When the Right Attacks

I have read more than a few blog entries from the dark side about a supposed leftist conspiracy to undermine the various U.S. governmental agencies warning about a potential terrorist plot that may take place in the U.S. this summer.

I dunno. I have looked at a lot of opinion on the left concerning this, and I find no evidence of an orchestrated effort underway to undermine Bush, his Administration, or the various agencies responsible for getting the word out to America that something dire may be about to be unleashed.

All I see is healthy skepticism. People wondering what form an attack could take, and questioning our level of preparedness, etc. These are things that all thinking peoples could be reasonably expected to do given the ominous warnings of their government.

I trust that the government does indeed have increased levels of 'chatter' and that the seven individuals wanted for questioning aren't seven unlucky people randomly picked from a database.

My personal view is that I am unlikely to come under terrorist attack. As are you. The chances of dying in a motor vehicle accident are 40,000 times more likely than dying in a domestic terrorist attack.

I still drive. Every day in fact.

I cannot offer any quick-fix advice to those that are so indoctrinated as to see shadowy motives under every rock that they overturn. I can only offer a long term solution to this phenomenon. Certain people - both left and right - are so inured that they only can offer reflexive answers to vexing questions. Questions that require a more nuanced, wide range of thought to properly understand, and then offer answers for them.

Sorry for that bit of digression.

Getting back on course, how do we as responsible citizens start to turn the tide?

Name calling, and other destructive behaviors isn't going to work. There are projects underway that are attempting to reframe issues in a progressive manner, but first finding some commonality would be helpful.

Because reframing issues in a different light can be a rather daunting task, I'll let linguist George Lakoff explain how the issue of taxation can be taken from its commonly framed construct of something almost evil in nature, to something much more positive and instructive.

You've written a lot about "tax relief" as a frame. How does it work?

The phrase "Tax relief" began coming out of the White House starting on the very day of Bush's inauguration. It got picked up by the newspapers as if it were a neutral term, which it is not. First, you have the frame for "relief." For there to be relief, there has to be an affliction, an afflicted party, somebody who administers the relief, and an act in which you are relieved of the affliction. The reliever is the hero, and anybody who tries to stop them is the bad guy intent on keeping the affliction going. So, add "tax" to "relief" and you get a metaphor that taxation is an affliction, and anybody against relieving this affliction is a villain.

"Tax relief" has even been picked up by the Democrats. I was asked by the Democratic Caucus in their tax meetings to talk to them, and I told them about the problems of using tax relief. The candidates were on the road. Soon after, Joe Lieberman still used the phrase tax relief in a press conference. You see the Democrats shooting themselves in the foot.

So what should they be calling it?

It's not just about what you call it, if it's the same "it." There's actually a whole other way to think about it. Taxes are what you pay to be an American, to live in a civilized society that is democratic and offers opportunity, and where there's an infrastructure that has been paid for by previous taxpayers. This is a huge infrastructure. The highway system, the Internet, the TV system, the public education system, the power grid, the system for training scientists — vast amounts of infrastructure that we all use, which has to be maintained and paid for. Taxes are your dues — you pay your dues to be an American. In addition, the wealthiest Americans use that infrastructure more than anyone else, and they use parts of it that other people don't. The federal justice system, for example, is nine-tenths devoted to corporate law. The Securities and Exchange Commission and all the apparatus of the Commerce Department are mainly used by the wealthy. And we're all paying for it.

So taxes could be framed as an issue of patriotism.

It is an issue of patriotism! Are you paying your dues, or are you trying to get something for free at the expense of your country? It's about being a member. People pay a membership fee to join a country club, for which they get to use the swimming pool and the golf course. But they didn't pay for them in their membership. They were built and paid for by other people and by this collectivity. It's the same thing with our country — the country as country club, being a member of a remarkable nation. But what would it take to make the discussion about that? Every Democratic senator and all of their aides and every candidate would have to learn how to talk about it that way. There would have to be a manual. Republicans have one. They have a guy named Frank Luntz, who puts out a 500-page manual every year that goes issue by issue on what the logic of the position is from the Republican side, what the other guys' logic is, how to attack it, and what language to use.

As you can see, it's a daunting task to undo decades of conservative newspeak. Before anyone calls me on it, I am aware that this same sort of thing also occurs on the left.

I hope that the above gives you something with which to work. The balance of the above parenthetical remarks and a lot more can be found at the Rockridge Institute.

Disclaimer: I am a semiconductor engineer, so if this post is abjectly lacking in useful material, I can't help it. I'm a geek :)