Precisely. Romney moves in a high context subculture of the far right where very little has to be spoken to telegraph complex messages. The theme is that of the collectivist country nearby US shores. Obama campaign messaging anticipated that there would be reactionary statements. The subtext of the response is that Romney would make not just a cowardly leader, but a foolish one about how to handle tin plated leaders like Chavez.

Benen fails to understand (or even apparently attempt to understand) the Right's highly contextual language or literary themes.

Benen's analysis pummels us with the message that the Right/Romney is stupid about their messaging and about policy questions. On the contrary, Romney knows that a discussion of the most intelligent policy towards Columbia is irrelevant to voters who might choose him. He knows that external threats and red baiting are powerful themes on the right.

As Day aptly warns: Scoff at your peril.

It seems that Day was being sarcastic, John. It seems you give too much credit to Romney et al in assuming that they know what they are doing. I see no thoughts framed by the knowledge of some "high-context subculture", I only see a simplistic raving about "commies" and the usual lack of any plan beyond that.

Liberals! You ignor the real threats like Obamacare,abortion, contraception, illegals, and get preoccupied with phony issues like "global warming",voter suppression,outsourcing, tax avoiding billionaires,access to health care, corruption,...

Mass hypnotism is being used to lead you to socialism! Wake up and smell the gasoline as I strike a match to your facts and figures. Right is right-even when wrong!!!

Yes, the Red Star banana company is just the beginning! Soon we'll have Venezuelan Muslims creeping into our churches and holding up TSA lines at our airports! I still love Chavez' sulfur comment at the United Nations, obviously the Wrong-wing is still fuming about that!

If I give too much credit to the Right and their use of themes that strengthen their sense that they are an embattled and righteous subculture fighting for the "real America", then explain to me Fox's ratings.

The fact is that it is pointless and impotent to mock the language that the Right uses. The adept response is to use the language. Using the narrative of the external threat, if a member of the tribe directly attacks the premise that there is a real threat, this is not persuasive to those in the middle who believe their might be some truth to it. If you put out this message, the opponent will cast you as naive / ivory tower person who time and again brings about the downfall of societies.

The Obama campaign understands some may believe there might be a threat there. When there is a threat, there is a response to rally to a leader. So what Obama team does is to cast Romney as the cowardly fool, while casting Obama as the decisive wise one whose gaze sees the movements of the tin pot dictator.

Understand this: If you go knocking on doors, Benen's style of argument will win few independent voters. You must speak the language of those you talk to. If you mock premises that are integral to their narratives, you may satisfy yourself that you have devastated them with an overwhelming rationalist argument. Because it is true- the facts are on your side.

The problem with this scathingly brilliant strategy is that you will not move a vote over to Obama. So it is just brilliantly idiotic and self indulgent. This is not about proving how smart and well informed we are compared to the Right.

It is about using their own language and themes to defeat them.

Wait a minute! What about me? Why are all the gringo righties so concerned about the fat guy? They used to have a thing for me, but now not even a mention?

I'm still here!

s/

Daniel Ortega

Managua, Nicaragua

John, George Lakoff would disagree. Using their own language reinforces their values, not yours. It frames their ideas, not your values. Mocking is not the answer, I agree, but using language that reflects our values, our morals personalizes rather than intellectualizes the very policies we want to see in law and practice. See his new book he wrote with Elisabeth Wehling called THE LITTLE BLUE BOOK: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic.

Judy, yes of course he would disagree. He expressed this idea clearly in Political Mind:

What conservatives did was to use language, ideas, images, and symbols repeatedly to activate the conservative mode of thought and inhibit the progressive mode of thought in individuals who had both. This increased the synaptic strength of the neurons in the circuitry characterizing conservative thought, and did the opposite to progressive thought. The relatively greater activation strength of the conservative mode of thought increased the likelihood of its being neurally bound to conservative framings of particular issues. This gradually made people more and more conservative, though in most cases not wholly so.

From Lakoff's point of view, if you speak the language conservatives use, you merely re-enforce "bi conceptual" thinkers to move into ever more conservative framings of issues.

In Lakoff's cosmology, cognition has two Manichean poles. Most of us are somewhere between the two. The goal of progressives is evangelical: to move people towards the narratives and language of the progressive style of cognition. Whether he is aware of it or not, in so doing Lakoff is himself guilty of the "conservative" mindset of reduction of the world into simple dichotomies, that some framings are universally bad/ evil and must be eliminated in order to achieve a pure "progressive" mindset. This happens to be good old American puritanism.

I don't mean to be flippant. It is fair to note that Lakoff's account is controversial and that his categories are simple and rigid.

Lakoff is to be commended for introducing analysts to a deeper level that drives political discourse. However, Lakoff treats narratives as if they are computer programs- that they are deterministic. As other cognitive scientists point out, there is little survival value in rigid languages of representations for the world. Take a look at the literature from neuroscientists on how maps work. The reality is that a narrative is a representation of sense data with a time component and multiple branches. Antonio Damasio is my favorite writer on this because he both is a leading scientist in this field doing the research who has an ability to communicate the concepts in lay terms. Interestingly, Damasio theorizes that the temporal sequencing of mental representations leads to the survival need to protaganize the narrative. He theorizes this could be the essence of the emergence of consciousness of self in mammals. (Self Comes to Mind: Kindle Locations 3140-3142).

These narratives are deep in the activity of minds. So for example, an lioness will cuff a young one for misbehavior. To Lakoff, "The lack of punishment is seen as a moral failing of the strict father."

Romney in this case points out that Chavez has done many things (harboring drug kingpins, supported terrorist organizations including allowing Hezbollah inside Columbia, and helps Iran evade sanctions. The frame is that Obama is a bad father because he doesn't spank little Hugo's bottom.

Obama campaign uses the same frame for leaders. Too embelish: Little Hugo just wants attention. Romney is a poor parent because he is easily playing into the child's game of drawing attention to himself. Romney, by being afraid of this child and by allowing himself to be manipulated by the child shows what a poor father Romney would be. (Roll tape on dog on car, Roll tape on Obama spanking bin Laden).

Set and match.

Now, Lakoff would say that by focusing on short term goal of persuading centrist voters, he has undermined long term goals- by strengthened their conservative thinking and swinging them further to the dark side- eg: that we need more 007 assassins in chief.

Well, if the world were chopped into two simple Manichean categories where punitive consequences equates to activating conservatism in the mind's computer, then Lakoff would be correct. Lakoff's weakness is that he looks at the mind as mechanism rather than literature. There is not are not unitary sets of narratives, each with single outcomes. What Lakoff attributes to the fundamentalist Judeo-Christian image of the strict father is what other cultures attribute to Karma. Karmic consequences have nothing to do with gender or a personality. It is a simple attribute of the Cause and Effect in Being. If you do a Yin, there will be Yang. Jonathon Haidt for example goes into great depth on this unwillingness of right and left to speak in terms of common reference points- to speak in moral languages that the other understands. (More in his Righteous Mind) So many others in the cognitive community do not see things in the simple reduction Lakoff does. The conservative "mind set" is not activated because an alternative narrative is taught: That of a "collectivist" who is also a good father whose wise interaction with the world involves a more subtle though just as forceful application of consequences, using means that are effective in correcting bad behavior, and bringing the nation back into the global community of nations who accept common norms conducive to world peace.

This larger understanding about the language of morals appreciates that the solution to the world's problems is not evangelizing everyone to think as we do. Speaking the language of another is the means not of reinforcing their narcissism, but pulling them out into a much wider world, a world populated not just by strict father families and nurturing empathetic families, but families with narratives and moral languages that fit into neither set. Finding common moral language and speaking in terms of narrative reference points that the listener can relate to is not a weakness- it is a strength.

Certainly it is a weakness if you do not suggest an alternate ending to the stock conservative narratives.

Or worse. Our Olympic uniforms! Mitt would never let this happen.

The Prince of Outsourcers?! No never! #sarcasm

Why?

^My question exactly. Pardon my parables!

"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways." So I imagine that Polar Bears' point is that somebody is thinking in childish ways. I assume that the "childish" ones are Romney and his supporters.

It is unfortunate that the leaders of the Right always seem to need some enemy to hate and fear. It is in fact more than unfortunate--we were led to fear Saddam Hussein, and over 4400 Americans died.

I often like to note the literal meaning of the word "fearmonger." The word literally refers to someone who sells fear. I see also (as per Merriam-Webster's online dictionary) that the word "monger" is related to the Greek word for "magic charm" or "magic potion." So--when someone is a fearmonger, they may well be bamboozling you for their benefit.

Or giving heating oil to our poor.

It's like what I told the very few people that didn't believe Iraq was a threat, "You just wait til those camels float into New York Harbor with all those WMDs on their backs!!!"

Well actually oil provides the lubricant on which they spin while coal ash gives them a soft place to fall. Wealth begets wealth by buying power.

This guy is evil and hates the USA. He has money and he likes to make alliances with US enemies. He sells oil to the US through Citgo (a Venezuelan Co.) and is a key factor in the gas prices in the USA. He has closed 38 treats with Iran, ( I don't know if you think that Iran is a friend of the USA or not) including nuclear research. Oh, there's Uranium in Venezuela. He has total control of the media and has allowed crime rate of his country gone to a 236% compare to 1999 (yes, 13 years) when he took office. Also, Venezuela is only 1,100 miles (3 hrs flight) away from the USA. I don't don't you, but yes, he is a treath to the USA and an evin influence in the region.

Obama = Hitler, except he's a black Hitler which is somehow inferior yet even more powerful!

Sorry - I should have been more clear. Of course Obama is the new Hitler, but he's our Hitler. Rightwingers need a foreign new Hitler too. I mean, yes, Obama sort of fits that as well, being Kenyan and all, but he's not really the President of Kenya, and they don't have anything worth invading for anyhow, so...

We need another Hitler! Preferably one with access to large oil deposits...

The irony being, that when the world had the actual Hitler, the American right couldn't see what people were so worked up about (until Germany declared war on the US, that is).

Fed talking points? Romney is more like a ventriloquist's dummy, but he's so stiff and uncomfortable I don't think his operators have their hands in a hole in his back.

He's put significant restrictions on the media there. He's resorted to cheap populist rhetoric and crappy policy. He opposes free speech, that's all I need to be opposed to Chavez. The socialism-and-nothing-else-EVER policies are just the cherry on top.

Tip: The government needs to do more things, especially here in the US. It does not, however, need to do everything. Chavez seems to think otherwise, and it's really fething up Venezuela as a result.

Rawmoney has struggled badly to understand the "basics" period!

The only "basics" that count are the "basics" of getting elected. Which may depend more than anything else on dog whistles.

I heard that he has a special task force searching for WMD's in the communist stronghold of Berkely, California.