For too long too much of our climate crisis framing has resonated only with the already convinced. That is still going on today, this very minute. Even Greta is doing it, with an important exception I’ll mention later in this piece. But before the rest of us can get more effective, we need to be […]
Use Smart Words to Stop #NukeDoomsday
During this Democratic primary season and even before, a great many longstanding injustices in American life have become high profile: #MeToo, police violence against people of color, the climate crisis, to name just a few. But there’s one still under the public radar: the nuclear threat. The climate crisis will make life on earth increasingly […]
Say: “Move America Forward?”
In the first Democratic presidential debate, Andrew Yang proposed a slogan, “Not left, not right, forward!” The next day I corrected it on Twitter to be “Forward, not left, not right!” My explanation for this change was familiar to my readers: always put the positive first. But today I’m suggesting a far more important edit: […]
Springing the GOP Trap
This post was originally written during the Trump presidency but all of the advice in it still applies, no matter who is your opponent. These days every morning brings a new shock to the republic, as Mr. Trump and the GOP drive Americans into bigger and bigger traps. Trump’s most outrageous caper yet, the federal […]
GOTV Plus: Revisiting How to frame it “American” Now
Framing Our Climate March Messages to Persuade: September 2018
On September 8 there will be climate marches all over our planet. The date has been chosen, no doubt, in order to increase pressure on and publicity for The Global Climate Action Summit four days later in San Francisco. Here in California, Mark Baldaserre, CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California, has commented that […]
How to frame it “American” Now
How to use “#SharedSecurityWorks. #PreemptiveWarFails!” Now
With President Trump’s choice of Bolton as National Security Adviser and Pompeo for State, our country has reached a more dangerous place than ever, especially in the light of new U.S. air strikes on Syria. A wide range of Americans, even Republicans, have been appalled by the choice of Bolton, an open supporter of preemptive […]
What “#(Americans)StepUp _______” Can Do Right Now
Readers who follow me on Twitter and The Metaphor Project’s FB page may have noticed that as 2018 began, I started using the hashtag “#AmericansStepUp_______” or variants of it. (1) With it I identify news and frames about people, communities, or states countering DC folly with positive projects at home. The most recent example is […]
Say: “Stop the GOP war on America: (fill in the blanks). “
Emerging from a long stretch of social media push back, I’ve been thinking about something more permanent. How might we create an “umbrella” frame that would bring it all together in a form all of us can use? As Naomi Klein has shown, a key part of the “shock doctrine” is overwhelming the victim with […]