How best to do that? Just explaining in wonkish detail what the corporate oligarchy, the Right wing, or even professional academic economists really mean by “free market” is a non-starter today. Of course, the Right’s got that powerful American story word “free” on their side.   But we have an equally powerful American story word in “fair.” That’s just one word though. We need to tell the whole “fair market” story ourselves to overcome their  “free-to-lie, cheat & steal market” push.

To get our “fair market” message out there, we need smart American catchphrases and snappy metaphors familiar to the public. That’s why I’m suggesting we progressives demand a “fair market,” to replace our current “free-to-lie, cheat, and steal” market.  A fair market is something that all Americans deserve, and it’s truly American. Fairness is one of our highest values as a people. Moreover, a fair market is one where buyers and sellers all play by the same rules, no matter who they are. It’s a market which is  truly a level playing field and provides equal opportunity for all. It’s one where the rules are set by fair and impartial “referees,” representatives of all the people, not lobbyists for less-than-honest corporations and Congress members in their pay. The rules of a “fair market” protect the health, safety, and economic opportunity of all Americans.  A fair market at home is also what’s needed to create fair trade abroad. That’s trade that won’t sell out our own working people and force all countries to poison the air, water, and soil we humans need to survive on this planet.

More evidence that the “fairness” story works for all Americans comes from a surprising source.  As reported in the recent New Yorker piece on the Kochs, a political advisor of theirs put it this way: “Americans almost universally believe that fairness matters. . .Americans overwhelmingly believe that it’s right to help the vulnerable.”  Judging from that account, the Kochs apparently didn’t really “get” that advice, or couldn’t stomach it, because they went for a “happiness” frame as their own Trojan horse of choice (the “Bridge to Wellbeing” is their “economic freedom” metaphor). But they are still the most dangerous actors in American politics today when it comes to telling a deceptive “free market” crime story, because they are now keenly aware of how important framing is.

As for professional economists, most of them have been pushing the wonders of  “free market,”  deregulation at home, or “free trade” abroad for  many years. Many are also in the corporate pocket, as Charles Ferguson’s 2011 film, Inside Job, showed, or they are just not that into everyday reality or everyday American workers. As James Surowiecki  has just written in the February 22nd New Yorker about “free market’s” twin sister, “free trade:” “. . .free trade has created major winners and major losers in the U.S. economy, and the losers—mainly blue-collar workers—have received little or no help.” Speaking of our outsider candidates Sanders and Trump, he adds, “By focusing on trade, though, both [outsider] candidates are acknowledging something important: what has happened to U.S. labor was not a natural disaster, but, in part, the product of government policies designed to accelerate globalization and expose American workers to foreign competition. “

Elizabeth Warren has long been saying our economic/political system is rigged, and we know it. The question is what do we the people do about it? What will really work? Unfortunately, as I said, honest economic analysis, progressive policy proposals, and campaign rhetoric aren’t enough. We the people must tell the “fair market” American story everywhere ourselves, if we are going to block their corrupt “free-to-lie, cheat & steal market”push.

Susan C. Strong, Ph.D., is the Founder and Executive Director of The Metaphor Project, http://www.metaphorproject.org,  and author of our book, Move Our Message: How to Get America’s Ear.  The Metaphor Project has been helping progressives mainstream their messages since 1997. Follow Susan on Twitter @SusanCStrong.

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In early 2013, the U.S. justice Department launched a program named “Smart on Crime.” It included a review of the criminal justice system in order to identify much needed  reforms. But putting the focus on “crime” in the title just plays into the hands of those whose game plan is to revive vague public fear of “crime,” with prison as the all-purpose solution. If we say “smart on prison dollars” instead, the focus goes to the problem—prisons, and their cost, which has a lot of persuasive power right now. Although the progressive/liberal argument for sentencing reform is moral and about building true community security, the current climate of debate in our country is dominated by conservative values. So we will be better off to focus first on the waste of tax payer dollars on ineffective mass incarceration.

If we can get the initial framing right, we can add a lot of persuasive power to a few of the hopeful signs out there that criminal justice reform  can survive the 2016 campaign.  Recently two Republican governors, Governor Snyder of Michigan and Governor Bentley of Alabama, signed historic reforms into law. And it has even been reported that the infamous Koch brothers are actually on the correct side of the criminal justice reform issue, for a change. Despite their strong support for Scott Walker in other ways, some pundits speculate that the Kochs may hope to influence Walker to move away from a campaign attack on commonsense criminal justice reform.  Senator Rand Paul is also taking a strong stand in favor of it. Although the majority of criminal justice reform must take place at the state level, the coming presidential campaign will raise the level of visibility and debate on the issue in ways that will inevitably affect state politics across the nation.

Though it might feel funny to be on the same side as the Kochs about anything, that kind of “strange bedfellows” behavior is one of the best things about the classic One Big American Family style in politics.  That means the following:  “The most important thing about this ‘one big family’ frame is exactly this way people focus on real problem solving together, looking at what really works  and what doesn’t, emphasizing what they agree on (saving public money, for example), having a shared goal they work for even if their reasons for wanting
the result differ. . .” (quote from the One Big American Family style).

A fine example of how well this can actually work comes from the results of Living Room Conversations  (LRC) on criminal justice. Says founder Joan Blades, “Living Room Conversations have demonstrated extraordinary power to transform the debate.” Indeed, their work on criminal justice reform is an outstanding case in point. Starting with a “conversation” between Joan and Mark Meckler of Tea Party Patriots in January 2013 about this subject, LRC went on to convene a meeting in DC in October 2014 of leaders from the left, the right, the beltway and beyond to talk about opportunities to work together on the issue. That helped inspire the creation of the remarkable cross-partisan Coalition for Public Safety, which includes such unlikely partners as the ACLU and Koch Industries, among others.

We can hope that the momentum of these efforts will be strong enough to overcome an ugly presidential campaign attack. But just in case, let’s also say “smart on prison dollars” everywhere we can, because we the people are going to need to hear it from each other too, all through the long and dreary election season coming up. Even the Kochs can’t do it all by themselves!

Our short 1.09.15 TEDxVail Talk video, How Speaking American Can Help Save America, is still available on YouTube. It’s about how to address those who don’t agree with us. And it includes proof that with the right verbal and social tactics, it’s possible for grass roots Americans to communicate effectively about solving our national problems. Part of my message is based on the pioneering work of an organization called Living Room Conversations. Check them out too!

Here’s the link for my talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcxEYXHWxqs

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Susan C. Strong, Ph.D., is the Founder and Executive Director of The Metaphor Project, and author of our new book, Move Our Message: How to Get America’s Ear.  The Metaphor Project has been helping progressives mainstream their messages since 1997. Follow Susan on Twitter @SusanCStrong.

So what “American truth bites” do we need on this subject? Well, for starters, the administration should immediately change the title of their “This is Obamacare” informational website, www.thisisobamacare.com.While the info on it is good and the graphics lively, they’ve already lost by using that title. A recent Democracy Nowshow demonstrated that people like the “Affordable Care Act,” but hate “Obamacare:” too many Americans don’t realize they are one and the same.(3) I’m not going to suggest an alternative domain name here; some opponent reading this would quickly buy it up, but any fool could do better than “This is Obamacare!” So President Obama, hurry up and change it right now, and fire whoever told you to use it.

But what about the rest of us? First of all, we need a very simple phrase to say something positive about what the ACA was designed to be: it’s a RESCUE. It’s PATIENT PROTECTION, that phrase having been part of the original title of the law. It’s supposed to rescue sick Americans and protect them from the abuses of a rogue industry, one that actually denied them health care. The ACA’s goal is to get all Americans the medical care they need in order to be productive citizens. (See 4 for answers re objections to these statements.) The law is designed to reduce the exorbitant cost and backwards medical process unique to this country. And there is some good news about this subject already. Paul Krugman has just reported that health care costs are starting to fall, and health care providers are behaving in a more productive and sensible manner.(5)

In states where the governors agreed to set up state-based ACA insurance exchanges, things are going well.(6) People are signing up easily and are deeply grateful. So say: SOME STATES MAKE AFFORDABLE CARE WORK JUST FINE.  It also means that in those states the whole population will be healthier, and that should lead to a better state economy too. HEALTH LEADS TO WEALTH, because HEALTH GROWS ECONOMIC ENERGY. A recent study compared the economies of Minnesota (thriving) and Wisconsin (lagging). It shows that slashing jobs and benefits, throwing people out of work, starving poor children by cutting their food, and the whole rest of the Right’s agenda is actually bad for a state’s economy.(7)

Now, as my regular readers know, I always recommend starting positive in a framing fight, sandwiching the negative in the middle, then going positive to finish up. So now for the negatives: what is the Right doing? SABOTAGE. Why? Because they are IN THE PAY OF CORRUPT [INSURANCE] CORPORATIONS. Those are the folks who want to get their profit-rich, abusive system back, making money by refusing to help sick people and children get health care. The Right’s “Obamacare” attack is just a HEALTH CARE SHUTDOWN TRICK. They try to dupe ordinary Americans hooked by the idea that ‘Obamacare” is about taking their money and freedom, instead of what the ACA really intends to do. That’s where the Right’s new “redistribution” framing ploy comes in too, but there is real doubt even in DC about whether this will work in a country where everyone knows that the 99% have already lost their money to the 1%. (8) So say: NOW THE 1% WANT TO TAKE OUR HEALTH CARE TOO!

So much for the negatives. Now it’s time to circle back to the positives. Say: THE AFFORDABLE CARE LAW PROTECTS US WHEN WE’RE SICK.(9) Or: THE AFFORDABLE CARE LAW RESCUES SICK AMERICANS. Or: SOME STATES ARE MAKING THE AFFORDABLE CARE LAW WORK JUST FINE. And add: GOOD HEALTH LEADS TO WEALTH!

Even if the actual workings of the law over time prove that the insurance companies managed to fully sabotage it internally, it must still stand as a witness to what America’s best intentions for health care reform are. If we succeed in reframing “Obamacare,” that American dream will continue to generate real political power for the idea of sane health care, no matter what health insurance company mischief turns up. When and if it does, just call it by its right name: betraying America.

Susan C. Strong, Ph.D., is the Founder and Executive Director of The Metaphor Project, http://www.metaphorproject.org,  and author of our new book, Move Our Message: How to Get America’s Ear.  The Metaphor Project has been helping progressives mainstream their messages since 1997. Follow Susan on Twitter @SusanCStrong.

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1. Using the opposition’s frame without tweaking it significantly enough to give people the feeling that it is something really different and opposed has been scientifically proven to be a losing strategy. George Lakoff wrote an entire book, Don’t Think of an Elephant¸ to teach Democrats, liberals, and progressives about this fact. Why this knowledge hasn’t penetrated the White House enough by now is hard to understand. Re tweaking a word or phrase enough to make a strongly felt difference in meaning, here are a few examples from my own work with The Metaphor Project: l. During the Iraq War, we countered “stay the course” with “course change.” 2. During the 2010 congressional debate over the financial regulation bill, we countered the known negatives of the word “regulation,” with the word “rules,” as in everyone should “play by the [same] rules” (The Right uses the word “regulation” to imply “hurts business, costs jobs etc.”)  It doesn’t matter a bit for the process of swaying public opinion that the bill was actually about “regulations.” It was also really about “rules.” What matters is the story the words tell on the stump, online, and in the media. That’s where you win or lose.
2. Lakoff’s piece is available at: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4339256?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications;
   Reich’s is at: http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/272-39/20576-three-obamacare-truths-that-the-republicans-ignore
3. http://m.democracynow.org/stories/14006
4. Although several analysts have suggested that the ACA is full of traps for the people and outs for the health insurance industry, (http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19692-obamacare-the-biggest-insurance-scam-in-history?tmpl=component&print=1 andhttp://paulcraigroberts.org/2013/02/03/obamacare-a-primer/), the stated values and goals of the Act have huge political power for the future. If people really can’t or don’t get what the Act promises, pressure will mount for a real solution that does give them what they need. Already, in Vermont, which is one of the states that have set up a state-based exchange, the model is more like a Medicare extension, or as some call it, a “single payer” system. (See http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/24/1258135/-Obama-just-launched-single-payer-in-America?detail=email for details.) We need to understand that this health care fight is a long haul, given the enormous power of the health insurance industry. It’s one that should never have been set up as a profit-earning business, because everyone needs health care sooner or later. That’s not the way any other insurance business works; for fire insurance to work, only a few houses must burn down, not everybody’s!
5. See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/29/opinion/krugman-obamacares-secret-success.html
6. See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/09/us/politics/uninsured-find-more-success-via-health-exchanges-run-by-states.html?_r=0
7. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/opinion/sunday/right-vs-left-in-the-midwest.html
8. See the last paragraphs in:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/us/dont-dare-call-the-health-law-redistribution.html?ref=todayspaper
9. Calling the ACA an “Act” might suggest to some that it is still in play. Calling it a Law” reminds everyone that it is the law.

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Maybe you’ve noticed the sports metaphors I’m using?  These are the frames we should all be choosing now, for both issues. Every human activity has rules, implicit or explicit. The biggest de facto lie of supply side economics has been saying that markets or foreign trade can be ‘free.’  There’s no such thing.  Even a village market high in the Andes has unwritten rules of order and fairness, and trade agreements are nothing but a set of rules about how business will be conducted.  Moreover our planet’s biosphere has iron rules. We are all going to pay very big penalties if we keep on breaking them.

Conservatives always scream about how ‘regulation’ will harm business and our economy. In reality, that’s just them demanding the right to play the economic game with no rules. Or to play the game with secret, arcane, or unstated rules that favor them cheating, stealing, being criminally negligent of public safety, and lying to the public about it. This is exactly why we need good government—we need an honest referee. (Yes, I know our government is compromised right now — publicly funded elections at every level should be the next really big ‘rules’ fight.)

The first step right now is to talk about playing by the rules again, the rules that keep us safe and help us get fair and square, win-win outcomes for every American.

Susan C. Strong, Ph.D.,
Founder and Executive Director
The Metaphor Project
https://metaphorproject.org/
metaphorproject@earthlink.net

For starters, preventive earthcare is healthcare for people too. Think of the cost of treating climate change-related health problems– new tropical diseases invading areas where people have no resistance, new levels of respiratory illness, new heat stroke-related health disasters. Add the cost of growing storm damage and rising seas. Finally, as the planet keeps  overheating, falling supplies of food and clean water will lead to costly conflicts all over the world. Though we may not be able to stop all of it at this point, we can certainly prevent the worst  if we act now.

And right now there are lots of things we the people can do to show our support for vigorous action to curb climate change, both in Congress and at the December 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.  We can get busy publicizing Earth Overshoot Day today, September 25^th, joining 350.org’s October 24^th global demonstration, lobbying to strengthen the Senate version of HR 2454, the weak Waxman-Markley climate bill, and working to get rid of widespread state laws that prevent industrial energy recycling. (See the note below for details of these ideas.) (1)

But whatever we do, the framing will have to be a lot more savvy this time. As Hunter Lovins describes it in the recent documentary about environmental movement history,Earth Days, we’ve lost 30 years of potential progress because of bad framing. As the film shows, both the early environmental movement and President Carter said that the solution to our energy problems was to cut back, to give up stuff, to deny ourselves.  This gave the Republicans and presidential hopeful Ronald Reagan a very big target. They used the underlying optimism and “can do” spirit embedded in the ideal American story against this negative narrative and won. The solar panels Carter had put on the White House roof came down, and you know how this story ends—it’s where we are today.

In Earth Days, Steward Brand says it well—to move Americans you have to appeal to their pride—to their belief that anything is possible. Reducing the climate change threat is possible. . .so let’s do it, America! Let’s do it in new and better ways. And doing it will now be a lot better for our wallets. Give us preventive earthcare—it’s smart healthcare too!

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Susan C. Strong is the Executive Director and Founder of The Metaphor Project. Our mission is helping progressives and liberals mainstream their messages by framing them with language that evokes the ideal American story.

NOTES

(1) We can start by noticing and publicizing that today/Friday, September 25^th is Earth Overshoot Day, the day our resource demands on the earth exceed what the planet can sustainably supply in a year. http://www.footprintnetwork.org  (Non-specific link) Every year this day has been coming earlier in the calendar. Every year we’ve been digging deeper and deeper into earth’s reserves, doing things like driving fish populations into extinction.
We can also demonstrate on October 24^th as part of a huge, earthwide grass roots mobilization being organized by Bill McKibben’s new project, 350.org, to call for serious carbon reductions.

Then there’s writing to your senators, about strengthening the Senate version of the House’s dangerously weak Waxman-Markley HR 2454 climate bill. http://www.fcnl.org/energy/ (Non-specific link)

Finally, there’s working to get rid of widespread state laws that prevent recycling the enormous energy potential of U.S. smokestacks. Robert U. Ayres and Ed Ayres report on the remarkable energy savings possible if we can do this in the current World Watch Magazine (September-October 2009, pp. 22 – 29).

It’s high time the media, online and off, and our government took notice.  This could be the biggest recovery story of all. Reporting what’s happening now as a national trend will also help it gather speed. And speed is what we need.  Although Washington means to use the economic crisis to jumpstart a green recovery, we’ll need a lot more than top-down efforts to succeed.

Fostering bottom-up grassroots solutions is also sound science.  Modern ecosystem research shows that collapse can lead to a much healthier order of things, starting close to the ground.  Reporting in the latest World Watch magazine (March/April 2009), Thomas Homer-Dixon notes that collapse in nature “liberates. . .enormous potential for creativity and allows for novel and unpredictable recombination.” The emerging pattern is “far less interconnected and rigid. . .and far more resilient to sudden shock.” It encourages “new behaviors and relationships.”(5)

History shows that human societies follow the same pattern. Our propensity to experiment and invent has always been the key to our survival. But we must actively foster that kind of reorganizing now—before a deeper collapse wipes out what we’ll need to shape a new way of living. (6)   We know there are much bigger crises ahead– the end of reasonably priced oil, major global warming ravages, and the onset of serious resource overshoot.(7)   Maybe if we get going with a vigorous grassroots transformation now, we’ll be able to ride those storms out too.

At this point though, the most important thing is the story: collapse can lead to rebirth in more resilient form. Including the grassroots piece of the story is vital. That bottom-up path calls on some of our best national traits too–our innovative, pragmatic, can-do, roll-up-your sleeves style, as we work together, close to home, helping to reinvent a new and healthier economy.

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1 Three good sources for information about this kind of project are

• Yes Magazine
• The Sustainable Communities Network
• New Village Press
• New Village Journal

2. Reports of cooperative resistance to foreclosures can be found at:

•  www.alternet.org/workplace/121844/resistance_to_housing_foreclosures_spreads_across_the_land/
• www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/nyregion/18foreclose.html

3. Information about projects run by cities and counties is available at: http://www.icleiusa.org/.   In the San Francisco Bay Area, three major cities, San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland have just joined forces in a regional greening agenda. San Francisco Chronicle, “Thinking Globally in the Bay Area,” March 6, 2009. Many American universities house institutes devoted to sustainable development at the regional level.

4. Other people who have already been working hard to prepare for those larger crises can provide us with good ideas and examples that we can easily adapt for the current wave.  Some of those include the Transition Towns phenomenon (it’s worldwide, but here’s the U.S. url: http://www.transitionus.org/ ) and other groups like it, such as Community Solutions. There are also recent books like Small is Possible, by Lyle Estill, about work in Chatham County, NC, and Plan C, by Pat Murphy.

5 Thomas Homer-Dixon, “Our Panarchic Future,” World Watch, March/April 2009, p. 15.

6. see Note 5 above.

7. More information about Earth Overshoot can be found at the Global Footprint Network’s page on this topic.

This month’s post has already been published by Alternet on November 30th, in their Rights and Liberties Section.

My short summary of the piece is that the Mukasey nomination result shows that we progressive activists must take on the job of educating the public on this issue now. The most powerful argument for that part of the American public still supporting torture is that torture actually threatens our safety, because it leads to lying, not valid information, whether the liars are trapped innocents or seasoned al Qaeda agents.

In the piece I suggest soundbites, possible visual scenarios, and provide resouce links for the job we face.  In addition, any protest you can make to the FOX network television show called ’24,’ would be good. The show features agents torturing terrorism suspects who then tell the truth about their plans, something seasoned intelligence professionals say does not happen in real life. According to Wikipedia, ’24’ is slated to become a major motion picture soon. Friends, this is a VIP double crisis–re our national security and for our American civil right to dissent. (See also Naomi Wolf’s new book, The End of America for where this ’24’ tactic might be aimed. . .).

Please pass this on!

Susan C. Strong, Ph.D.
Founder and Executive Director
The Metaphor Project
www.metaphorproject.org
metaphorproject@earthlink.net

Today, success in promoting economic justice demands that we speak honest American. To be heard above the public din, we need to be able to reframe our own messages as part of the best American story. We must tell the story of our own American dream–a fair nation that consistently fosters equality of opportunity for all. We can learn to use with integrity the familiar images and metaphors that convey these values in our daily work.

Hard Work, Horatio Alger and the American Dream

Hard work is highly valued in America. This value is evident in the well-known work of early American author Horatio Alger, who wrote stories about the American dream and the triumph of the individual over struggle. The so-called ‘individual responsibility frame,’ or Horatio Alger story -in which one struggles through hard work and determination to escape poverty — still plays a major role in American thinking.

In order to counteract the damaging effects of this frame -which places both the causes of and responsibility to move beyond poverty squarely in the lap of the poor — we need to do two things. First, we must use what we can from it and then we must combine it with other American frames that modify and counteract its most damaging aspects.

The Horatio Alger story serves a variety of functions in American society. Its most important role is to keep hope alive. It fits the fundamentally optimistic American temperament and our pragmatic, ‘can do,’ experimental approach to problem solving. As a nation of individualistic rebels, we like to believe that we control our own destiny and opportunities in life.

However, there is a way out of the Horatio Alger ‘individual responsibility’ trap. Other core American ideas that can counter it include the following:

• The importance of guaranteeing equality of opportunity,
• Preventing unfair advantage
• Leveling the playing field
• Government as an honest referee
• The value of helping individuals who have been the victim of bad luck or circumstances ‘through no fault of  their own.’

Rules of the Game

A lot of this sounds like the great American sports metaphor–that is what it is. Sports metaphors can be useful in translating concepts of economic justice–they are the chief carrier in American public storytelling of many of the values we hold most dear. {The sports metaphor} also carries many of Americans’ most common operational assumptions about how best to bring those values into reality. Working together as an American team to help all individuals fulfill their potential is very important to Americans right now. And, ironically enough, to get economic justice, we have to stop talking about it using the abstract phrase ‘economic justice.’ Instead, we need to use language that can convey our values and goals in short, easily understood bits of national story.

Small Town Security

Another moderating American frame much in the news right now is whatBusiness Week on May 16, 2005 dubbed the ‘safety net nation.’ Business Weekfound that supporters of the Bush Administration are too worried about their futures to want drastic changes in our familiar national safety net, Social Security. The phrase ‘safety net nation’ is just another way of invoking a set of traditional American story elements I call ‘small town security.’ This cluster of ideas includes co-operation, mutual assistance, protection, common sense, practical problem solving, and being moderate‚ the kinds of traditional values found in our ideal of the small American town.

These ideas are clearly reflected in the stories Business Week recounts of how ordinary people see the pension issue now. From a safety net nation with pensions, it is just a small step to calling for a safety net nation while people are still in the work world. For example, we can talk about a safety net that begins with guaranteeing equal opportunity to all individuals who are trying to ‘do better and move forward.’

American Metaphors, American Stories

Horatio Alger, sports and small town values are each key elements of the American stories we tell each other each day in our society. By examining our stories and the metaphors we use to tell them, we engage in a systematic pursuit of economic justice. We can create positive new messages that play on core American images, themes, and stories to carry the values of economic justice.

The Land of Opportunity

There is a persistent (if misguided) idea in our society that everyone already has the opportunity to succeed just by living in America. This idealized understanding of opportunity often combines in people’s minds with the widely held belief in ‘individual responsibility’ ‚Äî the idea that in America it is up to individuals to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. In this frame, those who fail just aren’t trying hard enough.

On the face of it, this combination of ideas looks like a tough one for us to reframe. But right now there is a widespread feeling that the country is going the wrong direction. Sad as it is, this situation is actually helpful for promoting expanded opportunity. Since more people are experiencing barriers to opportunity, more people are open to new ideas about how to expand opportunity. Now is the time to take control of the Opportunity Frame.

Play Fair: Sports Metaphors

Hard work is highly valued in America; it’s the quickest and surest way to gain respect in this country. There is a strong sense that the American people’s hard work has created our country’s success. In the American story, hard work should also lead to individual success and advancement, so any conditions that block people from working as hard as they can are considered unfair. Anything that hampers people trying hard to better their lot is also viewed as unjust. The ideal American story dictates that everyone here should get a fair deal and a fair shot at success, but it’s not fair or smart that people are denied the opportunity to work hard and get ahead by things like easily preventable illnesses, lack of the necessary basic education and skills, or even outright job discrimination based on race, ethnicity or gender.

If all this talk about fair play, fair deals, and fair shots has you thinking about the NBA finals, that’s because Americans use a lot of sports metaphors to express deeply held ideas about what we value. In promoting the Opportunity frame, effective metaphors include those that emphasize teamwork (in which all Americans are on the same team) and fair play for all, while avoiding the imagery of competition between Americans–or between different groups of Americans–for scarce resources. Also effective are metaphors that invoke the tearing down the walls that block opportunity so that all Americans can work hard and contribute to the American team.

An American ‘Can Do’ Attitude

Americans are optimists. They hate failure and love success. If the messages we choose to employ focus consistently on how our country is headed in the wrong direction, we risk of alienating our audience. The American story contains some clear norms about how to make a comeback. We ‘find out what works,’ and we ‘make it happen.’ We are the ones who can ‘change direction’ and ‘move ahead on a new path.’ We know how to ‘remove blocks’ and ‘improve conditions.’ And we ‘never give up.’ We develop smart, innovative, effective, participatory, empowering solutions. We ‘try harder,’ and we ‘build a better future for everyone.’

Using enduring American images, phrases, ideas and metaphors like these can make sure we evoke the best and most widely shared American values when we speak to mainstream audiences. ‘Speaking American’ in this way can help you connect with people in a way they’ll easily understand, reframe the debate about opportunity, and change minds.

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(This piece was published in the Opportunity Tool Kit by The Opportunity Agenda in April, 2006.)