My mom gave me a copy of George Lakoff's "Don't Think of an Elephant!" soon after the election last fall. It's a quick read, but a good one. I remember feeling hopeful after reading it that maybe, perhaps, the democrats would actually listen to Lakoff and change the way they talk about things.

It turns out they have. At least some of them, some of the time. The argument that words don't matter, only ideas matter, is silly to me because it implies that words aren't ideas when they are. Words embody ideas. Ideas are not separate from language. I guess Lakoff, as a linguist, knows this better than I do.

I didn't know until reading Matt Bai's article in today's NY Times that Lakoff studied under Noam Chomsky and had a falling out with him. This makes me like Lakoff even more. I'm cautious of anything that promotes Chomsky as an "authority," especially films that plop him in as the de-facto anti-Bush, anti-US spokesperson. I've always distrusted him. He's the personification of the ivory tower elite: never worked outside of academia; the youngest person to be tenured at MIT (only 32). He's had very limited experience, so when he talks about the rights of workers and other traditional talking points of the left, it feels flat and insincere to me. If he's never had to earn a living on an hourly wage, how can he really understand it?

Sorry for that little rant. I didn't intend to talk about Chomsky, but rather Lakoff.

What impressed me most about Lakoff's book was his insistence that we are reacting to repubicans, falling within their framed arguments, rather than presenting our own. We are often reactors, not actors. It's the purely defensive posture rather than the offensive. When I studied kickboxing and boxing, we had a mantra, "The best defense is a good offense." It's true for the blood sport of politics too.

I'm not going to excerpt too much of Bai's article here. It's worth reading the whole essay. But here's a snippet:


I don't agree with Bai's conclusion, though I think the democrats are still floundering. It isn't bad to present ideas that everyone agrees on when you frame them properly. If we can grow the democratic party by demonstrating our core values are universal rather than reacting to republican arguments, we will win elections.

Frankly it's easy to debate the repubicans' mantra: "Free markets" is a farce when your country has outlandish corporate subsidies and trades, unrestricted, with countries that restrict their trade, not to mention when the market is rife with corruption and cooked books. "Strong defense" is a farce when you start wars unprovoked and overstretch the military to the breaking point. "Lower taxes" is a farce when to lower them today means to tax the next generation outrageously to make up for an exponentially growing deficit. "Smaller government" is a farce as soon as you point out that crazy deficit -- if a deficit isn't a sign of huge government, what is? "Family values" is a farce when the administration cuts programs that help keep families together, tears apart families across the country by long deployments of national guard and reservists (not to mention active duty), and when they oppose gay marriage. To be against the marriage of two adults who love each other is actually to oppose marriage.

But we can't win elections by responding and debating republican ideas. We can be the party of reaction or action. We have to be the party of action if we're to win ever again. Lakoff's talking points of "Stronger America, broad prosperity, better future, effective government, and mutual responsibility" may not be perfect, but they're a start. They reflect the core values of our party. We believe in responsibility, from an individual level to a governmental one. We believe that it's best when all Americans prosper, not just a handful. We believe in optimism, which promises a better future, not an apocalyptic one. We believe that America is made stronger by intelligent, thoughtful foreign policy, not the policy of revenge. We never lacked values or ideas. We've lacked the language to express them.

I hope Lakoff stays popular. I hope his strategies spread throughout the party. He's right on. Framing is the issue. We have core values. We have an idea of what our country should be. We've spent the past five years reacting to the republicans' ideas because we haven't had the language to express our own. To use another fighting mantra, "Fight your own fight. Not your opponent's fight." This means to have a plan and stay on the offensive, rather than letting your opponent lead you around the ring while you try to deflect their punches.

We've been led aroung the ring too long. It's time to fight our own fight.

I think Frank Rich gets it exactly right. It's not about Karl Rove any more than it's about Joe Wilson. It's about Bush and his insatiable appetite for war.

Perhaps Rove will go down. But I don't think it will matter. This time next year his office may not be across the hall from the president's, but he'll still be on the payroll as a "consultant" and we'll still be at war in Iraq. I'm saddened that many democrats have chosen to make this about Rove. Rove is a supreme a**hole; in fact he is our own little Dark Prince, and he deserves to be punished for all of his lies and for outing an undercover CIA agent. However, the hounding of him on this one issue is playing right into their strategy. If it gets too hot, Rove will resign from his official position and the right will say, "See, he's gone." There will be no discussion of the lies and deception that led us to war, and, no doubt, Rove will still be the puppet master in an unofficial capacity.  Unless, and here's the caveat, we are able to focus on the whole layer cake that has been the past five years and use Rove's malfeasance as an example of the deeper problems within this administration, demonstrating how Bush Co. cannot be trusted on any issue, however significant or not, because they are bald-faced liars.

I think all of us in blogoland understand this is a complex issue -- Rove's desire for revenge was just one part of the massive machination that led us to Iraq. I hope our representatives, who have such louder voices than us, can focus on that and not let the right spin this into another inconsequential flash of reality easily dismissed.

(I revised this post a bit this morning. It's dangerous to write in the middle of the night. Sometimes I wake up and I'm surprised by myself -- the language is flat, or worse, the thoughts aren't clear.)

On NPR today I heard about an anti-discrimination lawsuit against New York City's MTA public transportation system. Apparently MTA asked their Sikh employees to put an MTA logo on their turbans so passengers wouldn't get "confused." The employees have called this discrimination because non-Sikh employees frequently wear baseball caps with team logos on them and they are not asked to put the MTA logo on as well. MTA claims that the turbans are scary to passengers who think the employees may be terrorists, even though Sikhs are not Muslims.

How did we become so ignorant? And so fearful?

For Sikh men, the turban is an integral part of their religious practice. One of the Sikh employees interviewed on NPR said that to ask them to put a MTA logo on their turbans would be like asking a Christian to put a MTA logo on his cross. I thought that was a powerful analogy.

I know we learn geography only when we go to war, but what about religions? When do we learn about them? Isn't it our responsibility to know about other religions, especially when we are so quick to judge?

One of the Sikh employees interviewed had received a commendation on 9/11 when he backed up his train from the WTC station just before it collapsed and saved the lives of his passengers. Today he is being asked to take off his turban, deface it, or lose his job, all because of the ignorance of some of his passengers who think he may be a Muslim terrorist. Their fear matters most, I guess.