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So, that explains it. While I was watching them last night, I thought, shit, they all look alike, and they all look just like they did twenty years ago. Same viciousness, cruelty, arrogance, mean spirited to the bone.
``I strongly recommend George Lakoff's new book "The Political Mind" - which makes this argument quite eloquently. It is obvious to me that unlike Democratic operatives and consultants of the previous era, Obama took a lesson or two from that book or perhaps Lakoff's theories in general and is applying that lesson with a great success...''
Maybe I will get it and read it. I would certainly like to think Obama has done more than apply lessons on refaming in more than a rhetorical way. But I don't think so. I think he has bought into the neoconservative frame all across the board in foreign policy. I think this is especially so, in the idea that the US is supposed to defend `freedom' all over the world. This central pillar of bullshit obscures a more thorough going re-assessment of the US position and what its vastly scaled down power is in concrete terms and what it should be used for.
And contrary to the possible hopefulness suggested in a deeper re-framing, what I am bothered by is that Obama has managed to reframe race, poverty, and inequality in some Hayek inspired way (individualism, individual initative, etc) which completely precludes the very institutional overhauls necessary to change all that. The latter reframing is essentially what Reed and Ford are complaining about.
It would be a great round table to hear Lakeoff and Reed argue through this topic.
``We need neuroscience to tell us that people respond to symbols and buzzwords?'' Chris Doss
Evidently. On the other hand, the point is to learn how those symbols and their psycho-motive registers are created, linked together, and used to creat the mental realities that are in turn manipulated by various ideological systems.
CG