At some point (soon?) I'll get back to blogging. In the meantime, if you have any interest in understanding what I've been winding around, trying to summarize... about the way our brains use metaphors to create meaning, how language is understood via metaphors, and how we use language (through metaphors) to create our values AND how the radical right has understood this since Nixon but exploded into it with Reagan and how we progressives are only helping them win. Well, this is a decent summary that I hope you might take the time to read: http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml
More from me another day.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Sunday, July 4, 2010
how populist progressives are helping the radical right win
Yesterday I lost another follower on Twitter because I stated some opinions in ways that were unpalatable, apparently. One of the most surprising things I've learned in the last year is it's not the right wing crazies (as if there really is a left-right scale*) who are incapable of listening to and learning from new ideas. It's my own fellow populists.** Of course, I don't do the greatest job sharing these ideas because I get so upset by progressives who have their heads so far up their asses thinking they know what's morally right. They won't even listen for a moment to the possibility that they're missing some things.
Let me be clear. Populists/progressives are the true patriots. We are the people who recognize that all people have value, that we're only as strong as our weakest link, and that our nation was founded to expand freedom. That's the whole point. Expansion of freedom. The radical right are wrong. Their policies and domination of our culture will end up destroying everything most Americans care about.
But. The radical right is winning and we populists and progressives are helping them.
I've been thinking about this issue a lot in this brief blogging hiatus, trying to pare it down into a concise point. Divvying things up into separate posts. It's challenging. Here I'm going to try and focus on the issue of deafness and resistance I find among my peers.
I'll use yesterday's exchange as an example. This guy was tweeting about soldiers being murderers. I objected strenuously and with some words that definitely came off as arrogant. I was so fucking angry, though, because it does damage to so many people on so many levels when progressives make that kind of statement. It could be simply that this guy didn't like how I was talking to him, but I'm pretty sure (based on previous conversations) that the concepts I am trying to explain or share are so foreign to my fellow progressives they mishear me, classify me as conned by the right, and dismiss me. Or they think I'm a sellout, a compromiser, or just plain stupid. I don't know. Too often, they stop the conversations because they think I'm insulting them.
Here's the biggest problem of all. If someone says to me "I have information you don't, let me tell you about it" I don't think they are saying I'm an idiot/ignorant fool or anything like that. I think they think they have information I don't already have. They may be right. They may have information I can learn from. They may have useless crap that has no merit. In any case, though, another person having information or a new perspective or point of view doesn't make me feel insulted or attacked. I have had only a few instances where people I discuss these issues with are able to hear what I'm saying. Again, I'm sure a great deal of the fault is in my own communications. But, George Lakoff says it in one of his books, we progressives are so unfamiliar with the radical right's meanings for words like freedom, liberty, or fairness, that we can't even comprehend different meanings exist. It's so much easier to call them names, say they are immoral greedy assholes. Examining how all of our minds work (using metaphors to create meaning) doesn't mean we have to start accepting the radical right's behaviors. What it can do is free us to fight back. We need to get freedom back from the radical right. We can't do that if we refuse to acknowledge multiple meanings of the word.
Back to the Twitter unfollower. So, he said soldiers were murderers. I was really, really angry. I recently finished On Killing and learned so much about what it takes for one human being to kill another. With Vietnam, the military began perfecting the programming required to help soldiers kill. Before that more soldiers didn't kill than did. I'll blog about those issues another time. The point here is that I was angry. I was angry because I see attacking the soldiers as attacking the poor. Our military is made up of people with very few other decent options. These are not people who say, Oh, I could go to Yale or maybe join up with Daddy's hedge fund, but I guess I want to go kill people. No. In fact, people do not join the military to kill. Again, I'll come back to that.
So this guy says he "champions the poor" but that people join the military for a paycheck and then they go kill so they are murderers for hire.
His ignorance about the process of actually killing, the important distinction between killing and murdering, and his blaming the soldiers rather than the fucking elite at the top who are running things just infuriated me. I didn't keep my cool.
That said, he was talking all firey, too, so it wasn't out of context for me to be opinionated. The difference was, I can listen to someone through their ranting and try to hear what they are saying. He, instead, assumed he knew what I was saying (I am pretty sure he thought I was one of those "all soldiers are heroes" cult members who never questions what that means), insulted me, kept throwing statements at me I agreed with but didn't seem to think it mattered that I agreed with him.
This is so common, I've found, among my fellow populists and progressives. They think that looking at why the radical right is winning means accepting their positions as, well, as acceptable. Every time we slam the door on new perspectives and new knowledge we reinforce the radical right's stereotype they have so successfully woven into the fabric of our culture: liberals/progressives are elitists who think we know better than anyone.
We populists/progressives know our positions are right (we are, and our country will flourish if we can only get our shit together) but we are unwilling to understand why the radical right thinks they are right. They speak a different language and they are using that language to change the generally accepted meaning of such key words as freedom, liberty, justice, fairness, opportunity... the list goes on.
One small example? Every single time a populist or progressive refers to the occupations of Iraq or Afghanistan as "wars" we reinforce the radical right's frames. Those are not wars. The uncontested meaning of the word "war" involves a villain, a hero, battles, and an end through agreements or withdrawal of one side. These are not wars. These are occupations. Again, every time my fellow progressives or populists refer to them as "wars" and that is all the media ever call them, they reinforce the wrong frame. They reinforce this false notion that there is a clear villain and battles and the possibility of an end.
What I will do in the future is try to reign in my anger when I hear my like-minded peers destroying our own positions by empowering the radical right's frames (referring to the "wars" for example) and see if there is a way to share the concepts that doesn't come off as arrogant or, worse, as if I'm suggesting that all these different meanings are equally acceptable. I can only hope that people who want to preserve the founders' beliefs in the expansion of freedoms for everyone might start to listen to new ideas coming from within their own circles.
*I'm going to use "radical right" even though the idea of a left to right range is a creation of the radical right. How's that for a puzzle? Still, it's true. When I refer to the radical right I'm talking about Karl Rove/Bush W. style conservatives.
**I'm also going to use the term "populists" or "progressives" when referring to what I consider the closest to "opposite" the radical right. I'm using populists in the way Jim Hightower does (here's a good example of his meaning).
More:
Google books has "Whose Freedom" by George Lakoff available. It's just one of many of his books I wish all populists and progressives could read. He, of course, does a much better job of explaining these concepts. He does, though, come across as a know-it-all and somewhat arrogant. It is my firm opinion, however, that a great deal of that tone comes from the same place mine does. An urgency. We are losing. Our own people who care about equality and fairness and a thriving nation of free people are helping the radical right destroy everything. They are creating a plutocracy and the corporations will rule and regular people will suffer.
This article does a fine job (first few chapters of one of Lakoff's books) summarizing how our minds use metaphor to create values.
Let me be clear. Populists/progressives are the true patriots. We are the people who recognize that all people have value, that we're only as strong as our weakest link, and that our nation was founded to expand freedom. That's the whole point. Expansion of freedom. The radical right are wrong. Their policies and domination of our culture will end up destroying everything most Americans care about.
But. The radical right is winning and we populists and progressives are helping them.
I've been thinking about this issue a lot in this brief blogging hiatus, trying to pare it down into a concise point. Divvying things up into separate posts. It's challenging. Here I'm going to try and focus on the issue of deafness and resistance I find among my peers.
I'll use yesterday's exchange as an example. This guy was tweeting about soldiers being murderers. I objected strenuously and with some words that definitely came off as arrogant. I was so fucking angry, though, because it does damage to so many people on so many levels when progressives make that kind of statement. It could be simply that this guy didn't like how I was talking to him, but I'm pretty sure (based on previous conversations) that the concepts I am trying to explain or share are so foreign to my fellow progressives they mishear me, classify me as conned by the right, and dismiss me. Or they think I'm a sellout, a compromiser, or just plain stupid. I don't know. Too often, they stop the conversations because they think I'm insulting them.
Here's the biggest problem of all. If someone says to me "I have information you don't, let me tell you about it" I don't think they are saying I'm an idiot/ignorant fool or anything like that. I think they think they have information I don't already have. They may be right. They may have information I can learn from. They may have useless crap that has no merit. In any case, though, another person having information or a new perspective or point of view doesn't make me feel insulted or attacked. I have had only a few instances where people I discuss these issues with are able to hear what I'm saying. Again, I'm sure a great deal of the fault is in my own communications. But, George Lakoff says it in one of his books, we progressives are so unfamiliar with the radical right's meanings for words like freedom, liberty, or fairness, that we can't even comprehend different meanings exist. It's so much easier to call them names, say they are immoral greedy assholes. Examining how all of our minds work (using metaphors to create meaning) doesn't mean we have to start accepting the radical right's behaviors. What it can do is free us to fight back. We need to get freedom back from the radical right. We can't do that if we refuse to acknowledge multiple meanings of the word.
Back to the Twitter unfollower. So, he said soldiers were murderers. I was really, really angry. I recently finished On Killing and learned so much about what it takes for one human being to kill another. With Vietnam, the military began perfecting the programming required to help soldiers kill. Before that more soldiers didn't kill than did. I'll blog about those issues another time. The point here is that I was angry. I was angry because I see attacking the soldiers as attacking the poor. Our military is made up of people with very few other decent options. These are not people who say, Oh, I could go to Yale or maybe join up with Daddy's hedge fund, but I guess I want to go kill people. No. In fact, people do not join the military to kill. Again, I'll come back to that.
So this guy says he "champions the poor" but that people join the military for a paycheck and then they go kill so they are murderers for hire.
His ignorance about the process of actually killing, the important distinction between killing and murdering, and his blaming the soldiers rather than the fucking elite at the top who are running things just infuriated me. I didn't keep my cool.
That said, he was talking all firey, too, so it wasn't out of context for me to be opinionated. The difference was, I can listen to someone through their ranting and try to hear what they are saying. He, instead, assumed he knew what I was saying (I am pretty sure he thought I was one of those "all soldiers are heroes" cult members who never questions what that means), insulted me, kept throwing statements at me I agreed with but didn't seem to think it mattered that I agreed with him.
This is so common, I've found, among my fellow populists and progressives. They think that looking at why the radical right is winning means accepting their positions as, well, as acceptable. Every time we slam the door on new perspectives and new knowledge we reinforce the radical right's stereotype they have so successfully woven into the fabric of our culture: liberals/progressives are elitists who think we know better than anyone.
We populists/progressives know our positions are right (we are, and our country will flourish if we can only get our shit together) but we are unwilling to understand why the radical right thinks they are right. They speak a different language and they are using that language to change the generally accepted meaning of such key words as freedom, liberty, justice, fairness, opportunity... the list goes on.
One small example? Every single time a populist or progressive refers to the occupations of Iraq or Afghanistan as "wars" we reinforce the radical right's frames. Those are not wars. The uncontested meaning of the word "war" involves a villain, a hero, battles, and an end through agreements or withdrawal of one side. These are not wars. These are occupations. Again, every time my fellow progressives or populists refer to them as "wars" and that is all the media ever call them, they reinforce the wrong frame. They reinforce this false notion that there is a clear villain and battles and the possibility of an end.
What I will do in the future is try to reign in my anger when I hear my like-minded peers destroying our own positions by empowering the radical right's frames (referring to the "wars" for example) and see if there is a way to share the concepts that doesn't come off as arrogant or, worse, as if I'm suggesting that all these different meanings are equally acceptable. I can only hope that people who want to preserve the founders' beliefs in the expansion of freedoms for everyone might start to listen to new ideas coming from within their own circles.
*I'm going to use "radical right" even though the idea of a left to right range is a creation of the radical right. How's that for a puzzle? Still, it's true. When I refer to the radical right I'm talking about Karl Rove/Bush W. style conservatives.
**I'm also going to use the term "populists" or "progressives" when referring to what I consider the closest to "opposite" the radical right. I'm using populists in the way Jim Hightower does (here's a good example of his meaning).
More:
Google books has "Whose Freedom" by George Lakoff available. It's just one of many of his books I wish all populists and progressives could read. He, of course, does a much better job of explaining these concepts. He does, though, come across as a know-it-all and somewhat arrogant. It is my firm opinion, however, that a great deal of that tone comes from the same place mine does. An urgency. We are losing. Our own people who care about equality and fairness and a thriving nation of free people are helping the radical right destroy everything. They are creating a plutocracy and the corporations will rule and regular people will suffer.
This article does a fine job (first few chapters of one of Lakoff's books) summarizing how our minds use metaphor to create values.
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