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Sunday, November 07, 2004
17 Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists...by Michael Moore
Dear Friends,
Ok, it sucks. Really sucks. But before you go and cash it all in, let's, in the words of Monty Python, “always look on the bright side of life!” There IS some good news from Tuesday's election.
Here are 17 reasons not to slit your wrists:
1. It is against the law for George W. Bush to run for president again.
2. Bush's victory was the NARROWEST win for a sitting president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916.
3. The only age group in which the majority voted for Kerry was young adults (Kerry: 54%, Bush: 44%), proving once again that your parents are always wrong and you should never listen to them.
4. In spite of Bush's win, the majority of Americans still think the country is headed in the wrong direction (56%), think the war wasn't worth fighting (51%), and don’t approve of the job George W. Bush is doing (52%). (Note to foreigners: Don't try to figure this one out. It's an American thing, like Pop Tarts.)
5. The Republicans will not have a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate. If the Democrats do their job, Bush won't be able to pack the Supreme Court with right-wing ideologues. Did I say "if the Democrats do their job?" Um, maybe better to scratch this one.
6. Michigan voted for Kerry! So did the entire Northeast, the birthplace of our democracy. So did 6 of the 8 Great Lakes States. And the whole West Coast! Plus Hawaii. Ok, that's a start. We've got most of the fresh water, all of Broadway, and Mt. St. Helens. We can dehydrate them or bury them in lava. And no more show tunes!
7. Once again we are reminded that the buckeye is a nut, and not just any old nut -- a poisonous nut. A great nation was felled by a poisonous nut. May Ohio State pay dearly this Saturday when it faces Michigan.
8. 88% of Bush's support came from white voters. In 50 years, America will no longer have a white majority. Hey, 50 years isn't such a long time! If you're ten years old and reading this, your golden years will be truly golden and you will be well cared for in your old age.
9. Gays, thanks to the ballot measures passed on Tuesday, cannot get married in 11 new states. Thank God. Just think of all those wedding gifts we won't have to buy now.
10. Five more African Americans were elected as members of Congress, including the return of Cynthia McKinney of Georgia. It's always good to have more blacks in there fighting for us and doing the job our candidates can't.
11. The CEO of Coors was defeated for Senate in Colorado. Drink up!
12. Admit it: We like the Bush twins and we don't want them to go away.
13. At the state legislative level, Democrats picked up a net of at least 3 chambers in Tuesday's elections. Of the 98 partisan-controlled state legislative chambers (house/assembly and senate), Democrats went into the 2004 elections in control of 44 chambers, Republicans controlled 53 chambers, and 1 chamber was tied. After Tuesday, Democrats now control 47 chambers, Republicans control 49 chambers, 1 chamber is tied and 1 chamber (Montana House) is still undecided.
14. Bush is now a lame duck president. He will have no greater moment than the one he's having this week. It's all downhill for him from here on out -- and, more significantly, he's just not going to want to do all the hard work that will be expected of him. It'll be like everyone's last month in 12th grade -- you've already made it, so it's party time! Perhaps he'll treat the next four years like a permanent Friday, spending even more time at the ranch or in Kennebunkport. And why shouldn't he? He's already proved his point, avenged his father and kicked our ass.
15. Should Bush decide to show up to work and take this country down a very dark road, it is also just as likely that either of the following two scenarios will happen: a) Now that he doesn't ever need to pander to the Christian conservatives again to get elected, someone may whisper in his ear that he should spend these last four years building "a legacy" so that history will render a kinder verdict on him and thus he will not push for too aggressive a right-wing agenda; or b) He will become so cocky and arrogant -- and thus, reckless -- that he will commit a blunder of such major proportions that even his own party will have to remove him from office.
16. There are nearly 300 million Americans -- 200 million of them of voting age. We only lost by three and a half million! That's not a landslide -- it means we're almost there. Imagine losing by 20 million. If you had 58 yards to go before you reached the goal line and then you barreled down 55 of those yards, would you stop on the three yard line, pick up the ball and go home crying -- especially when you get to start the next down on the three yard line? Of course not! Buck up! Have hope! More sports analogies are coming!!!
17. Finally and most importantly, over 55 million Americans voted for the candidate dubbed "The #1 Liberal in the Senate." That's more than the total number of voters who voted for either Reagan, Bush I, Clinton or Gore. Again, more people voted for Kerry than Reagan. If the media are looking for a trend it should be this -- that so many Americans were, for the first time since Kennedy, willing to vote for an out-and-out liberal. The country has always been filled with evangelicals -- that is not news. What IS news is that so many people have shifted toward a Massachusetts liberal. In fact, that's BIG news. Which means, don't expect the mainstream media, the ones who brought you the Iraq War, to ever report the real truth about November 2, 2004. In fact, it's better that they don't. We'll need the element of surprise in 2008.
Feeling better? I hope so. As my friend Mort wrote me yesterday, "My Romanian grandfather used to say to me, 'Remember, Morton, this is such a wonderful country -- it doesn't even need a president!'"
But it needs us. Rest up, I'll write you again tomorrow.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com
Posted at 10:55 pm by blog swarm
Political News Permalink
Kerry, don't leave country
George, John, and Warren (Keith Olbermann)
NEW YORK - Here’s an interesting little sidebar of our system of government confirmed recently by the crack Countdown research staff: no Presidential candidate’s concession speech is legally binding. The only determinants of the outcome of election are the reports of the state returns boards and the vote of the Electoral College.
That’s right. Richard Nixon may have phoned John Kennedy in November, 1960, and congratulated him through clenched teeth. But if the FBI had burst into Kennedy headquarters in Chicago a week later and walked out with all the file cabinets and a bunch of employees with their raincoats drawn up over their heads, nothing Nixon had said would’ve prevented him, and not JFK, from taking the oath of office the following January.
This is mentioned because there is a small but blood-curdling set of news stories that right now exists somewhere between the world of investigative journalism, and the world of the Reynolds Wrap Hat. And while the group’s ultimate home remains unclear - so might our election of just a week ago.
Stories like these have filled the web since the tide turned against John Kerry late Tuesday night. But not until Friday did they begin to spill into the more conventional news media. That’s when the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that officials in Warren County, Ohio, had “locked down” its administration building to prevent anybody from observing the vote count there.
Suspicious enough on the face of it, the decision got more dubious still when County Commissioners confirmed that they were acting on the advice of their Emergency Services Director, Frank Young. Mr. Young had explained that he had been advised by the federal government to implement the measures for the sake of Homeland Security.
Gotcha. Tom Ridge thought Osama Bin Laden was planning to hit Caesar Creek State Park in Waynesville. During the vote count in Lebanon. Or maybe it was Kings Island Amusement Park that had gone Code-Orange without telling anybody. Al-Qaeda had selected Turtlecreek Township for its first foray into a Red State.
The State of Ohio confirms that of all of its 88 Counties, Warren alone decided such Homeland Security measures were necessary. Even in Butler County, reports the Enquirer, the media and others were permitted to watch through a window as ballot-checkers performed their duties. In Warren, the media was finally admitted to the lobby of the administration building, which may have been slightly less incommodious for the reporters, but which still managed to keep them two floors away from the venue of the actual count.
Nobody in Warren County seems to think they’ve done anything wrong. The newspaper quotes County Prosecutor Rachel Hurtzel as saying the Commissioners “were within their rights” to lock the building down, because having photographers or reporters present could have interfered with the count.
You bet, Rachel.
As I suggested, this is the first time one of the Fix stories has moved fully into the mainstream media. In so saying, I’m not dismissing the blogosphere. Hell, I’m in the blogosphere now, and there have been nights when I’ve gotten far more web hits than television viewers (thank you, Debate Scorecard readers). Even the overt partisanship of blogs don’t bother me - Tom Paine was a pretty partisan guy, and ultimately that served truth a lot better than a ship full of neutral reporters would have. I was just reading last night of the struggles Edward R. Murrow and William L. Shirer had during their early reporting from Europe in ’38 and ’39, because CBS thought them too anti-Nazi.
The only reason I differentiate between the blogs and the newspapers is that in the latter, a certain bar of ascertainable, reasonably neutral, fact has to be passed, and has to be approved by a consensus of reporters and editors. The process isn’t flawless (ask Dan Rather) but the next time you read a blog where bald-faced lies are accepted as fact, ask yourself whether we here in cyberspace have yet achieved the reliability of even the mainstream media. In short, a lot gets left out of newspapers, radio, and tv - but what’s left in tends to be, in the words of my old CNN Sports colleague NickCharles, a lead-pipe cinch.
Thus the majority of the media has yet to touch the other stories of Ohio (the amazing Bush Times Ten voting machine in Gahanna) or the sagas of Ohio South: huge margins for Bush in Florida counties in which registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 2-1, places where the optical scanning of precinct totals seems to have turned results from perfect matches for the pro-Kerry exit poll data, to Bush sweeps.
We will be endeavoring to pull those stories, along with the Warren County farce, into the mainstream Monday and/or Tuesday nights on Countdown. That is, if we can wedge them in there among the news media’s main concerns since last Tuesday:
--- Who fixed the Exit Polls? Yes - you could deliberately skew a national series of post-vote questionnaires in favor of Kerry to discourage people from voting out west, where everything but New Mexico had been ceded to Kerry anyway, but you couldn’t alter key precinct votes in Ohio and/or Florida; and,
--- What will Bush do with his Mandate and his Political Capital? He got the highest vote total for a presidential candidate, you know. Did anybody notice who’s second on the list? A Mr. Kerry. Since when was the term “mandate” applied when 56 million people voted against a guy? And by the way, how about that Karl Rove and his Freudian slip on “Fox News Sunday”? Rove was asked if the electoral triumph would be as impactful on the balance of power between the parties as William McKinley’s in 1896 and he forgot his own talking points. The victories were “similarly narrow,” Rove began, and then, seemingly aghast at his forthrightness, corrected himself. “Not narrow; similarly structured.”
Gotta dash now. Some of us have to get to work on the Warren and Florida stories.
In the interim, Senator Kerry, kindly don’t leave the country.
Posted at 10:52 pm by blog swarm
Political News Permalink
Random Thoughts
Some of these are culled from various things I've read over the weekend, but I'm too lazy too hunt some of them down so if I'm ripping you off apologies...
Anyone who thinks that Democrats lost Senate seats because voters perceived that Tom Daschle was an "obstructionist" is a fool.
Going forward, the only way for the Democrats to pick up substantial seats in 2006 is a) if everything is a disaster (possible, but not something I hope for) or b) they manage to convey to voters how they are different than Republicans. This difference exists, but rhetorically the Democrats have been more interested in blurring the lines than making them clear. Clear differences do not always mean extreme differences - this is not about lurching left or right or whatever, it's just about making the differences clear in an easy to understand fashion.
New York Times columnists railing against the Right's favorite liberal strawmen should be ignored.
If "values" are the new battleground, which I mostly doubt, then I say bring it on, Larry Flynt-style. Let the scarlet A's be handed out, the closet doors swung open, and weekly church attendance records of members of congress and the administration be compiled. If sinning godless heathens are the problem, then let's be clear about who the sinning godless heathens are.
Our side is going to have to get used to the fact that "opposition" does not mean "obstruction." It's nice to imagine that the filibuster can solve all of our problems, but even with strong willingness to do so by all of the Senate Dems (there isn't), it isn't. Opposition is going to mean laying out the case clearly and forcefully for our side, voting against the worst of what the other side opposes, and having clear responsibility exist for the consequences of legislation. We aren't going to win too many battles in the next couple of years. Deal with it.
I'm not holding my breath, but the media needs to reevaluate its role when we have entrenched single-party rule. More on this later.
If, as news reports claim, Chenron is pushing for some version of a flat income tax, or consumption based tax, and the Democrats are unable to convince the vast majority of voters that this will in fact constitute a tax increase for them, then all is hopeless.
Posted at 10:25 pm by blog swarm
Political News Permalink
Posted at 09:59 pm by blog swarm
Political News Permalink
Republicans Endorsing John Kerry
- Elmer L. Andersen, former Republican Governor of Minnesota (1961-63) -- Oct. 13
- Tim Ashby, director, Office of Mexico and the Caribbean, U.S. Commerce Department under Reagan and Bush I -- Oct. 14
- Jack Bogle Founder of the Vanguard Mutual Fund.
- David Catania, Republican (now Independent) Councilman from Washington, D.C. -- Sept. 29
- Steve Chapman, conservative syndicated columnist, Chicago Tribune -- Oct. 24
- Mike Cobb, former Republican Mayor of Palo Alto, California -- Sept. 8
- George Comstock, Mayor of Portola Valley, California -- Sept. 1
- Marlow Cook, former Republican Senator from Kentucky (1968-74) -- Oct. 20
- Comer Cottrell, longtime Republican, Bush ally, and old baseball partner -- Oct. 28
- David Durenberger, former Senator from Minnesota (1978-95) -- Oct. 27 (endorsing Kerry health plan over Bush's)
- John Eisenhower, son of former Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower -- Sept. 9
- John A. Galbraith, former Republican Ohio General Assemblyman -- Sept. 28
- Peter Gillette, former Republican Commissioner of Trade for Minnesota (1991-95) -- Oct. 20
- Lee Iacocca, former Chrysler Chairman -- June 25
- Anne Morton Kimberly, widow of Rogers C.B. Morton, former Republican Representative from Maryland -- Oct. 14
- Steve May, former Republican state legislator from Arizona -- Sept. 10
- Pete McCloskey (editorial here), former Republican Representative from California -- Sept. 8
- Scott McConnell, executive editor, The American Conservative -- Nov. 8 issue
- Al Meiklejohn, former Republican state senator from Colorado -- Sept. 19
- Ballard Morton, son of Thruston Morton, former Republican Senator from Kentucky -- Oct. 14
- Clay Myers, Republican Secretary of State (1967-77) and State Treasurer (1977-84) for Oregon -- Sept. 1
- Clyde Prestowitz, counselor to Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Commerce -- Oct. 6
- Rick Russman, former Republican State Senator from New Hampshire -- Oct. 7
- William Milliken, former Republican Governor of Michigan (1969-82) -- Oct. 18
- Charley Reese, conservative columnist/journalist, Orlando Sentinel (1971-2001) -- May 17
- Bill Rutherford, former Treasurer of Oregon and Chair of the Oregon Investment Council -- Sept. 1
- Richard Schmalensee, former Council of Economic Advisers member for President George H. W. Bush -- Oct. 12
- Jon Silver, former Republican Mayor of Portola Valley, California -- Sept. 24
- Gail Slocum, former Republican Mayor of Menlo Park, California -- Sept. '04
- Bob Smith, retired Republican Senator from New Hampshire -- Oct 28
- Andrew Sullivan, conservative columnist, former editor of The New Republic -- Oct. 26 (on Jul. 25 he announced he wouldn't vote for Bush)
- Russell E. Train, (interview) EPA chief under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford -- Jul. '04
- Jude Wanniski, former associate editor of The Wall Street Journal, coined term "supply side economics" -- Oct. 27
- Marshall Wittmann, former communications director to Arizona Republican Senator John McCain -- Oct. 7
- Basil Akers, 1992 RNC NM delegate for George H. W. Bush and U.S. Army intelligence analyst in Vietnam, Oct. 25
- Bob Barr, former Republican Representative from Georgia (1995-2003) -- Oct. 14
- Robert L. Black, retired Republican judge of the Ohio First District Court of Appeals -- Oct. 13
- John H. Buchanan, former Republican Congressman from Alabama -- Oct. 4
- Lincoln Chafee, Republican Senator from Rhode Island -- Oct. 4
- Gary Coomer, Republican, Founder of Land's End clothing company -- Oct. 29
- John Dean, former White House Counsel to former Republican President Nixon -- Apr. '04
- John Donley, former Republican state senator from Colorado -- Sept. 19
- Paul Findley, former Republican Representative from Illinois -- Apr. '04
- Francis Fukuyama, prominant Republican neo-conservative, author of The End of History
- Mary Lou Halliburton, lifelong Republican, served on the Nixon White House staff and was appointed by Reagan-era Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women and the Services -- Sept. 19
- A. Linwood Holton former Republican Governor of Virginia (1970-74) -- Aug. 29
- Harry Lewis, Republican and former president of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce -- Sept. 19
- Log Cabin Republicans -- Sept. 8
- Walter Olson, Bush 2000 campaign advisor -- Oct. 26
- Paul O'Neill, former Treasury Secretary to Republican President George W. Bush -- Jan. '04
- REP America Republicans for Environmental Protection -- Fall 2004
- Richie Robb, mayor of South Charleston, WV (and 2004 Electoral College WV Republican elector) -- Sep. '04
- William Saletan, "liberal Republican" columnist for Slate -- Sept. 1
- Karl W. B. Schwarz, very conservative Republican from Arkansas -- Oct. 20 (see also [1])
- Dottie Wham, former Republican state senator from Colorado -- Sept. 19
Posted at 06:50 pm by blog swarm
Political News Permalink
This is a much condensed version of the Voter Registration Fraud Clearinghouse page.
General Info
State-by-State Breakdown of stories
It is now becoming clear that there is a massive, coordinated campaign orchestrated by the RNC and the GOP to commit nationwide fraud, disenfranchisement, confusion, and chaos. Nathan Sproul is behind voter fraud in many swing states, including Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. They have fraudulently used the name of another organization, America votes. Here is a summary of some of the various cases of voter fraud going on now.
The Republican party in Nevada ordered its employees to dispose of Democratic Voter Registrations. Republican voter registration organizations have illegally shredded Democratic registrations in both Nevada and Oregon, which both are past their voter registration deadline of Tuesday October 12th, leaving many Democrats who thought they'd registered disenfranchised in the most important election of our lifetime. The company Sproul & Associates, which is closely connected to the RNC and has recieved half a million dollars from them since July 14, 2004, is behind this. It is run by Nathan Sproul, a big Republican donor. This dKos diary explains the roots of the Republican Florida ACORN fraud claims.
Hollow Victory, Guardian 21 Oct 2004 Markos Moulitsas runs through the bare bones of the vote fraud, registration fraud, and voter suppression stories, mentions this page and another excellent resource, eriposte's vote2004 and brings the exposure of GOP mendacity to the global stage.
Posted at 06:44 pm by blog swarm
Political News Permalink
We've Been Framed: Looking to Lakoff (Intro)
by Jeffrey Feldman
Sun Nov 7th, 2004 at 08:29:11 PST
With so many Dems saying that Bush won because he is a criminal with dumb supporters, I believe it's time to take a serious look at George Lakoff.
According to Lakoff, it wasn't Bush that beat us. It was the GOP frame. We lost because we got framed.
Over the next few weeks, my diary will focus on Lakoff's book Don't Think of an Elephant!, published to help progressives understand why the GOP wins, and how to beat them.
Plenty of writers will explain why we lost. But Lakoff's book is no ordinary hindisight-is-20:20-vision memoir or out-of-touch academic theory.
Lakoff is for Dems who are tired of having better ideas, but getting muddled in debates--tired of pushing good policy, but alienating voters--tired of getting out the vote, but still losing elections.
Today, I start with a general discussion of what "frames" are in Lakoff's model and what they are not, and where they were most devastating for us in this election.
Why Did Bush Win?
The first time I thought there was something seriously wrong in the way I was understanding the election was after John Kerry won all three debates, but the polls stayed pretty much the same. Remember that feeling? Kerry was so much more articulate than Bush. Stiff, sure. But smart, prepared, statesman-like. He was taller! Bush was cocky, tired, repetitive, balked on many answers. For goodness sake: Bush was caught wearing a wire!
But the debates did not shake the numbers, even though Kerry managed to beat Bush on the game of low expectations and way out perform him on all three debates.
I remember sitting there and thinking: Damn. There's something I'm not hearing and not seeing here. Aren't we supposed to win when we present the best ideas in the clearest style? Aren't we supposed to win when their candidate acts and looks like an idiot? Aren't we supposed to win when the majority of the electorate agrees with what our guy is saying?
Apparently, it's more complicated than that.
According to Lakoff, we won the debate, but lost the battle not because of the ideas our candidate expressed, but because of the ideas invoked by the words our candidate used.
Sit back for a minute and think about that last sentence.
Lakoff's basic argument is that the words we use have consequences in politics on two levels. If we are more strategic in the langauge we use, we will controll both levels of meaning, be more successful in advancing a progressive agenda, and win more elections.
Expressing vs. Invoking
Lakoff's book is essentially a theory of language. It explains how language works and why this has consequences in politics.
The three key components of Lakoff's theory are:
This is the Lakoff's model in a nuthsell:
- Every phrase we use has two levels of meaning
- First, there is the meaning expressed in the words themselves, the ideas they communicate directly.
- Second, there is the meaning invoked by the words, the broad set of unspoken ideas through which we understand ourselves and the world around us (e.g., the "frame")
- head of state (states aren't bodies)
- face of evil (evil is not a person)
- war on terror (terror is a place or army)
Metaphors are powerful, according to Lakoff, precisely because they invoke broad sets of unspoken beliefs, and therefore can tip us towards interpreting other words and events in a certain way.
Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world...You can't see or hear frames...When you hear a word, it's frame is activated in your brain. (Lakoff)
Our ideas were good. But we lost because the opposition didn't just think about the first level of meaning in their words. They chose words that invoked powerful sets of unspoken and unheard ideas that framed the entire debate--viewsof how the world works that ultimately trumped and undermined every possible statement made by our candidate. The GOP won because somehow, someway--while we were obsessing over the best phrases to use to tell people about our ideas--they chose language that tipped the entire terrain in their favor.
Those phrases were then repeated and amplified endlessly by the media--not just by FOX, but by all media, even the progressive blogs. No matter how articulate Kerry was, none of his speeches or commercials were able to dislodge those unspoken and unheard ideas set in place by the GOP.
Many of us think this is just about a good "meme." But it's more than just a phrase that gets repeated. It's how that repeated phrase invokes the GOP controlled frame.
The GOP beat us by framing the debate. And you know what's the most frustrating? We helped them and didn't even realize it.
George W. Bush may be bad at getting across the first level of meaning--a "D" student in English 101. He just can't express complex ideas in well built sentences.
But Bush is a master at invoking the frame. He is a master at getting out those two or three word phrases that get picked up and hyper-amplified in the media. Anyone who calls Bush "dumb" based on his speaking style, doesn't understand how Bush uses language. Bush is, perhaps, the greatest frame invoker of the modern political era.
It's about the Metaphors, Stupid
Right after 9/11, the GOP wasn't quite sure how to frame what happened. Here are some of the phrases the Bush team used in the early days:
- Terrorists must be brought to justice (crime frame)
- Terrorists are cowards (schoolyard fight frame)
- Smoke 'em out (fox/hunting frame)
- Dry up the swamp (slimy monsters frame)
Ultimately, they settled on "War on Terror," thereby framing the debate in terms of two clear sides. And the war on terror is really a war between Americans who are "good" and terrorists who are "evil."
It is difficult to exaggerate how much John Kerry struggled against the war frame invoked by the GOP. His arguments were sound, his policies clear, his record solid. But still the GOP kept invoking the frame. Anyone who doesn't support the "war on terror" (terror=evil), must be evil themselves. Bring on the Swift Boat Vets. Their lies were completely wrong. But they reinforced the notion that the US fights wars against evil enemies, and if we're not careful, forces within us conspire to take us down.
After a certain point, I could see why Kerry didn't give more specifics about Iraq. Either he was going to shift the frame or he was going to lose. So, late in the game he tried to shift the frame from "war" to "crime"--the very frame where Bush began--but it was too late. Too much of the public was already thinking through the war frame.
But there's a bigger lesson, here.
Dem's can't change the frame and still use Bush's phrases that invoke the prior frame.
We can't "win" the "war on terror" by building alliances and enforcing laws. Wars can onlyh be won by fighting. In this sense--and this speaks to the power of frames--even mounting casualties are a better at showing that you are winning the war, than talk of building alliances.
Isn't that insane? How many of us thought that when US casualties hit 1,000--Bingo! Kerry wins. We were so wrong. The casualty numbers were evidence that Bush was fighting the war, that Bush would not let evil win without fighting. The only way for Kerry to trump Bush in the war frame was to talk about fighting harder and better (e.g., to unveil plans of a massive invasion, use of unconventional weapons, etc., etc.).
We can credit the late talk by Edwards and Kerry about "killing" the terrorists to this attempt to show that they would fight better, to a last ditch effort to control the GOP frame.
Ah, but you can't control a frame set by someone else. To win, you have to invoke a new frame that serves your interests, and holds.
From dKosopedia, the free political encyclopedia.
The word "meme" was originally coined by Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, in his book "The Selfish Gene", which laid out the argument that individual genes could be treated as being affected by natural selection. The term is a new version on the observation that "ideas" spread like a contagion. As such there is an entire academic study of memes which takes the original analogy seriously.
As used on the Internet the term has a related, but different meaning. Since in the digital environment, fragments of information really do have an exact reduction - unlike "ideas" between people which do not - a "meme" in Internet terms is any fragment which is easily memorable, easily recallable, and which drives out other competing frames of reference. A successful meme is characterized by people's willingness to send the meme on to other people, so that it will spread. (See Viral Marketing, Message). Thus the important characteristics of a meme are: memorable, recallable, spreadable, applicable, credible and terminal.
Memorable, recallable and spreadable are all relatively obvious. Credibility is somewhat more elusive: some memes are not credible if actually stated, where they can be refuted, but the meme itself must be credible when used. For example "Saddam bin Laden" is not credible, but it can be used credibly. Applicablity is the property of a meme to be invoked in a wide variety of circumstances, "Dissent endangers the troops" is one example: almost any line of argument can be stopped if it can be troped to damage the morale of the troops. Terminality is the property of a meme that it ends discussion, thought or debate. A successful meme crowds out other interpretations, even obvious ones, from the listener's mind.
Memes are generally described in their most generic form, for example "Saddam bin Laden" is a description for the meme that Saddam was related to the 9/11 attacks in some way. As can be seen from this example, memes do not rely on evidence, or even direct assertion, but instead are meant to evoke a particular image.
The word meme is often applied to two related, but separate, entities. One is the actual quotation or fragment which is spread, or its variations, the raw "memetic" code and its "alleles". The other is the underlying tropic meme - for example "Democrats are soft on defense" is an example. Sometimes called a theme by political commentators, the usage of meme for both is likely to continue. In linguistic theory these are often called frames, and asserting and establishing a new meme is called reframing the debate. (See George Lakoff, paradigm)
Related to memes are tropes and factoids. The word "trope" means "turn", and it is from the ancient Greek, where Homer describes Odysseus as of "many turnings". The word "tropic" comes from "trope" because the tropic is where the sun "turns" back on its course from north to south, or south to north. A trope is a turn which recalls the original. This means that puns are one example of a trope, but plot "twists" are as well. A trope in critical theory describes how different images or incidents are tied together. Most memes rely on a "trope" of discourse, a common pattern of turning.
One example of a trope is to call "Iraq the central front in the war on terrorism". The trope is to describe the War on Terrorism as having "fronts" and the trope of connecting Saddam to Osama works by the chain of "Osama is the enemy in the War on Terrorism, Iraq is the central front on the war on terrorism, therefore Iraq is related to Osama".
A factoid is an observable without a frame of reference, whether an anecdote, a statistic, or an historical event. Factoids are given context by spinning them, that is, applying a trope to the factoid to relate it to a meme. An example is "GDP grew at 4.5% in the First Quarter of 2004". This could be spun as "we are no longer in recession with such good GDP growth", it could also be spun as "almost all of that growth was government or consumer borrowing, therefore the economy is still frail without stimulus". The factoid means nothing by itself.
One example of a meme at work is the meme "Saddam is a liar", which was backed up by factoids of his being uncooperative in the extreme to weapons inspections. This was used to spin factoids of possible weapons, to imply that they represented the tip of a very large iceberg.
Political discourse works by asserting memes which end discussion, or stop thinking. They are buttressed by, or countered by, other memes and factoids, and held together by tropes.
Crucial to the use of memes in political discourse is their insertion. Inserting a meme is an attempt to have other people repeat the meme and use it. A meme is said to be "insertable" when it is in a form which will be readily remembered and repeated. A bumpersticker spreads a meme by making people want to put it on their vehicle, an email message spreads when people forward it. Political operatives have a variety of means to attempt insertion from "trial balloons" through political advertising, blast faxes and providing video tape to news organizations to run as part of their broadcasts. However, insertion does not always insert the meme that an operative intended, for example, the "Misson Accomplished" banner was an attempt to insert the idea that victory had been achieved in Iraq, but is now a factoid for Rovian manipulation, and part of the "Republicans will do anything to spin the public" meme.
There is extensive critical theory associated with post-modernism on tropes, memes and factoids, but, as yet, no cohesive theory has emerged for them.
(see also MemeTank)
Posted at 06:42 pm by blog swarm
Political News Permalink
Bush re-election already hurting
Dollar expected to fall amid China's rumoured selling
By Steve Johnson in London and Andrew Balls in Washington
Published: November 7 2004 19:43 | Last updated: November 7 2004 19:43
The dollar could slide still further, in spite of hitting an all-time low against the euro last week in the wake of George W. Bush's re-election, currency traders have said.
The dollar sell-off has resumed amid fears among traders that Mr Bush's victory will bring four more years of widening US budget and current account deficits, heightened geopolitical risks and a policy of "benign neglect" of the dollar.
Posted at 06:38 pm by blog swarm
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On Monday, Governor Dean's latest column, The Work Doesn't Stop On Election Day, was published and it was announced that voters would not face challengers in Ohio (this decision was unfortunately reversed on Tuesday morning). After the Daily News Roundup, Katherine Allen told us how to talk about voting, and Patrick Goggin wrote in from wecount.org. Monday evening, William Sumner started a Thank You Howard Dean diary at Daily Kos.
Tuesday was Election Day 2004. After providing some resources, we focused on the electoral vote count and the Dean Dozen 2004 Election Results. We ended the calendar day with a pause in the eleventh hour.
Early morning Wednesday was still election day. After some late night/early morning election returns, Ohio remained in the balance and election night eventually turned into day. The office was waiting for resolution... and rest until Senator Kerry conceded the presidential race. Governor Dean followed up with a positive column on what the TV networks weren't saying, and "My Vote is My Voice" opened up venue voting for DemocracyFest 2005. The day ended with Meetup Minutes for November 2004.
Thursday morning, I wrote in from my flight back from Ohio my belief that this is still a country worth fighting for. The transcript from Governor Dean's Meetup Conference Call was posted, and after the Daily News Roundup DFA staffer Zach Manganello shared his letter to a Maine senator. The day ended with the possibility that we may see a change in the Attorney General's office, and change is good.
Friday morning, Dean Dozen Senator-elect Barack Obama thanked his state for electing him by a wide margin, and it became apparent that voting machines were in short supply on election day. Globe Columnist Steve Bailey urged Kerry supporters to lead, don't follow, and after the Daily News Roundup we ended the day with a Specter of hope.
Posted at 06:10 pm by blog swarm
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Posted by Matt Stoller at November 7, 2004 04:46 PM | TrackBack
In the Washington Post:
Simon B. Rosenberg, president of the New Democratic Network, devoted to making the party more competitive, said he and many Democrats used to believe the key to success was to play down overt partisanship and seek common ground where possible. But many Democrats, he said, in the Bush era have concluded this approach is naive.
"What's changed in the Democratic psyche in the last two years is that we believe we have to oppose the Republicans because their agenda is not just different from ours but that it's dangerous," Rosenberg said. "We don't see ourselves arguing in a debating society between two alternative points of view. . . . We are fighting with a missionary zeal."
I think this about sums it up. The President doesn't have a track record of seeking common ground, because his vision for the country is very different than ours. The challenge, as Simon puts it, is to articulate our vision so voters have a choice.
Posted at 05:49 pm by blog swarm
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