Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Can America Recover?
Although the article quoted here is specifically addressed to progressives correctly framing our arguments and policies, it made me start thinking about how much America has changed in my lifetime. The changes are obvious: the hardening disregard for the less fortunate; the crass institutionalization of greed and how easily it’s expressed; an increasingly common belief that government is bad in and of itself; the appropriation and clinical manipulation of language to “spin” the truth; the effacement and disappearance of shame as a corrective in our culture; the failure of officials to take responsibility when their foibles are exposed; the list could go on and on.
Finally, we come to the highest level of framing accomplishment achieved by the right, and the most powerful. So successful have they been in their deep propaganda efforts, they have reframed the very categories employed in the discussion and consideration of political questions, as well as the labels and the meanings of those labels, used in such discourse. If, for example, they can cause negative images and sentiments to be associated with the very word 'liberal', they have won half the battle before it ever begins. And this, regrettably, is precisely what has transpired.
Consider the trajectory of the words and categories 'liberal' and 'conservative' over the past three decades. At the beginning of this period, liberal was far less the dirty word than it is today, and conservative far more so. Perhaps it was my age then, or the particular crowd with which I ran, but it seems to me that for many at that time, 'conservative' meant Nixon and lies and war and greed and uptight attitudes toward life's pleasures. Meanwhile, ideas like helping the poor, and the government functioning as a successful proprietor of solutions to societal problems, were broadly accepted as conventional wisdom.
To say that those latter notions are now ancient history for most Americans today is to be overly generous to the status of contemporary liberalism. The ultimate goal of skillful framing is to marginalize hostile concepts completely, optimally to the point of being forgotten and then actually inconceivable, and the right is now well down that path in the United States. Of course, this was precisely the core genius of Orwell in 1984, and why he was at such pains to portray in his totalitarian dystopia the government's efforts at reinventing language for the purpose of rendering certain ideas quite literally unthinkable.
Perhaps, then, the most profound - and subtle, and therefore little remarked upon - legacy of the Reagan years was to reverse those liberal notions embedded in 20th century conventional wisdom, turning Americans against their own government (notwithstanding the logical absurdity of such a notion in a democracy) and promoting the grandeur of what can only be described as greed. By the time we get to the era of Clinton and the Bushes, the poor and working class have fallen entirely out of sight, and politicians begin catering in their rhetoric only to the middle class. Meanwhile, being labeled 'liberal' becomes a political kiss of death, only slightly more attractive than 'pedophile' or 'terrorist' (just ask Mike Dukakis, who lost an election on almost entirely on the basis of this one-word albatross).
Honestly, is there really any chance of America recovering its moral and rational center? A part of me believes the damage is too great. What do you think?
Finally, we come to the highest level of framing accomplishment achieved by the right, and the most powerful. So successful have they been in their deep propaganda efforts, they have reframed the very categories employed in the discussion and consideration of political questions, as well as the labels and the meanings of those labels, used in such discourse. If, for example, they can cause negative images and sentiments to be associated with the very word 'liberal', they have won half the battle before it ever begins. And this, regrettably, is precisely what has transpired.
Consider the trajectory of the words and categories 'liberal' and 'conservative' over the past three decades. At the beginning of this period, liberal was far less the dirty word than it is today, and conservative far more so. Perhaps it was my age then, or the particular crowd with which I ran, but it seems to me that for many at that time, 'conservative' meant Nixon and lies and war and greed and uptight attitudes toward life's pleasures. Meanwhile, ideas like helping the poor, and the government functioning as a successful proprietor of solutions to societal problems, were broadly accepted as conventional wisdom.
To say that those latter notions are now ancient history for most Americans today is to be overly generous to the status of contemporary liberalism. The ultimate goal of skillful framing is to marginalize hostile concepts completely, optimally to the point of being forgotten and then actually inconceivable, and the right is now well down that path in the United States. Of course, this was precisely the core genius of Orwell in 1984, and why he was at such pains to portray in his totalitarian dystopia the government's efforts at reinventing language for the purpose of rendering certain ideas quite literally unthinkable.
Perhaps, then, the most profound - and subtle, and therefore little remarked upon - legacy of the Reagan years was to reverse those liberal notions embedded in 20th century conventional wisdom, turning Americans against their own government (notwithstanding the logical absurdity of such a notion in a democracy) and promoting the grandeur of what can only be described as greed. By the time we get to the era of Clinton and the Bushes, the poor and working class have fallen entirely out of sight, and politicians begin catering in their rhetoric only to the middle class. Meanwhile, being labeled 'liberal' becomes a political kiss of death, only slightly more attractive than 'pedophile' or 'terrorist' (just ask Mike Dukakis, who lost an election on almost entirely on the basis of this one-word albatross).
Honestly, is there really any chance of America recovering its moral and rational center? A part of me believes the damage is too great. What do you think?
