George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant!
Scheuer, Jeffrey
DON'T THINK OF AN ELEPHANT! KNOW YOUR VALUES AND FRAME THE DEBATE by George Lakoff Chelsea Green Publishing Co., 2004 144 pp $10 paper THERE ARE MANY approaches to democratic politics, but in...
...At first, some of this can seem like political sleight-of-hand...
...The values stay, or there's no point getting out of bed...
...The answer cannot be a piety contest...
...Lakoff shows how language—the medium of all democratic politics—has meant lost opportunities for the left and how those losses could be reversed...
...But then, too much reality, as Freud warned, can lead to depression...
...For the left, this is not a happy prospect...
...They are the elephants that I can't help thinking of...
...Do progressives tend to do so...
...Yet it hasn't been a winning combination against the right's "strict father" frame, which summons a muscular and often mean-spirited individualism and nationalism, along with market and moral fundamentalism...
...Lakoff counsels pragmatism, not opportunism...
...American culture and character are deeply hostile to structural reform, as is our democratic system itself...
...Should people vote their interests...
...These approaches require better arguments and tactics and, possibly, better candidates...
...This is all the more interesting when one considers the issues and values that divide us...
...Other than stealing votes, there's not much else to the game...
...For example, given a fairly stable political spectrum with two firm poles and a soft middle (call it the 40-20-40 model), why is this moderate middle much more liable to make excursions to the right (Reagan, Gingrich, the two Bushes, the current Senate and House leadership) than to the left...
...They certainly do not mean that we need better values...
...Why is greater equality, even via the gentler pathways of greater class mobility, such a hard sell...
...Despite the primacy of religious freedom among our founding principles, as reflected in its placement in the first clause of the First Amendment, ahead of speech and assembly, the right has vigorously exploited the ancient, bankrupt idea that Christianity is the source of all moral insight and authority...
...Lakoff's prescription for a healthier left is to reframe the discourse...
...Asking why people vote as they do, Lakoff offers the same answer as Thomas Frank in What's the Matter With Kansas?, which also appeared last year (neither author cites the other): [V]oters vote their identity—they vote on the basis of who they are, what values they have, and who and what they admire...
...Language does matter in politics, and much of the nation's political discourse has indeed been kidnapped by the right...
...The left won't get very far until it is able to present the idea that democratic politics is and ought to be about class...
...Terrorism alone can't account for the difference...
...It isn't just a matter of voting against one's interests, but also of misperceiving where those interests lie...
...They may not be integral to Lakoff's points about political language—and to that end, Don't Think of an Elephant...
...Any takers...
...specifically, the concept of class...
...But as tactical advice it is sound and overdue...
...He is working on a study of journalistic excellence and democracy...
...And how has the right managed to demonize "class warfare," rendering a core political concept taboo, while practicing its own form of plutocratic class warfare with astonishingly hypocritical abandon...
...Nowhere more than here has the right framed the issues in its own very limited way...
...And while offering hardheaded strategic advice, it gives no quarter on values...
...Despite its ill-chosen title, Don't Think of an Elephant...
...One is to mobilize the base to increase voter turnout...
...Its strength (and limitation) is its implicit focus on attracting the hypothetical "winnables" in the center...
...Among the better studies of the political spectrum's dyadic underpinnings is A Conflict of Visions by the conservative Thomas Sowell...
...and Lakoff's thesis, first outlined in 1996 in his much heftier tome Moral Politics, offers no panacea...
...Democrats have not yet figured this out...
...KNOW YOUR VALUES AND FRAME THE DEBATE by George Lakoff Chelsea Green Publishing Co., 2004 144 pp $10 paper THERE ARE MANY approaches to democratic politics, but in the end only a few known recipes for success...
...is admirably brief...
...Vexing issues remain...
...targets the political space where discourse can make a difference...
...The other big elephant is equality, which is the main axis of democratic debate...
...Lakoff doesn't confront the question of how the media help or hurt the right and the left, but he notes that journalists need to see through the frames and explain them...
...JEFFREY SCHEUER is an occasional contributor to Dissent and author of The Sound Bite Society: How Television Helps the Right and Hurts the Left...
...Lakoff is right to say that these competing frameworks, and underlying philosophical assumptions about morality, society, and causality, are what politics is all about...
...The left's "nurturant parent" model embraces genuine family values: jobs, education, health care, child care, clean air and water, public spaces, workers' rights, human rights...
...Coupled with his advice about politico-linguistic reform, it's a good start...
...This is not just about energy...
...We might be forgiven for wondering if the votes are really out there for a progressive America...
...The left must express progressive values in its own language and directly challenge the conservatives' frames...
...These, too, are interesting questions...
...I'm not sure progressives can win any lasting victories while this anti-pluralist view holds sway...
...Should our interests and identities conform...
...Lakoff urges strategic thinking to emulate the successes of the right, by which he means figuring out "what minimal change we can enact that will have effects across many issues...
...Don't Think of an Elephant...
...Lakoff's distinction between the strict father and nurturant parent models may not be the last word philosophically about the ideological spectrum, but in practical terms the metaphors go a long way in capturing the more rigid and hierarchical worldview of the right and the more holistic, interdependent, and egalitarian one of the left...
...Some of these can be expressed epigrammatically: "Do not use their language...
...It leaves open a lot of big questions, but it raises some important ones and offers sound strategic answers...
...96 DISSENT / Fall 2005 BOOKS THE RADICAL RIGHT is by no means the only problem facing progressives...
...And a third, the focus of much political energy, is to try to win over the uncommitted middle...
...0 NE OF THESE is the right's use of religion as a political blunt instrument...
...For example, what the right calls "tort reform," he correctly labels a broad attack on public interest law...
...In any event, if the left is to revive, it must both expand and motivate its base and fight for the middle...
...Certainly the problems of the left cannot be solved by language alone...
...That's one reason why George Lakoff's short book Don't Think of an Elephant...
...For example, he writes, "a massive investment in alternative energy has an enormous yield over many issue areas...
...He suggests ways this politico-linguistic revolution might be reversed...
...it is about jobs, health, clean air and water, habitat, global warming, foreign policy, and third world development...
...Although regaining lost ground demands more than reframing, that is where it must begin...
...It has even been argued that the electronic media skew debate toward simple ideas and sound bites, further privileging the right...
...DISSENT / Fall 2005 97...
...Americans often vote as if they were planning to win the lottery, and protecting their futures...
...Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, which appeared during the 2004 campaign, is important for the left...
...But Lakoff also offers many specific examples related to issues...
...flexibility not about ends, but about means, through the savvy reframing of basic issues and debates...
...Their language picks out a frame—and it won't be your frame...
...A certain number of voters identify themselves with their selfinterest and vote accordingly...
...Its cumbersome legislative mechanics are a recipe for death by committee: the Senate, the Electoral College, the disenfranchisement of the capital city itself, all are counterweights to progress...
...His analysis also suggests important differences between insight and traction: between the keys to understanding the political landscape and keys to altering it...
...But that is the exception rather than the rule . . . . The Republicans have discovered this, and it is a major reason why they have been winning elections— despite being in a minority...
...Or again, "The goal is to activate your model in the people in the 'middle' [by] DISSENT / Fall 2005 95 BOOKS using frames based on your worldview...
...Metaphors can function (or misfire) on both levels...
...A progressive response to the right's doublespeak might be to suggest that the American Dream is, after all, one of an expansive, absorbent middle class to which all can aspire, based on the values Lakoff cites...
...Other important issues belong in a fuller account of the left's predicament...
...Another is to reduce the opposition's turnout (the darker art of vote suppression: see, Florida 2000, Ohio 2004...
...But they are crucibles of those ideas...
...is a smart little book...
...How should the left respond...
...But I'm not sure that the country is ready to hear that democratic discourse requires a common language respectful of all faiths and of secularism...
...He shows how the right, on many issues, has recast the debate in recent decades, using what he describes as a "strict father" moral framework in contrast to the left's "nurturant parent" frame...
Vol. 52 • September 2005 • No. 4
