This season of extreme political discontent in the U.S. A. has thrown a harsh new light on what I used to call “the ideal American identity story.” That story goes like this: we’re the country whose people share ideals like freedom, equality, justice, and rule of law for all. I believe it is still true […]
Search Results for: One Big family frame
Say: “Smart on Prison Dollars” not “Smart on Crime”
With recent reports that aspiring presidential candidates Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin and Senator Marco Rubio, have both bucked the growing wave of bipartisan agreement about reforming criminal justice in this country, suddenly what looked like a slam dunk reform movement may be in jeopardy again. Up until recently, there has been a growing bipartisan consensus […]
Stopping the Mega-Corp Coup
What could make Americans say “enough!” to mega-corporations’ meddling? Examples of it are everywhere now: the attempt to privatize water in Detroit, massive cuts to public education in Mississippi, Burger King’s tax evading move to Canada, to name just a few. (1) Their goal? Extracting the last dollar of corporate profit from increasingly desperate people […]
Why Metaphor
A Definition A metaphor is an implied analogy that imaginatively equates one object (or person) with another and ascribes to the first object one or more of the qualities of the second. A familiar literary example is “My love is a rose.” A well-known political example is Ronald Reagan’s famous sound bite: ‘welfare queens.’ This […]
Say: “’True’ Public Safety Means Prevention!”
New reports suggest that some desperate Republicans are trying out “public safety” and “crime” as their 2013-4 state-level election frame.(1) Colorado and California are already seeing conservative moves to retake their state legislatures and governorships by accusing Democrats of being “soft on crime,” and putting “public safety” at risk. However, nationally crime rates have actually […]
Let’s Get Beyond Left “Groupspeak” Now!
As I write, the 2012 home stretch is still a few months away. There’s still time to get beyond our own disastrous Democratic/liberal/progressive “groupthink/groupspeak.” What is “groupspeak?” It’s the verbal equivalent of what Professor Haidt has described as “motivated reasoning,” preconceived ideas that get draped in rationalizations and then expressed in tired old words or […]