fence.  
I'm in it now, and I'm still me. Republican is just a word. I will  
divest it of its power.

Eileen • 11/04/04 01:49pm

  It's "crying wolf." When the person disabuses themselves of the  
concocted lies(note: dis+abuse+), one will have a hard time then  
convincing them that one is telling the truth.

There is a difference between myth and what is more-true-than-not.  
Saying...
"More than a few cigarettes a day for any extended period of time will  
increase the chance of getting lung cancer X amount, if you have Y  
predispositions, and of getting emphysema Z amount, if you have D  
predispositions, but only R amount, if you have E dispositions, et  
cetera, et cetera"
... takes up more bandwitdh than "Smoking is bad for you"

Josh Narins • 11/04/04 08:57pm

  By the way, since is my first thread here, I'd like to Lakoff really  
doesn't know much about politics. He gives the Governor of California  
credit for winning based on his framing of the issues. This is  
completely spurious. California had, at eight-eight percent, record  
high turnout. Again, this special, no-other-issue election was the  
highest voter turnout in California history. The new voters had their  
fingers firmly on the pulse of Hollywood, and nothing else.

And Ken A... the two-party system is a natural result of strategic  
voting, under current law. All voting methods (ours is called Lone-Mark  
or First-Past-the-Post) have weaknesses; but as all mechanical engines  
are inefficient, it does not necessarily follow that all mechanical  
engines are equally inefficient. Our voting method, Lone-Mark, is the  
least good. It provides the absolute minimum amount of information to  
the politicians from the polls.

Josh Narins • 11/05/04 07:27am

  i posted a lengthier reply to this on my site, if youre interested. i  
think its an extremely important issue
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2004/11/now-liberals-want-to-trick- 
people-too.html

tim boucher • 11/06/04 04:06pm