Good article. He who frames the debate wins in advance if the debate stays within that framework. We need to seize the language and do the framing (and indeed the hanging).

wolfie: obama, how would you prevent arctic ice melt, lower gas prices, prosecute the war on terrorism, protect us from sunspots, and ensure healthy petfood for all? 30 seconds, w/10 seconds for kucinich to respond.

it's more than just the framing of questions, Ms. Christina Smith of the "hugh downs" (20/20? wtf?) school.

but now we all know candidates can deconstruct the premises of a question. when they want to. whew! i was having my doubts. i mean hilary was only number 1 at yale law, and obama editor of harvard law review....ok, maybe not tom "gimme fantasy sadist from fictional torture-terror-TV land, jack bauer!" tancredo.

This is a communication skill and debate tactic Democrats are coming to understand and good thing. This is exactly where Repbulicans have eaten our lunch for the last six years. Don't start with the question, begin with the presumptions underlying the question and challenge, challenge, challenge, when called for. Simple minded ideologues want to make the world simple: everything black and white, either /or.

Check out "Reframing" by Richard Bandler and John Grinder.

and also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reframing

All during the debate about the supplementary Iraq war spending bill, every commentator I saw, on every network, insisted on calling it the bill "to support the troops". This is framing at its Republican worst. We need to reframe the phrase "support the troops" to mean "bring them home".

CNN and NPr are actually worse than FOX News for precisely this reason.

People who watch FOX know that they are watching a channel that has a clear political agenda, and even if they are part of the 35% of the country who approves of Bush, they know it's a bit of a put-on.

CNN and NPR are worse because they actually serve the same corporate agenda that FOX News does, but they work hard to preserve their image as 'neutral, unbiased news reporters'.

As this article points out, that is definitely not the case. CNN and NPR are even more dishonest than FOX News, which makes make no secret of it's real agenda.

Frankly, I can't wait for English to be declared the official language of the United States. Imagine millions of Americans trying to learn it properly! Adverbs! Knowing the difference between its and it's! And anyone who makes a grammatical error will have his statement stricken from the record.

And while we're at it, let's have an official accent. No more "youse" nor "y'all." Everyone will have to sound like Hugh Laurie on "House;" of course, he's only pretending to be an American.

Excellent article. It highlights how staged these events are, and how little substance can be gathered from the candidates' responses.

However, I don't believe the candidates are unaware of this conservative framing. Accepting the terms given to them allows them to seem more reasonable, more like 'one of us" who are accustomed to hearing questions in that frame. Challenging or changing the question can come across as combative or evasive.

In order to win the presidency, these candidates need to get some independent votes, and they obviously feel that working inside the dominant paradigm will work best for them. Alas.

ALL of US must begin to think outside the Bush Box (is that redundant or a double-negative?). In any case it's a positive, since the Bushists have already positively framed themselves with admitted and obvious felonies, some declared as such in federal court. So all that remains is to file the articles of IMPEACHMENT and war criminal/crimes against humanity charges in the Hague and to reframe THEM behind bars. Turn the circular firing squad inside out.

Christina Smith has it exactly right. We need to reject right wing framing right down to the level of basic vocabulary. When we use (or even respond to) terms like "war on terror(ism)" and "immigration crisis" we validate the world-view that underlies them.

I believe many Democrats are actually quite comfortable with Republican and Neocon-speak. And, while the take may be different, the essence is accepted. That's why Democrats will take us to war, will protect egregious violations law by BusCheney, and support corporate welfare.

Look, Buffalo's Blitzer worked for the right-wing Jerusalem Post before CNN. Chicago's Rahm Emanuel enlisted in the IDF before joining the Clintons, then made millions at Goldman Sachs. Nothing illegal here of course, but serving the American People is not clearly evident, I think you'd agree.

The allegiance of each elite should be scrutinized before accepting a word from their mouths.

Let's all become better listeners!

Good article. Everyone should read the Wikipedia articles on memes and cognitive dissonance as well. Cheap Jedi mind tricks, as old as politics itself.

Where do you go with this? Keep in mind that the majority of politicians in both of the corporate parties are lawyers and really should be wiser -- expert -- at identifying frames. So the Dimocrats who don't one-up the framer, redefine the question, clarify it, etc. are either (a) awfully weak-minded or (b) complicit -- the whole thing is just a charade debate.

They say that "suspension of disbelief" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief) is required to accept a work of art or fiction, and it's pretty clear that it's at work in politics also. Probably the "uncorrected frame" by shill opposition (bright people, probably both sides are ivy league lawyers), is left untreated for the viewing audience's pleasure. To give them gratification that a real debate, question/answer, policy consideration, etc. occurred when, in reality, the conclusions and policy may have been somewhat foregone conclusions.

I hope that we will be hearing more from Christina Smith. Right wing framing is sometimes difficult to unpack quickly. It would be a great service to the progressive community to have a weekly column on just unpacking conservative framing.

"Many provisions in the Patriot Act are indeed beneficial and needed."

No, they aren't. It is definitely true that the debate was punctuated by constant conservative-framed questions, but I still hold that Hilary used them as an excuse to remain as vague as possible about her personal views. I'm glad that the mainstream candidates didn't agree to a fox-news debate; I don't think I could have stood to watch it.

I think there should be many languages in the united states; only a small part of the country was originally a British colony, so why should there be more of a mixture of immigrant and native languages abound in addition to english?

http://www.dreamingearth.net

One more thing about framing. With regard to health care, the linguistic framing (propaganda technique, really) has long been to cite "lack of insurance" rather than "lack of access to health care". In other words, it already implies some sort of tax-mandated subsidy of the insurance racket -- with middle-men industries waiting in the wings to skim off the difference -- rather than single-payer or some other mechanism which is better aimed at the actual problem: lack of access to health care.

Framing is rampant in our political discourse, including public radio/television.

"The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about."
Noam Chomsky

"Television is altering the meaning of "being informed" by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation... Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing."
Neil Postman

"NPR and PBS at a national level tend to provide a bland variant of mainstream and conventional journalism, comparable to what's on the commercial networks, especially on highly sensitive matters such as the economy and the U.S. role in the world. Public broadcasting is so obsessed with conservative criticism, even more than commercial news media journalists are, that it bends over backwards to appease the Right and appear "balanced."
Robert McChesney

"We're not in the business of providing news and information, We're simply in the business of selling our customers' products. "
Clear Channel CEO Lowry Mays

The United States is a society in which people not only can get by without knowing much about the wider world but are systematically encouraged not to think independently or critically and instead to accept the mythology of the United States as a benevolent, misunderstood giant as it lumbers around the world trying to do good."
Robert Jensen

The media want to maintain their intimate relation to state power. They want to get leaks, they want to get invited to the press conferences. They want to rub shoulders with the Secretary of State, all that kind of business. To do that, you've got to play the game, and playing the game means telling their lies, serving as their disinformation apparatus."
Noam Chomsky

"In a media universe where you're likely to find right-wing conservatives on ABC, Fox, or NPR, the facts don't matter; only the framing. And in the hands of biased pundits posing as objective journalists, the framing is always going to be the same: promilitary, pro-government, and pro-war."
David Potorti

The word isn't "conservative;" it's reactionary. At root as observed and exposed is the Machiavellian drive by reactionaries to keep the People divided into factions by promoting controversial topics.

As pointed out by Ron Paul in the recent Republican "debate," true conservatism in the US is dead as many who describe themselves as conservatives are unable to articulate just what conservatism means.

Some of the most "patriotic" among us have NEVER learned English -- and I hear no Republicans or other anti-immigration folks whining about that. I'm referring to the good anti-
Castro Republicans who came to America way back in the 1960's and 70's.Sure, they came to escape Castro, but I personally know people who've been on these shores for as many as thirty or forty years; have lived here,worked here, rased their families here, and many of whom have now passed away here, many of whom have never bothered to learn one word of English. You think they might have learned a few words in all those decades. And yet, I'll bet many of the anti-immigration shriekers are plenty happy to exclude them from their English-only rants because they are some of the most hawkish, most pro-Bush, most pro-Republican people among us. Look, it doesn't bother me if they want to maintain Spanish-only communities, and hang out with like-minded, like-speaking people. It doesn't make them less human or less worthy of being part of the great American tapestry. But for Wolf Blitzer and others to play what they consider to be a very subtle version of the "tut-tut, isn't it awful?" game regarding immigrants and whether or not they should be an English-only country, well, that's nothing but hypocrasy masquerading as patriotism.

By the way, we English-speakers actually weren't the first folks to call this continent home. Perhaps we should get down off out high horses and realize that if things were truly as they should be, this ought to be a Native-American-Only-speaking country!

This is a communication skill and debate tactic Democrats are coming to understand and good thing.

It's a good start but only that . Only when ALL Americans choose to and are sufficiently discerning in recognizing the traps in the questions and subsequently capable of reframing the question before answering will Americans start choosing candidates that demonstrate honesty and integrity.

Framing questions with a built-in trap is nothing new . One of the first and most well-known framed questions was asked of Jesus by the Pharisees,the first-century ancestors of Blitzer and Spradling.

Pharisees : Who are we as Jews required by pay taxes to , Caesar or God (questionmark)

Jesus knew if he didnèt reframe the question so as to put the burden of legal interpretation on the questioners the answer would be a violation of Mosaic law or worse , a violation of Roman Law (treason)resulting in imprisonment or even death .

In a quite theatrical gesture he asked for a Roman coin , apparently the offical currency in Judea and in asking whose image-profile was embossed on the coin immediately reframed the question , knowing that it was the profile of Caesar Augustus or Tiberias.

Again , he already knew that Pharisees were well acquainted with Mosaic law that required all Jews to give one-tenth of their income to the synagogue.

His answer, Render unto Caesar what is Caesarès and unto God what is Godès.

The responce may sound simplistic but he had turned the trap-question for him into a trap- question for them.

He implied ,the decision is yours : you know you must abide by Roman Law and Mosaic Law.

He was probably chuckling to himself thinking that if Mosaic Law titheing took its 10% cut and Roman taxes took a 40% additional cut on the before-tithe income , there wouldnèt be much left.

Blitzer and Spradling are not bent on executing Edwards and Kucinich unlike Pharisees were for Jesus as yet but their questions are designed for political anniliation and must be twarted just as deftly by the candidates and recognized for the bias behind them by the American public.

I often find myself shouting at the TV or radio "Answer the goddamn question!" as some right-wing politico artfully sidesteps a query from the moderator.

Is that what Sen. Barak did?
No... rather than evade the question, he challenged it's premise directly. That's good, but he'd better have something to say as a followup, or he'll appear evasive.

So the other side of the "Framing" coin is how questions get answered... or not.

When the Vice President sits down with Tim "the marshmallow man" Russert on NBC, he can say whatever he wants and avoid answering any question with impunity.

The Interviewers on NPR were pretty passive in the same way, until the Dems took back the majority in Congress.

They've actually been pretty feisty since last November.

----------------------------------------

I'm old enough to remember when the words "conservative" and "skeptical" were almost interchangeable. They way things are going, "conservative" is going to be another word for "gullible".

jjohnjj: "No… rather than evade the question, he challenged it's premise directly. That's good, but he'd better have something to say as a followup, or he'll appear evasive."

Ah, but that's the beautiful thing about televised debates and time limitations which demand the candidate shoe-horn his or her answers into soundbites. A candidate sharp enough - or, more appropriately, willing enough - to challenge the question's underlying premises has little or no time to offer positive declarations as follow-ups and probably wouldn't be able to properly address and refute all the bullshit thrown his way in the first place. Besides, how many viewers would treat such challenges to the question's premises as "sneaky, fancy talk" designed to avoid the simple yes or no answer that loaded questions beg for?

We're going broke providing interpreters and teachers for all the illegal immigrants.

When our family lived in Canada, we paid for French instruction for our children. But then we were legal immigrants who believed we could do better by living there for a while. We brought a skill/s that was/were needed there, and we were willing to acclimate to become part of the community. It wasn't too hard. But then, we weren't a part of a horde of immigrants.

I don't sense that interest on the part of today's immigrants: the interest in adapting to our community and to improve themselves.

Moving on to the debates: what about what we see on TV is a debate? Lincoln vs. Douglass? That was a debate. What we're exposed to is verbal acrobatics with ads.

And CNN is supposed to be the "liberal" network.

This thread is a very refreshing one since the author of the article and many of the comments here are discussing things deeply and sharply. Superb example, Ron White and great quotes ezeflyer.

Here's my two bits worth.

In linguistics, we have several levels of framing to get the meaning of what one is trying to say across to others. This is available only to humans because of their language facility and remembered or learned social norms, customs and convention. It is also precisely the reason why the search for creating a human-like computer through artificial intelligence, by Marvin Minsky, Daniel Dennet and many of the neo-con atheists trying to reduce the human mind to a piece of flesh made by evolutionary forces without any non fleshly mind, failed. For no Turing Machine (any universal true/false computer), which is finitely programmed can replicate these layers of meaning without infinite regress. The current hope of a "human is a piece of meat" crowd is now in quantum computers because it is not constrained by true/false logic. They always keep forgetting Gödel's theorem that there is no end to truth, and thus meaning, that the human mind can jump intuitively to somehow, but which would take any programmed computer to go beyond its programming at the same speed.

At any rate, the two levels of linguistic implication I would like to discuss briefly here are the SURFACE meaning that is conveyed by a surface "If a, then b" implication, and the more subtle "conversational IMPLICATURE" discovered by the British Logician-Philosopher of language, H.P.Grice. It is also called "Gricean implicature" in his honour. It is used extensively by the advertising industry (unconsciously most of the time, of course) to send subliminal messages to consumers. Goebel's was a master at this art. So are the modern fascists who use the MSM for the same purpose,and one of the reasons why so many of us are anguishing as to why the mass of the American people still do not get it at this 11.50'th hour when another war (actually WWIII) is being prepared. Here is the paradigm example by Grice himself:

"Suppose that A and B are talking about a mutual friend, C, who is now working in a bank. A asks B how C is getting on in his job, and B replies, 'Oh quite well, I think; he likes his colleagues and he hasn't been to prison yet.' At this point A might inquire what B was implying, what he was suggesting, or even what he meant by saying that C has not yet been to prison. . . . It might, of course, be quite unnecessary for A to make such an inquiry of B, the answer to it being in the context, clear in advance. I think it is clear that whatever B implied, suggested, meant, etc., in this example, is distinct from what B said, which was simply that C had not been to prison yet. . .

"In the sense that I am using the word 'say,' I intend what someone has said to be closely related to the conventional meaning of the words (the sentence) he has uttered [that is, what the uttered surface sentence implies in standard "If a, then b" meaning of the words without context or circumstance]. Suppose someone to have uttered the sentence 'He is in the grip of a vice.' Given a knowledge of the English language, but no knowledge of the circumstances of the utterance, one would know something about what the speaker had said, on the assumption that he was speaking standard English, and speaking literally. One would know that he had [said either some male human or animal was unable to free himself of a bad character trait or that some part of the person was caught in a certain kind trapping device]..."
(Quoted from H.P. Grice:"Logic and Conversation, "reproduced in *The Philosophy of Language, Fourth Edition* (A.P. Martinich, ed., Oxford University Press, New York, 2001)).

As you can see, even if one frames a discourse correctly at one level of meaning, say the literal level, the optimal contextual and circumstance frames may be very difficult to determine for a large group of heterogeneous listeners. I have thought about this problem for several years, and have come to the conclusion that they are probably unsolvable in finite alphabet languages such as English. Otherwise it would be possible to program a computer to put forward and receive multiple layers of meaning using only one set of words.

A possible solution is to use art form, especially pictures and animation, as much as possible since art can represent both feeling, emotion, circumstance and meaning all at once in the same frame. Therefore, to get most people to understand what is at stake at this moment in history when a nuclear war is almost at our door step is to use graphic images of what a strike on Iran and its aftermath would look like.

"but now we all know candidates can deconstruct the premises of a question. when they want to. whew! i was having my doubts. i mean hilary was only number 1 at yale law, and obama editor of harvard law review"

Despite the snark, Jedediah z. makes a good point. All Dems on stage were completely capable of meta-thinking--so what's the problem? Could it be that Blitzer 's frames are perfectly fine (syntonic) with them, represents their own style of thought and that, for the most part, the "frame analysis" technique reveals that underneath, there really isn't enough difference between the two branches of one single corporate-funded way of thinking?

Wish Lakoff would analyze this level of the problem--because many Democrats don't seem to want to learn to talk more intelligently and cogently--so the problem isn't just one of language. It's one of principles and commitment to them. If the Dems would become as progressive as the majority of the country actually is--they could talk from these prinicples and the frames would follow.

Build the principles and the frames will come.

If you cannot hear the nominalizations in your own speech, if you cannot hear the Milton Model violations in your own speech, if you cannot hear the meta-programs in your own speech - you won't hear them in others. "Can the Commies win here too?"

Unexamined speech, like an unexamined life, is unconscious - that means somebody else pulls the strings and you dance. Don't we? Haven't we been? Couldn't we change that with some deliberate effort? How would we listen and speak differently?

Just questions....

Peace.

aymon: I differ here, my own research suggests that it is indeed possible, but that Minksy et. al. were going about it all the wrong way. It's a three part recipe: (a) sensory processing (b) a dictionary and thesaurus/cubed network of interrelated meanings achieved through massive arrays and (c) a semantic mentor who hooks senses up with the lattice of meanings. The mentor/teacher has always been omitted from AI. As a parent myself, with degrees in anthropology, history and computer science, I see that the maturation process for human intelligence is not autonomous, but takes years of guidance and tutelage, feedback, reinforcement, etc. There is no difference entailed with non-carbon machinery.

Keep in mind, also, that the logic "problems" you hint at toward infinite recursion, etc. could just as easily apply to biological nervous systems. There are presumably bootstrapped processes in our own "wiring" that prevent such race conditions (barring mental illness).

I tend to see "AI" as improperly named. Something is "artificial" only like art, in that -- in the eye of the beholder -- it stands for something other than it actually is. Therefore, artificial-anything always fails at being the real-something -- a priori. So what we're really aiming at is real intelligence, but non-carbon based. There seems to be no physical or theoretical reason why this is impossible.

Paul Bramscher:

Good points, I'll have to think on them for a bit. Could you please provide some references. At the risk of turning this thread too technical, I'll ask a couple of quick questions that make me a little bit sceptical because of the bypassing of both Godel's theorem and the Heisenberg uncertainty problem. That is that massive parallel arrays of the type you mention will quickly encounter Heisenberg, at which point entropy enters into the determinate meaning process. This in turn may stump the semantic mentor because either it considers what it meets as gibberish since the lattice of meanings is finite, or it will have to admit the new sentence as an axiom outside the denotation of its name. Humans can quickly separate the wheat from the chaff because of intuition. That is why humans can do such feats like Newton's Law of Gravitation (especially the action-at-distance part of it that still eludes us). But how does the computer reproduce intution by recursion or a fixed thesaurus?

But nevertheless, your points bear deeper scrutiny.

For the purposes of this thread I was suggesting an immediate practical resolution - - animated graphics and pictures, and music AND commentary to reach out to a mass of people whose level of thinking in words is at about grade 8 or 9, but whose grasp from imagery has been honed to sharpness from watching TV, a facility that progressives can put to use for their own message. for example the Grice problem of the "vice" that I mentioned above is resolved right away with a picture of an animal in a vice or a human snozzled from booze.

Right now words are not conveyimg the necessary imagination of the horrors of the current occupation in Iraq, and any massive escalation to a nuclear-bio-chemical war with Iran to the masses. they tune off as the MSM and neocon propagandists like Rush Limbaugh denigrate any intellectual exercise as "talking head" or "ivory tower" or "not real world". I see graphics and animation as desperately needed since nearly 6 years of words have not had the visceral impact of putting people out on the street. I know, I know the usual arguments that they are not suffering individual loss, but a graphic, sound animation of gas line-ups, blackouts, bio-chemical mayhem may quickly change all that within a period of 1-2months. All progressives who have the ability at computer animation, graphics and sound synthesis are desperately needed to save the human race from the impending catastrophe.

Aymon,
As follow up on your comment, someone installed a translation software on a computer and gave it a sentence in Russian to translate into English. He got the following response:

The Russian version: The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
The English translation: The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten.

Saila:

That's funny. I'll use it as frame-intro to cut down the verbosity in my posts above. Thanks.

This is precisely what happens when people blindly use the MS Word or any word processor "grammar and spell checker". Microsoft with 200,000 top class computer scientists has not been able to solve this problem, and that's why I think more practical and urgent solutions are needed.

In the article, the author mentions "costs" and this word trips up more or less every lay person and even university professors who have little education in economics, finance and especially accounting. It is the most abused term by fascist "busines people", so called "fiscal conservative libertarians", every two-bit politician and other sundry "conservatives" to kill any progressive initiative such as Universal Health Care as "too costly". They are talking about only "out of pocket costs" and not the much more important and larger "opportunity costs" that not providing this care would definitely occur. Accountants, by their ideology of "verfiable, incurred costs" never measure such future costs as increased child mortality, diseases that may have festered because millions of people could not afford the $100 medication 10 years ago when that would have done the job. Treating that now on Medicare when the person reaches old age or poverty status will cost the public $100,000. Yet, it is the public itself that did not want to spend the $100 10 years ago because of brain washing by neo-con accountants and economists about "costs".

Similarly, the "costs" of the Iraq war are being pegged at about $600 billion. But if one figures in OPPORTUNITY costs of getting the Iraqi oil infrastructure running again, the cost of looking after the 200,000 or so veterans who are or will be physically or psychologically wounded, then the costs are far higher over the next 20- 25 years as all these opportunity costs come home to roost.

This issue is not an issue of framing per se, but one of background knowledge. A cheap, effective way to illustrate the war costs is by multicoloured box diagrams and arrows. I know whereoff I speak. That will immediately sink into the minds of the public rather tahn a 20 page paper with 90% verbiage and little intuitive help from the technical graphs etc. Somehow, the Western World thinks, especially Anglo-saxon and French parts, that communicating by pictures and sound and animation is not "scholarly" or of "high intellect".

About a year and half ago, Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz and his co-author pegged the true costs (out of pocket + opportunity) of the war at about $1 trillion in an article that was cited often in the MSM (surprise!). But it quickly fell by the wayside as most people cannot even put down the zeros in a trillion, let alone visualize it. The article would have had a much more powerful impact if they had employed simple Power Point graphics.

There I go verbosing again.

Have you heard about this one:

A business person looking to recruit a smart right hand vice-president, asks an engineer, a mathematician, and an accountant what is the sum of 101 + 353.56?

The engineer gives an answer to several decimal places and the mathematician says "the solution exists". When it is the accountant's turn, he replies:

"What do you want the answer to be?"

Language is much too deceptive, it's so often used to infect thought with false emotion - especially upon the naive

But it's easy to decipher deceptive language - but not always in 'real time'.

1) You need to simulate a real example of what the words mean - turn the universal into the specific, a visual scene

2) You need to reverse the players, expecially male female, US or foreign actor etc.

3) Not allow the 'reasoning for extremes' to infect everyday thinking.

Then you can see clearly the propaganda at work.
------

How about O'Reilly's "The Religious Right vs The Secular Left"? That's conservative framing if I ever heard it and does a disservice to the whole nation. As if progressives are all atheists. Nonsense, and yet it starts the discussion with liberals having to claim their religion, as though it is unusual if we have one.

I watched both the Democratic and Republican debates and found them disappointing and completely useless in terms of gaining any kind of understanding of the positions of the various candidates. The format of these debates and the framing of questions, as so well pointed out by the article and other posters, is clearly designed to bolster the "dumbing down" of American political debate and the American electorate.

It's ludicrous to expect citizens to gain any understanding of the candidate's positions when they are expected to present simple, one-minute answers to complex issues. It reminds me of the only question given by one of my professors on our Philosophy class final exam: "Define the universe and give two examples." Expecting anyone to present a sensible, well-reasoned answer to problems as difficult and complex as immigration, health care or the war in Iraq in 60 seconds or less is absurd. The inevitable result is that we are given dribbles of information in fast-fire sound bytes that have no substance and do nothing to deepen our understanding of the issue or the candidate's position.

None of the candidates came out of these debates unscathed, with "front runner" hopefuls given just enough time to take a futile stab at defining their positions while their less popular counterparts went largely marginalized or completely ignored, feeding the media's presupposition that these candidates are not worth listening to.

I think that the issue goes much deeper than the author's accurate destructuring of the debate questions and their framing. In my opinion, the debates are designed less to inform the electorate than they are to lead it about by the the nose. Subliminally, we are already being told who we should be supporting and who we should not waste our vote on.

Paul Bramscher,

Of course there was the long flirtation with neural networks and other attempts to more closely mimic biological processes in early AI, but back when I was in AI in grad school in the 1980s it seemed that probabilistic logic (first developed in depth by the mathematician Zadeh at Berkeley) offered the best opportunity for solving problems not determinable by traditional algorithms.

A machine using probabilistic logic would appear to be able to solve any problem that a biological problem solving system could solve, given enough parallelism and speed, and it could easily avoid problems of infinite recursion.

Aymon mentioned Godel, I suppose in reference to Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, that says that for any non-trivial logic such as the propositional calculus no finite set of rules will answer all questions that may be posed, so any rule-based system in which the programmer provides all the rules, such as what you seemed to describe, would be inadequate. That is why any robust AI system for handling a similar set of problems must have the ability to create its own rules based on learning, and that would almost certainly require the implementation of some sort of system of probabilistic logic.

I do not know about now, but it used to be that there was disagreement over what level the probabilistic logic learning system must be set at in order to outperform humans. It seems clear that using probabilistic logic at the neural network level (where each node is learning through experience positive and helpful connections versus not so positive connections) it would certainly be able to outperform humans at some point, but that may take many years to achieve. So the question became whether it could outperform humans as a rule-based system using, as the simplest and most fundamental components, complex representations such as those you mentioned with regard to the use of a dictionary and images of associated meanings.

Could such a system learn as well as a biological system, or, even if not, could its other strengths more than compensate for the learning handicaps? I doubt those questions have been authoritatively answered, but it seems clear that some AI system will be developed that will outperform humans in virtually every task imaginable, unless the corporate predators and neocons manage to end civilization and maybe the human race this century, which is not altogether unlikely.

AYMON: What an intellect you possess, that can so deftly discuss such a various number of topics with aplomb. I would like to add, if I might, something to your logical debate with Paul B. Polarity tends to divide to conquer. Yet there are always places where duality can coalesce into a broader worldview. I happen to SEE Intelligent design as NOT inconsistent with evolution, and part of the intelligence behind cognitive design is the fact that our brains simulating the two antennae on insects, have TWO hemispheres. Indeed one was designed for left brain rational bases for insight, things that can be measured, aspects that conform to linearity. However, largely academia has neglected the entire realm of the all important right brain which is, of course, the intuitive sector. I forget the name of that bridge between both; but I do recall reading that it's far more developed in indigenous males than American males and I am sure this is because like a forest constantly under disuse, its intended pathway is overgrown. Indigenous people are keen on feelings, linked to the land and the seasons and thus they invite a sensory openness that is rare to be found in Western civilizations where the hustle is always on speed, getting "there," and tangible achievement. FEELINGS are most unwelcome in our society as seen in the enormous numbers of persons being prescribed anti-depressant drugs and/or sleep medications. Or course it's quite convenient to shut down the emotive mechanisms of a sizable portion of a society IF that society's leaders are furthering a politics and policy of destruction. Back to the left-right brain bridge, TRUE genius marries the perceptual gifts of both. Einstein was such a type, and I think Deepak Chopra has this capacity as well. Thus to your idea about using pictures and music to MOVE the right brain into a greater participation in the PROCESS of learning and responding to this awesome and complex world is a good one. If we were not a 24/7 marching society, then the ZEN art of being still might equally open the right brain that its voice and vision better guide the thought processes of persons of both genders. Logic is over-rated, when it demands that the complimentary forms of sentience fall in homage to its limited claim to "reason."

Hey, Kivals... we were just in synch, time wise, offering our respective views on logic... me arguing for right brain, while you brought a superb intellect to defend the province of pure logic. Thanks for dancing.

Thanks Siouxrose. Your perspectives make Commondreams, and life, more interesting.

This essay is very helpful. Framing is something that requires reinforcing and seeing real life examples.
The demo candidates are on their own. Most of us need to develop the skill because we are just tired of feeling frustrated at family gatherings and when neocon friends send us outrageous emails.

Very interesting discussion, but my question is, why are the Democratic candidates willing to let conservatives decide what will be debated?? Although by no means could you call what we saw a debate.

Looks like a long dreary election season.

Ezeflyer, Aymon, Saila & Ronald White -

This certainly generated an intriguing thread.

Clearly George Lakoff, Rockridge, and the entire "framing" approach to political style and substance analysis in the mass media can ignite a lot of creative thought that spins out in a lot of different, intellectually challenging directions simultaneously. My two cents worth draws on an anecdote attributed to Albert Einstein.

When the theory of relativity was being universally lauded as a Nobel prize worthy leap in human knowledge, an intrepid print media reporter supposedly cornered Einstein. The reporter demanded that Dr. Einstein reduce the theory into a single sentence, that the newspaper could then publish and sum it all up for an average reader. Albert Einstein paused and responded "Well, it's about time."

The current format of both the Republican and Democratic Presidential candidate forums imposes an extremely short, cosmetic "sound bite" response interval. Deconstruct the loaded question, and the answer appears evasive or nonresponsive. Respond instead within the framework of the question as framed, and your answer reinforces the underlying bias, dumbing down all meaningful public policy formulation through the electoral process, courtesy of the process.

Once the field winnows itself down to the major parties' one-on-one Presidential debates, more time is alotted for reflection, nuance and perhaps even for genuine substance. But by then it is likely to be too late to matter.

In a two party system with no Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, Teddy Roosevelt or Eugene V. Debs permitted to sit at the table, voters are invariably left with a superficial beauty contest choice. Through rejection or co-optation, most policy choices have already narrowed to the mushy middle of the partisan spectrum - a "middle" that for the last 50 years has mysteriously "migrated" (like those Gitmo interrogation techniques) farther and farther towards the right wing of your available radio/TV menu options.

I remain skeptical that packaged visual representations rather than use of human language will help rather than hurt, and clarify rather than obfuscate the dialogue further, at least where partisan campaigns are concerned. Just too many salivating wolves and soaring eagles out there for my sensibilities.

Time compression still confines the scope of what it is possible to communicate.

Maybe the solution to the framing dilemma starts with longer, mixed media approaches like Fahrenheit 911 and Sicko. Or perhaps with some variation on the lengthy, open source public dialogues that have proved so successful for Rush, Hannity and the others who dominate the hate speech end of your local AM dial.

But if a slick series like "24" can subliminally condition John Q. Lunchbox Citizen to believe that torture is not torture when us good guys do it, and that ticking time bomb scenarios are a daily fact of law enforcement in the real world, why can't that sort of framing be reverse engineered?

Bill from Saginaw

kathyodat: Because they are just two sides of the same grubby coin. It's a "good cop, bad cop" routine. Both parties are working for the same interests (military industrial congressional complex), and like how a parent will present a child with two "choices" (do you want to wear a red shirt, or a blue shirt?) which are actually false choices because either way the kid complies with what the parents wants (get dressed). So the kid thinks he's exerting some control over his life via these "choices" which are not really choices at all, but merely distractions designed to give him the illusion of choice while actually compelling him to comply with the underlying command. Public schools often operate on this principle, as well.

The two-party system is a FALSE CHOICE designed to keep us distracted and bickering among ourselves, instead of calling the lot of them out on their cowardice, greed, exploitation, lies, and war crimes.

Probably before any NCI (non-carbon intelligence) system can be achieved, it would be necessary to develop non-carbon idiocy, or at least a non-carbon tabula rosa that was capable of "imprinting" at T(0) relative to its (initially human) mentor.

And I mean it literally -- the machine must have state-of-the-art pattern recognition and a human mentor explaining to it what it is seeing over the course of years. When it has matured, of course, the entire state could be infinitely copied -- to make a duplicate personality at T(X) which may be turned loose autonomously, inform other machines, etc.

I've given it a fair amount of thought and while I'm a fierce open source advocate, idealist, etc. there are some secrets I have to keep to myself if I want to send my kids to college some day, spin-off an interesting product, etc. ;-) But from what I hear, AI is on the downswing as an area of emphasis in Csci. Not as sexy as it used to be.

In any case, to bring this back on track the framing issue is a great example not of how hard it is to program AI, build that semantic lattice/thesaurus which is properly referential, a system which has the ability to adjust logic scope in/out, etc. but its also highly illustrative of the faults in our own wiring. The very fact that so many people can be fooled so much of the time suggests not only that AI is a hard problem, but that real intelligence -- itself -- is also weak and easily gamed. It may well be that we're placing a higher standard on what we expect to get from AI research than we do regarding the intelligence of one another.

Rhetoric is certainly worthy of study and important to understand, but I think Christina Smith has presented a really half-baked analysis at best. I distrust her and the Rockridge Institute, which I suspect is a disinformation operation much as the Tobacco Institute was a disinformation operation. Smith and Rockridge purport to teach Democrats how to win debates and elections, but I think they provide bad advice and false facts.

For example, the best way to answer the question "When did you stop beating your wife?" is to say emphatically, "I never STARTED beating my wife. Why would say something so ridiculous?" If you do that, all eyes in the room immediately turn to the questioner. The onus is now on him to either substantiate the question or not. If he equivocates, he looks like a chump and you look credible. If he offers false information you can say "You're a liar!" and give details. In either case, you win.

Compare that to what Smith advises. When asked "When did you stop beating your wife?" she wants you to quibble with the question. You're advised to say something like, "That's not a fair question. The real question is how can we come up with a legal, sensible way for men and women to live together in harmony?" As soon as you say that, brother, you've lost the debate. You look NOT credible, and weak.

On every issue — when the corporate media frames a question in a biased way, as they always do — Smith advises the Democrats to dodge the question, to not answer the question, to rephrase the question. That's a losing strategy. The best advise is to answer head on, forcefully and with the facts. Then, if there's time, you can deconstruct the question and point out any fallacies it may contain. But, you must ANSWER the question first.

Smith further advices Democrats which arguments to make on the issues. Unfortunately, she advices we make our weakest and least popular arguments, and she doesn't mention our strongest and most popular arguments at all. Again, that's a losing strategy.

For example, on the issue of single-payer, universal healthcare, the advantage of such a system is BOTH that everyone gets healthcare AND that the total cost is less (even while doctors and nurses are better paid). That's because the inefficiencies of our multiple-payer system, and the profiteering of insurance companies and HMOs, are removed. But, Smith advises Democrats to emphasize the "Nanny State" aspects of universal healthcare, and argue that we must pay more so that the poor will have healthcare. She even throws in a false fact, saying "the implementation of universal health care will require taxes to be raised." Those arguments play right into the Republicans' hands.

On the issue of high gas prices, which should be a big winner for Democrats in 08 since it was Republican policies that caused prices to double, Smith advises Democrats to argue the wildly unpopular position that high gas prices are essentially a good thing because they discourage people "from consuming large amounts of gasoline." She wants Democratic candidates to educate the public about the "true costs" of gasoline to the country, the environment, etc. Those arguments are big losers for Democrats. We SHOULD be telling voters that Republicans gave you high gas prices with their stupid foreign policy and their laissez-faire attitude towards price gouging, and that Democrats will BOTH take actions to lower gas prices AND provide incentives for energy conservation and new technology.

Smith also wants the Democrats to oppose making English our "official" language. Again, that's a wildly unpopular position. I didn't know anything about the substance of the issue until I went to Wikipedia and spent two minutes reading about it.

According to Wikipedia, "An official language is a language that is given a unique legal status in the countries, states, and other territories. It is typically the language used in a nation's legislative bodies, though the law in many nations requires that government documents be produced in other languages as well." In other words, having an official language would not "disallow public funds to be used for ballots in other languages," as Smith claims.

Further, according to Wikipedia, "Official languages are sometimes not the same as the medium of instruction and so, the two are not interchangeable." In other words, having an official language would not "rule out funds for bilingual education classes," as Smith claims.

These appear to be false facts planted by Smith to bait Democrats into taking yet another position that is wildy unpopular with voters, to the benefit of Republican candidates.

Thanks, but no thanks. We prefer to win in 08.

Logic without intuition is impossible (fact)

Intuition without logic is possible (fact); but it is also the birthplace of all delusion and fundamentalism (fact; example - - Bush)

Thanks Siouxrose, Saila, jeddediah zachariah jeddediah, kivals, Bill from Saginaw, Ronald White, Paul Bramshcer and to all who are participating on this thread, because this is the thread where I feel from intuition from the Light that we will arrive at a strategy for communicating to the masses in such an impactful way that we may be able to stop a new war.

On this site i have I have been reading complaints ad nauseam that the 60 second sound bites in the political debates and in the news media are the cause of all that is wrong with the public ignorance of what the neo-cons have been doing and what they will do in the next 2-3 months. But after saying that sound bite, people here also want to just rush off from here and sound bite on today's articles and on and on. Whatever happened to the concept of PERSISTENCE at a task that many people here are complaining that the American people do not do because their attention spans are so short?

Come on people, recognising a problem in others but not in us is the height of EGOISIM. That will not garner any help from the LIGHT, and believe me we need all the help, as progressives, from the Light because the forces of darkness ranged against us are powerful, organized and determined. Please do not let your subconscious American CONDITIONING take over at this crucial juncture and make you enter the domain of making two bit comments on every article you see on this web site. That is a SOPORIFIC that you have been pumped with over the last 30 years by a very clever enemy to DISPERSE your INTELLECTUAL RESOURCES.

This article by Christina Smith, bless her, is a godsend, and LAKOFF'S Rockridge Institute and its superb work on framing is precisely the type of progressive, creative, scientific work, combined with added knowledge by serious thinkers here and elsewhere that will provide us both the knowledge, reasoning, and intuition for decisive communication and information strategies which can be put into effect immediately. And two- bit comments on every article under the Sun ain't that.

We do not have a laboratory or a research institute where some grand strategy is being fashioned which is going to provide progressives here and elsewhere the wherewithal to overcome neo-con brain washing. This IS that laboratory, the PEOPLE'S laboratory, as it were, where the grand strategy is being thrashed out by folks like us.
Enough pontificating; I am getting tired of it. I just want to repeat a universal truth that I wrote, but many may have not yet deeply thought about or assimilated. it carries a vast amount of underlying insight in summary that you have to unravel by thinking.

THE LIGHT GUIDES TO ITSELF THOSE WHO WILL
AND LEAVES TO STRAY WHOMEVER IT WILL

There is no threat, intimidation, fundamentalism, or whatever to be read in these words except reality: The Universe does not reveal itself by miracle to those who do not think deeply and persist in quests for knowledge, insight and wisdom. For the Universe is deep and vast. The enemy of compassionate humanism is thinking through issues of great importance shallowly without reaching some conclusion and modes of action that are required.

Continuing this thread:

I submit that most of our information, especially the type that engages the mind in powerful thought and not just emotion is by:

IMAGES
WORDS
SOUNDS

Each of these has its own framing issues, but to focus UNIDIMENSIONALLY on one only, namely speech acts (written or verbal), is like that cartoon where a body builder keeps on exercising following instructions he/she receives in the mail blindly, only to discover after several weeks that the right arm has developed to 18 inch biceps and everything else is scrawny. Visualise that and think how much funnier this would be with a picture of a nonplussed bozo looking in a mirror with the right arm flexed with a look of utter bewilderment on his face.

So I submit that all modes above have to be utilized, one or two sometimes more than others depending on the complexity of information and knowledge that has to be conveyed. I shall provide an example of one such message that can be designed by people with talents that I do not have (otherwise I would not be here begging for help in behalf of humankind - - time is running out folks as said in an a post earlier that Siouxrose so beautifully explained later - - Hey Siouxrose, perhaps people here need reminding of Pisces and Aquarius and this very grave period in between). I will set that up now momentarily.

Here are a three major discoveries on the structure of the Universe that I will cite in support of the fact that human alphabetic language is by itself simply incapable of either understanding or even discovering and conveying this structure without 3-dimensional pictures and visualizations (and sound to heighten the visceral effect)

1. I just read today in my local newspaper of a story that appears in the Washington Post on, perhaps, the most major discovery about the structure and activity of DNA molecules that will impact all the biological knowledge we have - - from understanding genetic disease and immunity to how information is processed by the genes into action). That happened because many, internationally coordinated groups of hundreds of scientists took to deeply studying a 1% segment of the 6-foot chains of DNA in each cell with laser focus for nearly four YEARS. Praised be the LIGHT for it guides to itself those who shall perceive. Here is the article; it speaks for itself without any commentary from me:

Intricate Toiling Found In Nooks of DNA Once Believed to Stand Idle
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer, Thursday, June 14, 2007; Page A01

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/13/AR2007061302466.html

2. Suppose I want to articulate the horrors of nuclear war. I submit that it is impossible to do so in a way that engages both the right and left lobes of the brain using "shock and awe" (pardon my use of neo-con language, but they don't own it) with IMAGES, WORDS, SOUND.
Everybody here is able to visualize it in a picture in the mind to a lesser or greater extent because of a PRIOR AUDIO-VISUAL stimulus that is imprinted in our brains. But take a peaceful person on desert island, who has never seen a flaming blast before, let alone a mushroom cloud, vaporization, or radiation damage and burns on humans and animal, but who has the facility of language and can analogise images and sounds from her experiences on the island. You can talk to her in the alphabetic language from here to eternity in every possible framing in alphabet language you want to devise, but she will never be able to grasp viscerally the vast destruction of a nuclear bomb as she would if she were to see slowly a movie that explains small fire/sound blasts visually and possible life destruction that these small blasts would do to the climax of the movie, namely the destructive awesomeness of a NUCLEAR bomb. In fact, I would wager that the peaceful person would die of shock if she were shown all at once the horror of a nuclear explosion.

(BTW, the project that we need to do, that I mentioned above I was going to talk about momentarily is related to this example. The audio-visual-literary materials may already be available from progressive sources)

3. Richard Feynman in one of his superb expositions for the generally educated lay person of what modern physics is all about says this about Newton's LAW of GRAVITY (for the life of me, I can't remember the title of the book, and I can't lay my hand on my copy as I write since I have it elsewhere. Therefore, I shall paraphrase in summary as his original argument runs to several pages):
--All the description in the last 300 years that I [Feynman] have seen on Newton's law has no intuition or insight in it comparable to other natural laws that we have discovered. They are mere verbalizations of the mathematical equation

G*m1*m2/r*2

The mathematical equation contains a profound mystery that Newton himself acknowledged, namely that the universal gravitational force seemingly works ISTANTANEOUSLY and at DISTANCE without any physical contact between subject and object. Thus when people ask how that can be, I have to simply say that that is how the Universe IS - - it is mathematically as such.

( Now please don't start bashing me on the head with Einstein's General Relativity, Unified Field Theories, String Theory, and everything else you may find in Brian Greene's bestselling book - - The Fabric of the Cosmos. Most of that is known, and was known at the time Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in physics, one of the most celebrated physicists of the 20th Century, originator of Quantum Electro Dynamics - - QED - - and one of my heroes, said what he said as quoted above. In fact, of the many String Theories of "quantised gravity" a.k.a "unified field theory", none of them would be comprehensible without prior visual exposure to THREE DIMENSIONIONAL SPACE. Remember Plato's parable of the people imprisoned in a cave seeing shadows on the wall?)

OK I believe I have made my point. On to the task at hand:

Step 1. NUCLEAR BLAST - - An of an American or Israeli missile with a nuclear war- head striking a target in Iran needs to be made with gripping sound-word-image visualization of the blast and its after affects. A lot of real-life Hiroshima-Nagasaki file photos need to weaved into this.

Step2. HUMANIZE THE VIVCTIMS IN THEIR TENS OF THOUSANDS. - - The small animated movie must present the human faces of victims - - example little children, innocent and angelic, holding their Mom's hand and looking directly at the viewer, before and after the horror that will be visited upon them if the reigning darkness is going its course. There is no alternative and there is no point grieving and posturing on websites after we have seen the fireworks show as we did, sanitized through green night vision by the complicit MSM in the Iraq war crime on 1 MILLION Iraqi DEAD and probably 2 MILLION WOUNDED, 3MILLION REFUGEES and counting.

Step 3. MAP; For God's sake, most American s don't even know where the country - - Iraq - - is on the map and which the occupation is successfully destroying, and where Iran is that the REIGNING DARKNESS wants to destroy. I wish CD site mangers had a bit of "framing' savvy and allow access to a map of Iraq and the surrounding countries where the refugees are and where the destruction (Baghdad) is the most horrific so that any compassionate human who visits this site can immediately contextualise where the hell the places and humans are that we are all crying about. The little movie needs to show maps, not only political but topographical with 3-dimensional global views from above(in animation, not satellite pictures though white clouds that convey nothing about what we would like to convey)

Step 4. Continue the movie with a possible reaction from Iran and how things can spiral out of control and reach mainland America with oil fields ablaze, toxic radioactive clouds of dust blanking out the Sun (which will happen if the first toxic clouds hit the Russia from Iran and kill tens of thousands of Russians die from radiation poisoning. Expect Russian missiles, if the people here are so confident that "rag head" Muslims don't have these weapons, even though they do (Pakistan). The Universe will have its reckoning. (Be afraid, be very afraid. This is no time for gabbing. )

That's it! A short 20 minute animation with verbal and written commentary is a decent start that can be done in a matter of days. I am BEGGING here to continue this thread for the sake of humankind. I have proposed a communication strategy above to prevent the massacre of millions of innocent people. This is CONCRETE, easily (for those progressives and their organizations who have the talent - - come on Michael Moore, where are you when humanity needs you - - please do this one and spread to the millions of good people in America so that they also join in active participation to prevent a preventable holocaust.

May the Light reach all here in time.

Aymon

Aymon (and iwarrior), Honorary members of the 11th ray coalition that works through the most abstract realms, also personifies the power of the wish; and when taken collectively, it is the lovely metaphor you gave it: compassionate humanism. I just went biking into the forest which is my ZEN way of asking intuitive help from guiding forces, and a thought came to me about our forum here. I HEAR your request for this animated cautionary film, but I worry that the persons who need the TRUTH may shun it; and the images are justifiably horrifying. Can we cast our collective cognitive net to the other side? The masters teach us to SEE the matter already done. To give thanks for what we have asked for, the key being that "2 or more" much place aside all antipathy and grievances and genuinely recognize the invisible ONENESS that indeed imbues the universe.
Here were my thoughts and I plan to submit them to commondreams as a proposal. I think that commondreams may wish to put together a compendium, based on topics, and cull the most striking letters from this forum on topics like:
A. Alternative technologies (fuel efficient, green) B. The balance between labor rights and coprorations (policies, proposals, protocals, etc.) C. Religion/spiritual beliefs and U.S. policy (the New Atheists article got over 100 responses) D. Political activists in the news and what they bring to the debate E. WTO, the World Bank and polices of trade imapcting the 3rd world F. Films, videos & documentaries that are making a difference G. Insider politics, latest decisions on part of congress, etc. AND MORE.
Since commondreams (correct me if I am wrong here) stems from Cornell University, I would presume there are more vacant rooms during summer. I would like to propose a COMMONDREAMERS seminar next summer (or before if possible), and there we can meet, and in a sense, bring this forum to life mirroring on a small scale, THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM. Some of us may wish to lead workshops or offer lectures; and commondreams could raise the $ from this event, to finance the book, which they in turn can sell.
In a meeting zone like that, synergistically, any with talent for film, animation, writing, etc can potentially devise a project. I remember when I was in college, there was a small slide show (and didn't Al Gore begin that way with his "Inconvenient Truth") that went campus to campus showing what DUM DUM bullets did when they pierced flesh. It was also shown to us that the same company that produced Wonder bread, it's slogan at the time was "Builds strong bodies, 12 ways..." also made these heinous weapons. Education. Yes. Shock and awe video, I'll sound like the Jack Nicholson character reminding that not everyone can HANDLE (that) truth.
I'd like to once again ask readers to consider lighting a candle at sundown on June 22, the solstice (DAY OF MAXIMUM LIGHT) and visualizing whatever peace looks like to you. Maybe you can see Palestinians dancing in the street, or Bush having an epiphany and really having a meeting with Jesus. Peace, as Dennis Kucinich so powerfully understands is not a strong concept in our culture. That's the weak muscle that needs rebuilding... our ability to SEE the world we wish to create. Meanwhile, Aymon, you are a profound thinker and powerful teacher, and I appreciate your sharing your understanding in this forum. I have felt compelled to do likewise, as have others who contribute everything from gifted expertise to heartfelt opinions. This is a rare venue for this type of LIVING democracy as you (Aymon) put it.
I hope the people who brainstormed this site and recently added the forum, might take my idea for a LIVING seminar and book seriously. Comments?

P.S. the NEXT article about corporate crime in my view represents a more gentle (glove over a fist) approach: show the products the military is making; and show what these products hypothetically do. PROVE they are not "smart bombs" and show--even if by diagram on crash dummies--what percentage of hits are civilians. SHOW the lifestyles of the makers of these weapons. (For the life of me, I cannot imagine the KIND of mind that uses its intellect to develop weaponry!) I remember a demonstration where each bullet case represented a bomb the US had stockpiled and we sat there as casing after casing was dropped into a metal garbage container to get a sense of how much TONNAGE is already out there. If there are no bombs (or public support for building them) they become a lot more difficult to drop on living beings. (I realize that we have a lot in inventory, but in principle, this idea could begin to stop the obscene arms trade; and isn't that one of the driving forces behind the mindset to MAKE, fix the case for and/or plan war?)

Siouxrose:

"I HEAR your request for this animated cautionary film, but I worry that the persons who need the TRUTH may shun it."

Those who fear the truth, especially the truth of their own barbarism and inhumanity, what truth will they speak to power?

Americans of European origin, in their masses have always run away from the truth of the barbarism and mass murder they have inflicted on coloured people over the centuries. 10 million original Indian people killed and brutalised over three centuries; 100 million African peoples enslaved, killed and brutalised for 200 years; millions of brown Mexicans killed, brutalised, and driven out of their homes; 3 million Vietnamese bombed, napalmed, and brutalised over 15 years.

This is all history, yet I remember that when the more or less sanitised TV series "Roots" was being broadcast, there were wails from large numbers of "genteel" Euro-Americans that the scenes of whipping and slave ships were too graphic and "uncivilised".

Here the truth is about to happen, a holocaust of coloured peoples of vast magnitude and you are worried about some folks who like to see their own barbarism at a distance, sanitised by their MSM?

The Light protects the the psyches of those who face the truth without fear and hasten into the ranks of the righteous like Rachel Corrie. Look up, there she is in the skys, a glittering star.

Do not follow the politician, the pundit who has no heart but who talks incessantly, deluded that he is talkinng REAL POLITIK, and giving people what they want to hear and see.

The truth is the REAL POLITIK, and it comes from the Light.

The Light is the source of all, and at the court of Osiris, when an individual's or a people's souls are weighed against the feather of Ma'at, there shall be no court of appeal thereafter with the Light.

"I am the beginning and the end of all, the Light of all

From age to age, when great evil arises triumphant, I descend in my Myself(Avatar)

To strike down evil and establish goodness"
(Bhagavad Gita)

"And seeing the multitudes, he [Jesus- Iusa] went up into a mountain ...
And he opened his mouth and TAUGHT them saying,

Blesed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled

Blessed are the mercicul: for they shall receive mercy

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God."

(King James Bible; Mathew, "Sermon on the mount", Ch.5)

Rah- Ma'at- Ta'at

Aymon

The article was about rhetoric and politics. Metaphysics, religion and personal revelations may be of interest to some, but that discussion is off topic.

Does anyone here have any thoughts about the rhetorical strategies put forward by Smith and Rockridge? (My thoughts are posted above.)

Aymon, Paul B. and Siouxrose have the more esoteric elements of the problem outlined here, so I'm just offering some more rudimentary nuts and bolts of the 'framing' situation:

"CNN and NPr are actually worse than FOX News for precisely this reason."

Ike, that's absolutely right. Although I watch more of CNN than listen to NPR, I have noticed in both a definite tendency frame their questions in an approved Republican way while pretending impartiality, especially Wolf Blitzkrieg and John King.

CNN, of course, is owned by media conglomerate Time Warner, who gets massive tax breaks from the GOP; NPR is run by neocon appointees of Bush. It is any wonder they toe the line?

Incidentally, the most famous example of this 'framing' goes back to the presidential debates in 1988, when CNN's Bernie Shaw, carrying Kool-Aid for the GOP, asked Michael Dukakis his 'hypothetical' death penalty question about Kitty Dukakis being raped and murdered. It was a 'got ya' of the lowest rank.

However, nowhere else in the debate did Shaw nor the other questioners ask such a 'got ya' question of Poppy Bush. For example, how about asking Bush Senior the 'hypothetical' situation of an innocent man being put to death by the state? Wouldn't that be murder? How could you support the death penalty knowing that human institutions make mistakes and consequently will eventually send an innocent person to death? In fact, how do you defend the numerous executions in the South where a black defendant was killed on only the most tenuous evidence of guilt or a forced confession? But Bernie couldn't be bothered to ask those kind of questions.

Dukakis should have answered that he was so enraged that he chased the hypothetical killer, who happened to be black, out the window and down the street, losing sight of him for a second at one corner, but recognizing him again because he was wearing a blue running suit with a white stripe. Finally catching up to the murdering rapist, he jumped on him from behind and beat him to death with a baseball bat in a rage. Only when the lifeless bloody body was turned over did he realize that he had not killed his wife's attacker but CNN's Bernie Shaw, out for an evening jog.

I would have liked to have seen the expression on Bernie's face if Dukakis had given that answer.

Sin Agua is right, many of the Dems are very comfortable with Wolf's framing since they are 'Republican Lite' DLC Dems, such as Hillary, who collect money from the same sources as the GOP. They don't want to dismantle the corporate state that peddles war and nonsense and dumbs down America.

Excellent quotes, Ezeflyer and Aymon. I would add these:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
-- H. L. Mencken

"Americans are too broadly underinformed to digest nuggets of information that seem to contradict what they know of the world ... Instead, news channels prefer to feed Americans a constant stream of simplified information, all of which fits what they already know. That way they don't have to devote more air time or newsprint space to explanations or further investigations... Politicians and the media have conspired to infantilize, to dumb down, the American public. At heart, politicians don't believe that Americans can handle complex truths, and the news media, especially television news, basically agrees."
-- Tom Fenton, former CBS News foreign correspondent.

"Media manipulation in the U.S. today is more efficient than it was in Nazi Germany, because here we have the pretense that we are getting all the information we want. That misconception prevents people from even looking for the truth."
-- Mark Crispin Miller

"The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."
-- Alex Carey

"I don't believe anybody. Even the most knowledgeable person on any subject has only a small fraction of the big picture. Whatever anyone says, you add it or subtract it from the big picture. Multiplication and division are out. As soon as you start multiplying and dividing the big picture by individual pieces that happen to fit together, you end up with a sum that's far from a summation."
-- Kurt Vonnegut writing as Kilgore Trout.

"Every government is run by liars, and nothing they say should be believed."
-- I.F. Stone

"To provide its happy people with perpetual fun is now the deepest purpose of Western civilization."
-- Jeremy Seabrook, Third World Network.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/index.html

To Aymon and Paul B.:

"We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth."
-- Pablo Picasso)

"Art is a lie used to expose the truth; political speech is a lie used to conceal the truth."
-- Max Publico

As the title of Neil Postman's great book says, we are "Amusing Ourselves to Death." Unfortunately, we have a media that has a vested interest in our euthanasia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death