Fouro's Reverse Crystal Ball™ - Part II

Fouro's Reverse Crystal Ball™ - Part II

Finally, the promised conclusion to this November '03 post on George Lakoff's ideas about "framing the message" and why Democrats are losing their grip on voters' loyalty. As mentioned yesterday in the first "Crystal ball" post, this was written last January yet, to my mind, the ideas on Bush, Iraq, the electorate and more are only more salient, not less. More fool me for thinking it too long and not posting it then.]

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1-20-04:

Okay, about that "rightness" thing...

Rightness. What is it? In the first Lakoff post I mentioned that

the question voters want answered is "Who are you, and why should I care?" But if you have only words to answer this question, you are doomed. The voters internal, subliminal dialogue goes: Spare me the shopping list. Don't tell me, show me. Don't bury me in position papers, touch me. Mirror me, even if I don't recognize myself. That last one is key. Politicians are purveyors of hope and answers to questions voters are often unequipped to ask. Visionary politics is about a future people didn't know they had.

But equally important is the fact that those people must do the heavy lifting. Business writer, Jim Collins, in his 2001 book "Good to Great" wrote about what separates also-ran organizations and companies from the greats. He gave an example of organizations using the metaphor of a Bus. In the best, most sustainable groups, not everyone wants to be the driver, they don't necessarily want to be the navigator either. They do share three characteristics though: They want to be "on the bus." They think the journey is a worthy one, in deeply personal and affirming terms. And, finally, they are willing to get out and push if need be.

This identification, affirmation and willingness to push is a powerful triad that needs but one more point of reference to become a valid frame: Meaning.


Look at this Pew Survey on Religion and Politics. Discussing its findings, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard, said on Fox News Channel's Beltway Boys: "There's been a realignment toward republicans." He's wrong. There is a backlash against ambiguity and relativism, but it is bipartisan. Nobody's walking the talk, and if media is any guide, there is no shortage of talkers and talking. The realignment Barnes misinterprets is a shift, but towards a more understandable, ethically based rationale for decisionmaking. What underlies the Pew survey is the fact that Ethics, Faith, and their perceived consistent benchmark are powerful draws in a world that is increasingly complex and incomprehensible. Subliminal authenticity and simplicity, Rightness, is an equal and opposite reaction to the sterility and disorienting complexity of "progress" and the professional, educated and slick parsing of words and facts.

People were once afraid of big scary animals. Now they're fearful of big scary institutions. Once, these institutions were embodied by Kings and Popes and Mutual Assured Destruction. Today, it's Nationalist Ideologues and self-dealing politicians and CEOs. Participants in, and consumers of, business and politics are, indeed, looking for something. Looking for a voice, attachment, help or guidance or inspiration, and they want it desperately. But no one in business or politics is providing. These disciplines are on autopilot, or in bunker-mode, too distracted or too busy for their core business: Moving people towards their shared ideal via product and/or policy. Heretofore, the means gets all the press and dollars, the ends are afterthought that continually depress us, or bite us in the ass. Sounds like an oportunity to me. In this case, one for the Democrats.

Rightness is meaning. And meaning needs context. The common benchmarks with which we measure meaning are intrinsic values like justice, fortitude, charity, truth, beauty, ambition, merit, and yes, faith. They don't need explanation. They are, as Kant and others note, Intrinsic Goods, "good in themselves." Go here to see exactly how pervasive and understandable this framework is.

Done? That, in a nutshell, is the cultural lexicon of persuasion, passion and purpose. Now, imagine that matrix as a filter against the messages you hear from politicians or advertisers. How do they measure up? Some people see that Table of Elements and intuitively glom onto it. They see the fit and context of their worldview and begin moving pieces around; they begin measuring their business, ideology or relationships against it. That's good. It's not perfect, nor does it delinate every factor or eventuality. Nor does it need to. The point is not to give the answers, but to provide a common credible language with which to build and frame your views--and your solutions--in authentic, straightforward and deeply human terms. In this way, ideas begin to matter because they factor in a thing beyond expediency. That thing is peoples' idealized view of their self--what they could be. Remember the lines, "Politicians are purveyors of hope and answers to questions voters are often unequipped to ask. Visionary politics is about a future people didn't know they had"? Finally, they say, someone is making an attempt to frame what matters to me in a way I and others can comprehend and begin to talk about. Talking. About common ground--fears and ideals, successes and disappointments. That feels like progress to people who are told we live in an Age of Progress, yet see no meaningful, personal signs of it in the markers of that Age: Email, cell phones, pizza delivery, sock puppets--all, if you'll notice, rpresentative of our ability to be further away from each other and yet, still able to "touch base." It seems that culturally, contact replaces connection, availability trumps proximity. Yet our urge for connection and proximity remains firmly parked in the the, reptilian R-Complex of Paul MacLeary's Triune Brain. "Touch," figuratively and literally, is the key to "rightness."

I realize this is a stretch for many. Oddly enough, it causes discomfort and suspicion, or just confusion, in the very people we lean on to "skin the world" and show it to us as it really is: Journalists.

For example: Josh Marshall's post of 1-18-04 Talking Points Memo:

A few days ago I saw James Carville say that Edwards was the best stump speaker he’d ever seen, even better than Clinton, or something to that effect. So I wanted to see what all the commotion was about.... While I was watching, in the moment, that is, I also didn’t have much question that Edwards would be the eventual nominee. He’s that good....His comfort level with a crowd, his ability to roll with and into their moods and reactions, and his ability to craft his talk into a resonant story (a narrative, as we used to say) is simply light years beyond what Kerry or Clark can manage.... With most politicians in these sorts of settings I watch and see the disjuncture between what they are doing and what they should be doing, what they’re supposed to be doing.... And yet, an hour or so later, after his presentation and after and Q& A, I had a bit of a hard time remembering quite what I was so dazzled by. It put me in the mind of one of those old clichés about light Asian food: filling at the time, but a few hours later you’re hungry again.

Ah, the old Chinese food analogy. An example of cliche within an example that proves another cliche: Jaded Journalists. The media, well educated and skeptical because of it, still have a narrow protagonist/antagonist polar view of stories. They want neatly cleaved distinctions between characters because it makes for more quickly understandable narratives. Following this premise, they view conservatives as having a franchise on the spiritual public persona--it fits the prevailing journalistic worldview. When they hear a conservative figure invoke faith, it has the ring of authenticity, therefore they nod and move on: "Nothing unusual here, find another story." When a liberal invokes faith red lights flash. Traditionally viewed as expansive and accepting, unwilling to judge conditionally, a liberals embrace of the "cartoon" view of spirituality of many journalists seeem counterintuitive. Why? Because doctrine and dogma--the brochure copy of organized religion--is basically a list of moral rules and judgements; they are a box. And the simplistic view of liberality is that rules can be harmful to personal freedom of choice with regard to lifestyle and direction of non-public conduct. The view is that liberals don't like "boxes". And that conservatives do. Both "learned" assumptions are wrong. The hopeful and spiritual "85% of Americans" in the Pew Foundation study mentioned earlier proves them wrong.

Faith moves mountains, but bring a shovel.

There's an odd dialectic at play within a voter's mind that is at once counter-intuitive and also, whack-on-the-head simple: If it's free it can't be any good. Framed in the right terms, sacrifice is a powerful selling point. But where does sacrifice play into the typical pitch of today's political candidates? Usually nowhere. The process of campaigning often consists of retailing solutions to grievances, usually niche complaints, with no larger application to the social fabric. If you can "fix" the problem, a box is checked and we move on to the next tactical bugaboo. This is not relief or progress, it's not shared victory. It's inventory.

Usally, this anti-climactic sense is the fault of the framers of debate. Complex issues, insufficiently boiled down to a moral roux, and reduced therefore, to personal choices and standards of success, leave us all confused about the the quality of the outcome. Complexity in framing is the enemy. Rightness is a victim of convolution. Rightness is subliminal, intutive simplicity.

And here, the left is often its own worst enemy. The 'black and white" nature of the current administration's framing of the War on Terror (and by association, the War in Iraq), is incomprehensible to them, yet it's accepted by a large majority of voters. How can that be? What are they thinking? After all, as Zbigniew Brzezinski recently pointed out, "if you are not with us, you are against us" derives directly from Lenin's threats to get anti-bolsheviks to snap in line, or else. What, are we taking rhetorical cues from bloodless commies now? Surely it's obvious that the Middle East is a melting pot of cause and effect:

* Palestinian displacement and disaffection
* Arab solidarity with Palestinians
* Wahabbist madrassas
* Socio-economic stratification
* Vertical economies based on oil wealth
* US meddling and overpowering cultural influence
* Hindsight that our intelligence infrastructure dropped the ball

Wow. What a list. And what to do with it--where to start? Well, building on the point that complexity is the enemy, a national seminar on geopolitics probably isn't the place. Starting an off-strategy second-front war doesn't exactly ameliorate things either, does it?

Those two--a seminar or a war--are choices. And I would venture, bad ones relative to getting moving or to long term success for Democrats, respectively. What's left? Or rather, what feels "right"?

Well, an important qualifier is that rightness is not always "correctness." One can mistake the two--I would venture this administration has, and it seems conservatives are starting to agree. This is why leadership is such a dangerous job. And why leadership of this country is so important. Rightness and correctness converge on this one in a simple way that's useful for democrats:

What is right is what "we can do well" or, perhaps, one step beyond what we have done before. As a populace, we don't sit well for eating our spinach--the effect of a seminar and deep, nuanced explanation. Of course, historically, we don't go off half-cocked and whack sovereign countries either, no matter how abhorrent those nations' leadership. These things just aren't done. They're not "American" in character. In this way, our decisions of late have confounded our allies into a state of anxiety and wariness--our President is mandating policies that reflect HIS character, not the nation's principles.

We know how democrats feel. But given that more and more conservatives look askance at things like moon-bases, deficits, unprecedented government spending leaps, etc, one could be forgiven thinking that this President has no central character--he doesn't know who he is.

Okay. What is "right" in terms of choice in this instance? What is right for the much-vaunted "leader of the free world", as our presidents are so called? Why not a third choice that builds on our abilities and ambition, engages the energies of our system, and that intersects with the desires of the world: Sharing our knowledge of how to build a better quality of life. That is a Frame many individuals, companies, communities, allies and enemies would slow down long enough to listen to.

First, let's stipulate some things. We Americans are here. We're not going anywhere. They, Muslim and Middle Easterner, are likewise staying put. We have an inalienable right to be unmolested. So do they. So, any attempt at pushing around the other has no legitimacy in the natural order of things. Call it God's Law, a Creator's preference or Good Cricket. Fair enough?

Our size comes with advantage and weakness. We can fall, nationally, like a ton of bricks on a problem or an enemy. This size tends to make us unaware of our everyday, bull in a china shop influence. In many eyes, we are clumsy, impolite company when exercising our outsize muscle. This makes us a target of jealousy or reactive anger at our cluelessness. To mix my animals and metaphors, that's a big elephant in the room, a fact we rarely acknowledge in a meaningful way. It's a non-sanctioned discussion. Oddly enough, it's a discussion that happens often in conservative boardrooms:

"How do we not get at cross-purposes with ourselves and inadvertently turn our size and reach into a liability? How do we avoid bigfooting the market and customers so much that we give the underdog, our competitive challengers, a leg up--how do we not spend our resources to energize their strategic imperatives?"

It's a conversation that happens in the course of imparting character to our children

Do not brag about your achievements, do not bully others with your talent. Help the lesser of your equals. Rest not on your laurels. Judge not lest ye be judged. Do not run up the score unnecessarily.

The beauty of the size I mention above is you have the luxury of generosity and the resilience to resist blows that would decimate lesser players. You can live and learn. You survive to get another, reasoned at-bat. With that size also comes the obligation of virtue and national character that is the only brake on your lesser impulses. I'm going to venture a touchy proposition here, but authenticity and believablility demands it I think: September 11, 2001, abhorrent as it was, offered us two choices. React in a small way, or large one, to a cross-cultural challenge. The course current leadership has chosen, is to get up, shake off the ringing in its ears, grab a bat, and go after people. Any people; allies, national security operatives, fellow citizens included.

We are the world's superpower. Our "ton of bricks" capability is undoubted. Afghanistan was a corrective that most would agree had some righteous symmetry to it. I would. But our reactionary responses in the aftermath of Afghanistan have been unitelligible in the eyes of much of the world. And also to a large percentage of Americans if recent polls are reliable guidance. Our unwillingness to, and apparent lack of facility with, commitment and clean-up after the end-game diminishes our virtue in the larger fight. We lose allies and focus. The drip-drip of tragic casualties feeds the "yeah, but what about ministires, museums, oil, contracts, " box-checking and inventory that lack of coherent and relevant purpose encourages in critics, domestic and foreign.

A larger way.

In a previous post here, I wrote that Iraq is a sequel. And that like most sequels, it unnecessarily complicates motives, plot, and character assumptions in order to justify its reason for being. (There' s that complexity word again.) Similarly, in the first part of this series I posited that voters need politicians to mirror them, even if they don't recognize themselves. Again, a sustainable larger way, reconcilable with our national self-image is precisely where current leadership has gone astray. Retribution substitutes for Republic as in for which it stands in the minds of many around the world. I don't see myself in that description, nor anyone I associate with or love. And before you suggest, who cares what "they" think?, let me remind that as a global economic power, there's little mileage in telling your customers they are wrong. "Perception is reality", and it has a nasty way of strangling balance sheets whether your name is Arthur Andersen or Uncle Sam.

The "smallness" rings of a moral cognitive dissonance, a braggadocio that suggests arrogant insecurity not a calm, powerful, confident resolve. In swinging that bat wildly and anxiously, we affirm the Bible, Broadway and Hollywood at once: "He that troubleth his own house, shall inherit the wind." Proverbs 11:29. In short, America's not going anywhere, even with, heaven forbid, a half-dozen more World Trade Centers. We're here for the duration, and we can hear Lincoln's "Better angels of our nature." That is a truth that should inform a "larger" response, one that makes a clear and sincere and therefore straightforward effort at minimizing or hopefully eliminating the chance of those six hypothetical attacks: tragedy must be recognized, but not at the expense of those who died. Not with the legacy of their death being a moribund moral, spiritual and political U-turn for a great nation with so much to offer.

So, if this is a misguided sequel in need of a rewrite, what does the "right" script sound like? Perhaps to follow the meme, I might offer rightness as framed by a hypothetical candidate in opposition to our curent practice. If we can spend to occupy and liberate, why not invest to secure and improve? At $150-plus billion for Iraq, we have far surpassed, by a factor of 5 or 6, the WW II restorative of the Marshall Plan. And we are headed in the opposite direction, accruing enemies, rather than converting them. Do bombs and bullets really offer a better ROI than bonds and building in a country awash in the former? Enlightened self-interest still guides our central national premise, but Realpolitik is a dinosaur when the danger is not the country with ten thousand nukes, but the marginalized zealot with one. Life or Liberty or the pursuit of happiness was not a "pick one" choice. Likewise, "with us or against us" is not a sustainable political or cultural proposition. So, my hypothetical candidate "rightly" might ask, sometime in 2004:

Do you share in the pride we all feel to belong to this thing called the USA? Wonderful: You're in, welcome to the club. But first, as citizens, let's do a little quantifying: We may look and speak and live differently, but we remain Americans. We're great buiders and great thinkers. We're great sharers. We're great doers. It is who we are. Yet somewhere along the way, someone has sold us a bill of goods. Somehow the idea was introduced that better profits trump the betterment of you and me. Either-or, not both-and. That somehow, national security comes not from cooperation and coordination, but by some imagined lonesome cowboy ethic that never really was. Imagine a movie that expects you to believe this plot--that a sheriff succesfully protects his town by alienating and insulting the ever-friendly marshalls in the surrounding counties. This is the premise and the plan, tragic and costly, we're expected believe today. You're either with us, or you're against us. Our way is the only way. This is wrong. This is not us. We have more confidence and ability than strained belligerent bluster like that betrays. The only franchise on infallibility comes from God, everyone's God. The Declaration of Independence is quite clear. America is NOT about being perfect. It is about pusuit of the ideal of perfection. Why? Because the minute we say "perfect," we're done. Our national reason for being is gone. Besides being impossible, "Perfect" is a destination. Terminal. Where to from there? If the world keeps turning, nowhere but irrelevance. But seeking perfection, not accepting good enough, now there's a journey. And a plan. And journeys need supplies, new help, new ideas and new things to discover. And the right journeys are glasses half-full. They are self-sustaining and self-starting. As creators and thinkers and sharers, the stuff we need to feel alive and growing is, as it turns out, the stuff others want the world over. There's a ready market for the things we innately believe. We don't have to fake it. Do we stop, sit, and congratulate ourselves? No. Do we alienate the very people who admire much of what we've built and done and who want to emulate much that they like? No. We survey the lanscape. We weigh our options. We make a choice. And we vote.

Okay, I feel silly writing half-baked speeches for imaginary candidates.... So take my feeble effort and substitute some truly meaningful political statements in time of challenge or national crisis.

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself"

"Ask not what your country can do for you"

"Malice towards none, with charity for all"

"Bring 'em on."

These words and choices enable something... Feeling. With a capital F. Do we think FDR wanted people to remember him for effectively engineering lend-lease or introducing the SEC? Was Kennedy in search of a rocket scientist make-work program? Was Lincoln suggesting a means-test of compassion for those in opposition to his views? Reread those quotes. Do you hear any determination there? Yes. Inclusion? Yep. Idealism? Of course.

Bluster?

Vengeance?

Anger?

Exactly.