  
George Lakoff is not Yoda
I cringed when I saw George Lakoff quoted in a recent Sacramento Bee article on the controversy over a Sacramento couple's anti-Iraq war display at their home.
From the Bee article:
"If what they want to do is open an effective dialogue, this won't achieve it," said George Lakoff, a University of California, Berkeley, linguistics professor. "I suspect it merely inflames."
Lakoff's well-known book, Don't Think of an Elephant, outlines the conflicts between what he describes as progressive and conservative thinking, arguing that conservatives have taken over the national dialogue.
If he could speak directly to the couple who posted the sign, who divide their time between homes in [Sacramento] and Berkeley, Lakoff would tell them, "This is counterproductive."*
My problem with seeing the mention of Lakoff in the Bee article is that Lakoff is taking on the status of the progressives' guru -- if he hasn't already -- and I think that's bad.
Lakoff has some good ideas, to be sure. The strategic use of language is an important piece of the puzzle for us progressives to take back our nation. But that's all that it is: A piece of the puzzle. It isn't a silver bullet. Yet Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant! seems to have become progressives' new bible.
It's understandable that after the 2000, 2002 and 2004 election losses, progressives are desperate for some leaders, some heroes, some gurus.
But these elections were lost, I think, more because of piss-poor Democratic Party leadership than they were lost because of the nuances of language. That the Democratic Party has taken its base for granted for the past four years has been more harmful, I think, than any mistakes that the party has made in its use of language.
That John Kerry refused to take stands on controversial issues -- he never denounced the Iraq war, for instance, but only criticized the particulars of its execution, and he would not strongly support or oppose same-sex marriage, but instead advocated separate-and-unequal "civil unions" -- also, I think, lost the 2004 election more than the misuse of language.
There are millions of Americans who admire what they see as George W. Bush's conviction, even though his "conviction" has brought us the largest federal budget deficit in history and his illegal, immoral, unprovoked and imperialist invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq has increased rather than decreased terrorism and has made the United States even more hated and thus less safe. For millions of Americans, possessing conviction is more important than being right. They see the president of the United States as a father figure, and they want a strong father to protect them. (It's OK if Daddy is wrong as long as he's "strong.")
We need to pay attention to psychodynamics like this, not just to the words that we use.
In Don't Think of an Elephant! Lakoff offers an insightful dissection of the California gubernatorial recall race and the frames that emerged during the race.
While frames are important, let's look to the 2006 California gubernatorial election. State Treasurer Phil Angelides, an intelligent, well-spoken man who, in his glasses, looks studious, is looking like he'll emerge as the Democratic candidate to oppose Arnold Schwarzenegger.
We can pre-emptively frame this race, but let's look at a more basic psychodynamic:
In how many high school student council elections has a brainiac beat the high school football hero for class president?
Doesn't an Angelides-vs.-Schwarzenegger matchup have the same basic dynamic?
I would vote for the smart guy over the dumb jock every time. If you're a progressive you probably would, too. But we'd be mistaken if we thought that even a simple majority of voters make their voting choices the way we do. I submit that our "real world," "adult" elections aren't much different than high school student council elections in terms of the psychodynamics involved. Many, if not most, people, I submit, vote with their gut, not with their heads.
In one of the other analyses of the recall election that I read, one writer posited that a big reason former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis went down and Schwarzenegger became guv is that most people would rather be Schwarzenegger than Davis, and that people tend to vote for the candidate they'd rather be.
If all of this is true, I don't see how the best use of political language could allow Angelides, the brainiac, to beat Schwarzenegger, the football hero.
(Note that for his photo ops, Kerry tried to look like less of a brainiac -- he rode onto the set of "The Tonight Show" on a Harley and regularly was photographed doing such things as skiing, riding a mountain bike and tossing a football -- while for his photo ops, Bush didn't try to make himself look like a smarter person. You didn't see Bush photographed reading a quantum physics textbook or using a slide rule. That's because being perceived as a brainiac more often than not is a political liability. Many if not most voters are intimidated by people who are smarter than they are and they punish smarter people by not voting for them.)
A better book on the use of language in politics than Lakoff's Elephant, I think, is the late S.I. Hayakawa's Language in Thought and Action (now in its fifth edition and available at amazon.com).
In a section titled "The Open and Closed Mind," Hayakawa notes: "...[I]f you are chronically insecure or anxious or frightened, you cling desperately to your belief system, and you are too busy defending yourself against real or imagined threats to take in information about [your] disbelief system." (Hayakawa defines one's "disbelief system" simply as "the things you don't believe in.")
What was the Bush team's No. 1 strategy in the 2004 election? Let me give you a hint: FEAR, TERROR, FEAR, TERROR, FEAR, TERROR and still more FEAR and TERROR. (Remember all of the bogus terrorist alerts? Remember when the Republicans were talking about drawing up laws for postponing the presidential election in the event of a terrorist attack? Remember when Dick Cheney said that if Kerry were elected, the terrorists would strike the United States again a la 9/11?)
It is because of the Bush regime's effective use of fear that a huge chunk of Americans still believe such things as: Those weapons of mass destruction that were used as the pretext for the Bush regime's March 2003 invasion of Iraq were found (they were not, of course); that the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi (not one of them was an Iraqi, and 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia); and that there was a connection between Iraq/Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda/9/ll (no such link has been demonstrated, of course).
Even George Lakoff can't fix something as seriously fucked up as this with his language tricks, which to me sometimes seem like lame attempts at Jedi mind tricks. (For example, in his too-brief-to-be-very-helpful DVD titled "How Democrats and Progressives Can Win: Solutions from George Lakoff," Lakoff suggests -- with a straight face -- that we progressives use the term "ending pregnancy" and that we never use the word "abortion." I can't see how treating people with contempt through the use of weasel words, like the Republicans do, is going to bring about a progressive renaissance.)
Again, the strategic use of language is important and Lakoff offers some good advice on this. But the strategic use of language is only one piece of the puzzle, and we ignore the other pieces at our own peril.
And George Lakoff is not Yoda.
*Lakoff and I aren't crazy about the anti-Iraq war display, but for different reasons. While Lakoff doesn't think it's good political strategy, I can't understand why people invest their time and energy fighting over a display at a private home and I can't see what actual good it accomplishes; if people truly care about our troops and/or the Iraqis, why don't they do something constructive, such as send money to an organization that helps them?
9:27:57 PM 
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