Stop Me Before I Vote Again

I'm feeling a bit better now. Okay, as I understand it, everyone has a brain and the brains exist along a spectrum, which has aspects of a continuum. In one sector of the spectrotinuum, we have the very bad brains. These are the wingnut brains, and they're filled with unhappy neuro-routines that make them want to kill Social Security. At the same time, they don't really want to. They have neuro-routines that can be nurtured into ascendance.

So far, so good.

In a more enlightened, but not quite enlightened, sector we have the elected brains of the Democrats. These brains are troubled. They believe the Big Lie that was put forward by the sinister brains that milk the miserable wingnut brains. Can these promising brains be helped? Only through communication, i.e. framing. This framing has to come from brains that reside in the nicest sectors of the spectrotinuum, where brains are nurtured and taught to clean up after their dogs when they shit on the sidewalk.

There you have it. David Bowie has helpfully made the concept accessible in a catchy pop song.

Lakoff has not come up with anything new to say on the subject since "Moral Politics". I always liked the characterization of liberal versus conservative personality types -- strict father figure versus "nurturant: parent, etc -- since I was too "empathetic" in my own own upbringing to believe that conservatives were actually destined to be that way.

But Lakoff never did come up with a sexy way of expressing Democratic values, possibly because actual elected Democrats wouldn't know what he was talking about. In this article, his own brain seems to be challenged by having to think of the "materialist" benefits of the Democratic capitulation plan on taxes.

Al, you read this whole thing? How?

Meanwhile: "What policies are proposed and adopted depend on how Americans understand policy and politics."

If that ain't the howler of the year, I don't know what is.

Such is the stuff of endowed tenure at UC Berkeley...Nuff said.

I trudged my way through with the immense intellectual fortitude imparted by a generous supply of percocet. I promised myself two of them as my reward. I needed three when I finished, but for SMBIVA I was willing to take the extra measure.

'campaign contribution' instead of campaign contribution
smugness pill instead of ivy league degree
brain-damaged whore instead of market economist
genocidal hellgrendel vomiting pieces of babies instead of military advisor
flying spaghetti monster instead of dialectics
surinam
wage slave instead of hey toots
magically entrapped planet-devouring robosaur instead of bank headquarters
cleaver instead of food processor
popular celebration instead of political party
two purple orchids & a ghost cat instead of facebook update
full pleasurable employment instead of watching your kid go hungry

That's the way things should be framed. The cringing corporate politesse terms simply don't convey anything other than cringing corporate politesse. They speak to a weakness of character and an emptiness of soul.

hapa u and igor Al
are a threat to

the marketing plan
of styro foam framing incorporated

There is no ideology of the center, just combinations of progressive and conservative views.

God help us all.

You know, with the way the left loves Lakoff, I hadn't expected him to be quite such a... cunt. Hopefully he's just been taking too many prescription medications.

I thought he was a well-meaning fool when I first read his stuff on framing. His political views are pure mush and his appeal is limited to the self-involved "creative class", but he started to seem a little sinister when he got into the neuro-linguistic routine. It now looks like he's auditioning for a position as a mindfucking consultant for the Department of Homeland Nudging.