Writing Life

This is a fabulous op-ed on VP Cheney, written by Eugene Robinson (p. A17). It talks about the Veep and his seemingly impoverished understandings of reality, especially as this relates to the Scooter Libby PlameGate trial.

If I may quote just one section of this piece:

Increasingly, the vice president is sounding as if he lives in a la-la land of his own imagining, a place beyond truth.

In Cheney’s world, the Iraq war is an enormous success. The idea that anyone would think otherwise is hogwash. The midterm election doesn’t seem to have happened yet — some sort of time warp may be involved. Polls that show overwhelming public opposition to the war do not even merit a nod of acknowledgment.

Check it out. Now, I’m not a big Ford fan and I’ve been a bit taken aback by the huge outpouring since his recent death. No one ever talked about Ford since after he left the presidency, except to note that he might be at a celebrity golf tournament. Now, however, it seems as if he was the cornerstone of the American Century and maybe a candidate for a new spot up on Mount Rushmore. WTF? The Wonkette piece is pretty funny in noting that Ford helped keep/resurrect Rummy and Dick “Shoot ‘em in the face” Cheney. Time will only tell, and it’s likely that after the huge state funeral for what many have called the “accidental president”, Gerald Ford will slip back into shadows.

A Word a Day sends out a great weekday email highlighting a word, its usage and background. Each week, the words are grouped around a theme. I’ve been reading this since forever and really love it. But, my favorite part is the quote of the day that’s at the end of each email. Today’s was particularly relevant, both for what I do as part of my job and what DC does best: spin and obfuscation. The quote is from George Orwell, best known as the writer of 1984 and Animal Farm.

A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics”. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.

I just finished reading George Lakoff’s don’t think of an elephant: know your values and frame the debate. Published in 2004, it appears to be a collection of essays and thoughts he has pulled together over the years. Frankly, it could have been reduced to about a 30-40 page primer that might get a wider audience. However, at 119 pages, it’s a quick read.

The book is about frames, i.e. how we understand the world, how we know what we know. Frames control how we deal with new facts that are presented to us. If a fact agrees with the frame, it’s accepted. If a fact disagrees with the frame, in more cases than not, the fact will be discarded, regardless of whether it is true or not. According to Lakoff, frames rule our world.

His book is for progressives and goes a long way to de-vilefying conservatives and “red-state voters”. He notes that progressives can’t call people who voted for Bush as stupid or moronic. The frames they have developed, and that have been reinforced by 40 years of conservative communications, simply won’t allow these facts to overwhelm their worldview. Lakoff urges progressives to think in terms of ideas, frames, and moral values. Everyone has these and it’s a matter of framing progressive values and repeating them often to get our message across. It can’t be done overnight, and as he repeats often, “the truth will not set you free”. Facts by themselves are not sufficient. One of his best examples is the frame of “tax relief”. It just sounds good, doesn’t it? Relief. Relief is a good thing. Relief from what? Taxes. If it’s relief, then taxes must be bad. If progressives talk about tax relief and say that it isn’t any good or helps the wrong people, they’re still using the tax relief frame and are simply reinforcing the idea of relief. We need to talk about it differently. We need to talk about how government built the interstate system, how it created the internet, how cures and vaccines have been developed by the national health institutes. Paraphrasing Lakoff, your tax refund can’t pay to build a highway to drive to work.

One thing I’d like to mention is his differentiation of framing from spinning. He sees spin as manipulative use of a frame. However, I would argue that it’s spin, regardless of whether it’s for good or for manipulation. Speaking in frames is an attempt to manipulate, or change, an individual’s world view and how they process facts. We frame it one way in order to counter another frame. He says framing is good if we articulate frames we believe in and that we see as morally good. But, isn’t that what conservatives, and all groups, do? They believe in what they’re saying and use a frame that articulates that belief system. Propaganda, as Lakoff rightly points out, is something entirely different and bad. He defines it well by calling it the use of a frame that is known to be wrong and selling that frame for political or economic benefit of the purveyor.

To end on a high note, his last chapter on how to respond to conservatives is a must read. That chapter along with the introduction of frames and a few examples make this book worth a look, but it really should have been edited down to a few dozen pages.

Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon (Latin American affairs) told the House International Relations Committee that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is putting his country’s democracy at risk. During testimony on Thursday, 17 November, he said President Chavez is centralizing power in the executive and politicizing the judiciary. He added that “The impact on the civic, political and economic life of the country is evident in increased self censorship by the media, lack of public confidence in the electoral system, reluctance to express disagreement with government policies for fear of retribution and capital flight.”

The current US Administration is terrified of Chavez and his populist, socialist revolution. He’s fighting for the poor and the indigenous, opposing the landed gentry and aristocracy in his country. He’s taking private lands (millions of acres that are not used by the few rich landowners), nationalizing them and making the cooperatives for poor farmers. Putting the land to use for and by the people who need it the most. Latin America has had land tenure issues since colonization. Each time they’re addressed by left-leaning leaders (Guatemala, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.), it’s termed a dictatorship and taking power away from the masses. In effect, it’s actually giving political and economic power to those who need it the most.

I also have to comment on the language Shannon used. His first sentence about centralizing the executive and politicizing the judiciary. Doesn’t that sound a bit familiar? Executive power in the US has increased to absurd levels under the current monarch of Bush II. Congress has become the lap dog of the administration. Desperate for attention but fearful of being slapped if they raise their voices. And politicizing the judiciary? Can anyone say Harriet Miers? Or Samuel Alito.

As for the direct quote. If you just read that without the context of this post, it could very well apply to the United States! The media is the administration’s mouth piece, only about half of Americans bother to vote, and Congress and the Administration have poll ratings in the toilet. Finally, to even raise a question about Administration policy these days finds Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Scott McClellan (White House press secretary), Senator Frist, House Speaker Hastert, and neoconservative pundits calling you a traitor, a terrorist, and un-American. Got to love this new version of the First Amendment.

If you google my name, you used to come across references to obscure computer science arguments (Tcl/Tk wars of early 1990s), papers I’ve presented, or my website. If you google me today, you’ll come across another entry that heralds my entry into official web life in my new job. A right-wing web columnist has written a long manifesto against the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

This reporter wrote an article entitled “Secret Agenda: Law of the Sea Treaty Will Provide Key Elements of World Government”. In it, he showed that he spent a great deal of time looking at my organization’s website and then he must have googled me to find my personal website. There, he read my blog and favorite links entries. He wrote his piece in order to incite fear and attach innuendo to his railing against UNCLOS. That’s his right, however, it does nothing to engage and further a discussion of this treaty. Inciting fear, either by the left, right or center, does nothing to actually address the pros and cons of this treaty and its impact on everyday Americans, businesses, the US Government, and other nations of the world. It’s time to move beyond the looney left and the radical right and engage Americans on the issues that affect Americans in a 21st century world.