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Obama’s Missing Moral Narrative
Barack Obama may be one of the best communicators of this generation, but he is not living up to his own talents. In a year of disasters, communication failure doubles the disasters.
If, as he says, the monster spill was his highest priority from Day 1, he needed to communicate that from Day 1 - or at least Day 3 or 4. It took five weeks for him to tell the nation what he and his administration were doing. The result was visible in the press conference today. He was on the defensive. He needed to be on the offensive - from early on. The choice is not doing or communicating. It is doing and communicating.
His narrative: This is a tough, unprecedented situation, but I'm in charge, and I've been very busy, in the Situation Room where I belong, not on tv. I'm fully competent. I'm a good policy wonk - ask me any question about details. I'm honest. I admit my few policy mistakes. I think about the details day and night. Don't think I'm oblivious.
It's defensive, trying to overcome criticism that should never have been allowed to accumulate. But worse, it's weak when it needs to be strong.
The president did do the required minimum. He placed a moratorium on offshore drilling and cancelled oil leases in the Gulf and off Virginia. He appointed a commission to make safety recommendations. And he is reorganizing the Mining Management Service. All to the good, but ...
Crises are opportunities. He has consistently missed them. Today was a grand opportunity to pull together the threads - BP and the spill, Massey and the mine disaster, Wall Street and the economic disaster, Anthem BlueCross and health care, the Arizona Immigration Law, Don't Ask, Don't Tell - even Afghanistan. The press threw him fastballs straight down the middle, and he hit dribblers every time.
It's not that he said nothing to tie them together. But there was no home run, no unifying narrative, no patriotic call to the nation on the full gamut of issues. Instead, there were only hints, suggestions, possible implications, notes of concern - as if he had been intimidated by the right-wing message machine.
And yet, Obama of all political leaders, could have done it, because he did before in his campaign.
The central idea is Empathy. Democracy is based on empathy, on people caring about one another and acting to the very best of their ability on that care, for their families, their communities, their nation, and the world. Government must also care and act on that care. Government's job is to protect and empower its citizens.
That idea is what draws together all the threads. The bottom line for corporations (whether BP, Massey, Anthem or Goldman Sachs) is money, not empathy. The bottom line for those who hate (whether homophobes, the Arizona Legislature, or al Qaeda) is domination and oppression, not empathy.
Empathy, and acting on it effectively, is the main business of government. And Obama knows it in his heart.
Yet the right-wing has intimidated Obama into dropping not just the word "empathy," but the idea. Empathy is a positive deep connection with other people in general and with all living things, the ability to see and feel as they do. The right-wing, which shows little empathy, has confused empathy with a bleeding-heart sympathy for individuals, which they see as a weakness. And though Obama has repeatedly made the distinction clear, he has allowed the right wing to intimidate him into abandoning "the most important thing my mother taught me."
At the very end of the press' questions, there was a hint of the campaign Obama.
...I think everybody understands that when we are fouling the Earth like this, it has concrete implications not just for this generation, but for future generations.
I grew up in Hawaii where the ocean is sacred. And when you see birds flying around with oil all over their feathers and turtles dying, that doesn't just speak to the immediate economic consequences of this; this speaks to how are we caring for this incredible bounty that we have.
And so sometimes when I hear folks down in Louisiana expressing frustrations, I may not always think that they're comments are fair; on the other hand, I probably think to myself, these are folks who grew up fishing in these wetlands and seeing this as an integral part of who they are -- and to see that messed up in this fashion would be infuriating.
So the thing that the American people need to understand is that not a day goes by where the federal government is not constantly thinking about how do we make sure that we minimize the damage on this, we close this thing down, we review what happened to make sure that it does not happen again. And in that sense, there are analogies to what's been happening in terms of in the financial markets and some of these other areas where big crises happen -- it forces us to do some soul searching. And I think that's important for all of us to do.
Here, at the very end, he allows the empathy and the moral vision to come out. Future generations, the sacredness of nature over the immediate economic consequences, caring for this incredible bounty that we have, identifying with folks who see fishing as part of who they are, analogies to what's been happening in the financial markets, soul searching.
That should have - and could have - been the central narrative drawing all the threads together. The narrative about the daily competence and effort should have been in service of the central narrative of his administration. It should be, and can be, the central narrative of American democracy.
But to make it central and powerful would be confrontational. It would bring him head-to-head with right-wing ideology - empathy-free, self-interest maximizing, with disdain or even hatred for those seen as lesser beings. It is self-reinforcing: a value-system that above all promotes that value-system itself. That is why right-wing Republicans always vote no to his proposals. Because to vote yes would strengthen an empathy-based moral system and weaken their own.
Because right-wing ideology takes precedence over empathy, there will be little or any real bipartisanship with those on the hard-core right. The right is provoking confrontation. It cannot be avoided. The president should be confronting the right-wing on all issues - not issue-by-issue as a policy wonk, but with the master moral narrative that makes sense of our country's values.
Here's what that would mean. The following "shoulds" are not mine. They follow naturally from President Obama's own values as he articulated them is his 2008 campaign, and as they leaked out, largely unnoticed, during his press conference.
The president recognizes that financial reform requires dealing with systemic risk, which means not mere regulation, but restructuring the financial system to minimize, and if possible eliminate, systemic risk. Applying the analogy to oil spills, it would mean no more deep-water drilling because major systemic risks ("worst case scenarios") cannot be eliminated when you drill starting a mile down where no human being can go and drilling three miles deeper.
Like other large corporations, BP uses cost-benefit analysis to maximize profits. It is no surprise that, to save money, BP chose inferior materials in Deepwater Horizon, materials whose defects may well have caused the explosion. The use of cost-benefit analysis for a corporation's benefit (and not the public's) is a dangerous practice in many industries. Cost-benefit analysis itself, used this way, should be considered as an important component of systemic risk by the President's commission on safety.
The president should support the Cantwell-Collins CLEAR ACT, which will actually cut gasoline consumption radically by 2050 and carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, while stimulating the economy by providing significant financial dividends to all adult citizens, eliminating government imposition on business, and making those who profit from selling polluting fuel pay to clean it up and develop alternative energy. CLEAR is far superior to cap-and-trade alternatives.
The president should generalize from oil spills to coal mining, banning the blowing up of mountain tops and the fouling of streams, and imposing serious safety restrictions on all mining.
The president should review the covert operations imposed by the military and cancel those that are inconsistent with American values.
The president should order military leaders under his command to support the elimination of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
The president should ask the First Lady to sponsor a major government program to do research on and support empathetic parenting, along the lines of his 2008 Father's Day speech.
And much more. A great deal follows from a unified moral stance.
Empathy and the discipline to act effectively on it, when seen as the basis of democracy and American values, can be powerful. It can unify the major policies of the administration, and unify people of good will - and that is a majority of our citizens. But only if the president communicates empathy effectively, and acts on it consistently.
Empathy Now!
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207 Comments so far
Show AllAt a time like this a leader capable of communicating empathy would have a great advantage but unfortunately for Obama he does not have such a temperment. He is dominated by thinking and is condemned to appear indifferent even if he isn't. This is not something you can turn on or off at will. It just is.
Rather difficult to communicate a "moral narrative" or a "unified moral stance" when one engages primarily in cold political calculation and accommodation with the current corrupt and brutal power structures.
Only difficult if you're incapable of seeing the big picture. I don't believe this President is incapable, but if he's unable to break through his preoccupation with political calculations, he might as well be.
Good grief.
What an absolutely ridiculous and impotent article. Does Lakoff really believe this stuff? Articles like this liberal goo piece do a great disservice to understanding what is going on and what is needed to deal with the situation.
You can pewl all day about morality and empathy and blah, blah, blah.
It's about POWER George. When are you going to wake up to this fact? Bleating on and on about empathy to the sharks is only going to maintain your role as shark bait.
Liberals like Lakoff don't like hearing or even pondering the harsh truth of the matter.
Sorry to burst bubbles of the people who think they are fighting the good fight and rationally motivated compared to the repukes, but facts are facts. Results matter. Obama is the man he claimed to be no matter what liberals pretended him to be in order to stomach voting for him. The mafia still runs the same even when the boss is a nicer guy who more eloquently justifies the crimes he commits. Maybe liberal ideology similarly isn't so rational, but based on maintaining the current power structure for people who want social protections? Maybe people who go to the ivy league don't know shit compared to those struggling to survive?
The Democratic Party is a big tent for the wealthy which is why they can't possibly represent workers without cognitive dissonance setting in. We need a worker's party for these very rational reasons. All you self-proclaimed pragmatists can keep going on about how you martyr yourselves and bleed your hearts to death but real people are dying everyday thanks to this political system you so voraciously defend.
Indeed. Great work mcoyote. A "moral narrative" from someone bombing children, kidnapping, torturing, etc..? Talk about delusional.
You can find stories of very nice, kind, empathetic slaveowners in the antebellum south who had very fine "moral narratives." Put that in your crack pipe George...
And in the 1940s, Nazis shoved Jews into ovens and gassed them in specially designed showers .... returning home after work, they sat down to a lovely dinner, read a bedtime story to their children. Hitler was quite popular. They loved him! Wet kissy, kissy for Adolf! Kissy kissy for our Obama!
Why is George Lakoff (and so many others) so blatantly obsequious to power? Do they care nothing about the innocent victims? Answer: studies show that the majority of people are deferential to power, authority, popularity. Lakoff is just one of millions. It's still hard to stomach, even though I know, and surely he does as well, that it's "human nature."
"Obama is the man he claimed to be no matter what liberals pretended him to be..."
No doubt, there was denial and wishful thinking among liberals and progressives in the last election, but that was fostered, aided, and abetted by Obama's out-and-out lies (see the other CD article today with Mao in the title). The two go together.
I think Lakoff is right about one thing: the right-wing hate speech media machine has defined the terms of the discussion for decades, sticking us in their frames. I don't mind him sounding like a broken record on the need to change the frames, but he needs to do way better than this. He needs to understand that NOBODY in politics is working from the "nurturing parent" model.
Well-stated, and quite right, mcoyote!
But: "You can pewl all day..."
What is "pewl"? Did you mean "mewl"?
Don't make me get all Sioux Rose on your ass! ;)
My party won while your party lost. Upset? BOO HOO HOO !! NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH !! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!! We liberals will kick you rightwingg asses.
You sure said it better than I could.
A-f**kg-men!
"And yet, Obama of all political leaders, could have done it, because he did before in his campaign."
As a candidate, Obama talked, glowing promises, lies, glossing over his defects, wonderful campaign....A+
As a leader you have to "lead", produce, show you know what you are doing, demonstrate competence....F-
This article is just silly.
Good point on the F- part. I saw one of your comments where you mentioned that your state of TX is working on blocking mandatory care. In a few states, I hear that it has already been done. In MO, we will get to vote on August 2 as to whether the state shall deny the federal government the power to penalize citizens for refusing to purchase private health care insurance. This should expose Barry as a corporatist sympathizer.
I think ole Barry and the democrats are exposed for exactly what they are and who they work for at this point.
To me the only question is how much more damage can they do?
Mr. Lakoff, I don't know what planet you're on, but you need to come down here to Earth and stop dreaming. Obama is a pathological liar, a fraud. Don't you get it? He doesn't care about you. He doesn't care about us. He doesn't care about the turtles and the pelicans or people's livelihoods or people's lives. He uses pretty language and portrays himself as the great and wise empathizer and sympathizer, but it's an act. That's all. His actions, and more important, his inactions, speak louder than his hollowed out rhetoric.
That was my first thought. Lakoff is flogging his "strict parent/nurturing parent" metaphor from the false premise that Obama is the latter. Obama SOUNDED like the latter during the campaign, but every single action since he's taken office reveals the wolf in sheep's clothing. That doesn't negate Lakoff's metaphor (and I happen to agree with his ideas about framing, etc.), but it does make this article rather meaningless to those of us who see Obama for the corporate shill he is. Wake up, George!
Right on!
George Lakoff is either utterly guileless or he's got a "special" place in his heart for Obama. Otherwise, why would he insist that Obama - a man, we must remember, who is ordering the killings of innocent people (many of them children!), and all for empire - just needs to learn how to manage the spin a bit better. weird.
George Lakoff gushes that the "Cantwell-Collins CLEAR ACT ... will actually cut gasoline consumption radically by 2050. How radical this cut will be Lakoff fails to say. As Steven Hill points out in his book Europe's Promise:
""When President Obama announced in May 2009 new nationwide rules for mileage standards, he set a goal that the U.S. motor vehicle fleet should reach an average of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. But Europe and Japan already have long surpassed this standard and even China has pledged to reach it by around 2010. The fuel standard of European vehicles is set to rise to fifty miles per gallon by 2012, with Japan already averaging forty-five miles per gallon."
What Lakoff should be doing, if he had an ounce of honesty in his body, would be, instead of praising members of Congress for attempting to raise fuel standards by some ambiguous level an amazing forty years down the road, should instead be condemning Congress for allowing the auto manufacturers in the United States to lag so far behind in terms of fuel efficiency from almost every other advanced country in the world. If Lakoff were truly honest he would be comparing America's paltry fuel efficiency of their automobiles with those of Europe and Japan. But Lakoff's silence on that issue is truly deafening.
And vastly improved fuel consumption for Autos (which is of course all that matters!
"Autos Uber Alles" should be the US slogan) is only the beginning of European and Japanese improvements on conserving oil. Not only does Japan have more fuel efficient cars they have LESS of them - according to Lester Brown's "Plan B4.0" the
Japanese have cut their cars by about 3/8ths in the past 10 years.
Instead they have bullet trains running every 20 minutes without a single accident
to go along with a whole interconnected public transit network.
CARS ARE NOT THE ANSWER!
When will US alleged Environmentalists and liberals see that?
When gas prices hit $4 per gallon, public transit ridership jumped 17% in just one
year! Yet at the very same time, transit systems all over the country actually
CUT service!
Over 150 transit systems are being cut right now all over the country instead
of increasing their service, their connections, their usefulness in terms of either parking or shuttles.
There is a proposal the "Public Transportation Preservation Act" to provide $2 Billion in emergency relief for operating funds for public transit.
This is a drop in the bucket of course compared to the $159 Billion for Iraq/AfPak
Wars or the $27 Billion spent subsidizing airports or the $100 Billion subsidizing
cars.
A coworker of mine just returned from a trip to his parents homeland of Taiwan
roughly 2 times the length of New Jersey which has bullet trains travelling
250 miles almost every 20 minutes!
Until we increase the gas tax, tax parking lots and actually operate public transit
instead of just building rails and stations with no service, we will not solve
this problem.
VERY good commentary! We need more of these excellent examples of success! And lots of earnest prayers from the bottom of our hearts that the "average" American will awaken to combat the greed and arrogance that are so endemic in this country now.
I don't know why we keep on being served George Lakoff's utterly politically naive and effusive choir-boy prose.
The man is an ivory-tower university professor with no sense of the workings of the real world.
Obomber is not just missing a moral narrative; he has no moral imperative, period.
"The man is an ivory-tower university professor with no sense of the workings of the real world."
I think you've hit the nail on the head, here. Many people have given up on Lakoff, especially since the bullhorn incident during student protests a year ago or so.
For what it's worth, I think his academic work, best explicated in his book with Mark Johnson, "Philosophy in the Flesh," is deeply profound and important work. Few people seem to know about it, but I think it will be his legacy, not these weak editorials.
There is one word I wish I saw more often in pieces like this one...corruption.
It's often used to describe the ruling class in other countries...never this one. A little intellectual honesty would help.
Reading this article makes me almost feel like scratching Lakoff like a cat ! Obama has his "empathy" but not for Main Street but for the corporate/religious/military elites and they are the only ones getting "democracy". Looking back at Lakoff's earlier books, I should have realized from the Epilogue of "Moral Politics" that he was a fixed Democratic Party apologist all along and that stain shows. I have yet to read an article by him or most party apologists highlighting Obama trashing the 1960s and 70s while simultaneously lionizing Ronnie Raygun. This is also the same Obama who proudly announced that he agreed with Dubya most of the time even as Senator but never mind that we have an electorate devoid of any real empathy unlike people in other nations so maybe we deserve such misleaders.
"The president should ask the First Lady to sponsor a major government program to do research on and support empathetic parenting, along the lines of his 2008 Father's Day speech."
There isn't much research to be done. All Barry had to do was repeal the disastrous economic and foreign policies that lead to the current dysfunctionality in the first place. Unfortunately, for Barry it is too much to repeal policies rigged for big businesses at the expense of small businesses. As for empathetic parenting, my parents may have been conservative and often times humiliating because I did not always agree with their conservative values but they were far more empathetic than the misleadership in Washington that plays kissyface with Wall $treet and persecutes Main Street and throws young people into wars. This is another reason I have grown to find party labels and even ideological labels unworthy of trust on top of seeing in person how different conservatives, liberals, and other ideologues in other countries differ from the US versions.
Nice one.
Indeed.
Chelsea
Lakoff notes:
"The president did do the required minimum. He placed a moratorium on offshore drilling and cancelled oil leases in the Gulf and off Virginia. He appointed a commission to make safety recommendations. And he is reorganizing the Mining Management Service. All to the good, but ..."
But, Bullshit!
In six months when the moratorium is up, it will be back to business as normal for Obama and his handlers in the oil industry. Carte Blanche for oil, coal, and nuclear.
Take a look at the facts:
Obama's EPA authorized Chemical dispersants which environmental organizations tell us is one molecule away from anti freeze and this is what Obama calls a ‘clean up.’ Essentially the industry uses this type of response to create what they refer to as a “Visual Management Corridor.” By submerging the oil into the ocean, it then becomes out of sight and mind, but nevertheless destroys a fragile eco-system for generations.
This is just another eco la la, Democratic apologetic we have become accustomed for the Obama Administration. And like another CD article currently, Obama is a Master at talking LEFT while moving RIGHT.
God, I hate this kind of stuff. It's about "narrative", eh? Get the right narrative and you can go far, whether "leading" the country or selling soap.
Lakoff's idealization of the Obama campaign tells you all you need to know about the shallowness of the rest of the article.
As if the narrative were the core, the real. The real has to come first and inspire the narrative. Lakoff embodies the apparently incurable "liberal" illness of being unable to distinguish the gritty reality under a cool sales job. (The gritty reality, of course, might shake the liberal's comfy position in the culture of hypocrisy, so the syndrome may be understandable, if far from admirable.)
While your comments regarding this article have some merit, I do not think there is an "incurable liberal illness" of any kind, and stating that there is such reinforces thirty years of right-wing hate speech against liberalism and ignores its great contibutions (i.e., we would have no liberty without liberalism). In other words, calling liberalism (or progressivism) a disease is part of the problem, and makes you sound like Glenn Beck.
No it doesn't Fast Eddie.
It actually hits the nail on the head. Most folks don't even know what "liberalism" is and when it's pointed out as something altogether different than the portrayals of the Beck's and the liberals themselves, folks get all reactionary on the facts of the matter.
Liberalism, and now progressivism, is nothing more than third way capitalist politics that deftly prop the status quo.
Liberalism is first and foremost a set of principles on economics. All the other aspects which we could call "identity politics" are rather unimportant in comparison yet those are the aspects highlighted by both the far-right and the squishy liberals. This is done purposefully so as to avoid the reality that on positions of economics and militarism the liberals and the conservatives are in complete agreement on core issues even if they split mildly on execution and demeanor.
Modern liberalism is occupying the space where the Left should be, confusing and misleading people, steering people away from accurate perceptions and clouding their minds, preventing them from asking the right questions because they think they already have the answers. That is dead wood that needs clearing. If we are willing to kick over the beehive of modern liberalism you will see the true face and the true nature of the ruling class war against the people with crystal clarity. As it is, we can't even see the enemy now. We are looking out the tent flap watching for the approach of those dreaded right wingers, and the enemy is behind us right in our own tent.
Thank you! Well said.
What an EXCELLENT explanation , mcoyote!! THank you.
indeed, liberalism is like a false signal standing for "culture" wars but in fact is just the "left side" of the SAME organ of what is really a "conservative economics" capitalist dogma . liberalism is the PRETEND "alternative" to conservatism .
i personally often encounter this very pretense among americans that - at first appearance , "talk the talk" even wrap themselves in "liberal" garb and appearance and habits...
but when push comes to shove - reveal that they are JUST as capitalist RIGHT and American Imperialistic as any "easily identified" Right wingers.
they are "liberal" in pretenses of "social tolerance" as they like to wrap themselves with -- but would defend to the core the so-called "business-friendly" AND Anti-labor capitalism of the USA.
in other words - they are "liberals" only in so far as "personal freedom" goes to distinguish themselves and appear as ...well......"liberal"...from "social conservatives" ...but in reality are just as capitalists , through and through as the Libertarians and Conservatives.
I personally know people like that. complete with earings, "i'm a 21st century flower-child" patina...but when pushed...are JUST AS RABIDLY capitalist and imperialistic as any Buttoned-up conservative or republican Far right winger.
The corporate media always does its best to confuse the issue by defining "liberal" broadly to include "social liberals" (liberal on cultural issues and supportive of identity politics) and "economic liberals." The term "economic liberal" is itself problematic because a "liberal economic system" is traditionally considered as laissez faire, with virtually unregulated capitalism (as in "neoliberal"), though the term is often used in the US to mean a left-leaning capitalist, e.g., a capitalist who supports governmental regulation, a safety net, and moderate redistribution of income. But keeping the terms confusing and inappropriately bundled has always helped to bamboozle, divide, and conquer the proles, as they are herded into separate pens that they become convinced provide cornerstones for their identities.
I believe the corporate media intentionally adds further confusion by focusing on a distinction between small government and big government. Once a society has developed a dense population and a developed industrialized economy, people are going to be interconnected in innumerable ways, completely dependent on each other, and subject to the repercussions of each others' actions, regardless of the size of government. The difference is in what interests the rules of the nation/society protect and further, e.g., economic elites, political elites, non-elites, some subgroup of elites or non-elites, or the entire population of the nation or of the world. Conservatives generally promote rules that only benefit economic elites while leftists promote rules that generally benefit non-elites or that benefit the whole of society (totalitarian leftists may claim that rules that benefit political elites may be necessary for the benefit of the society) or the whole of humanity or even all of life. That gives rise to a danger for leftists in falling prey to sophisticated demagogues who may claim to advocate rules designed for the benefit of all but who actually intend to use that broad and vague purported goal as cover while they surreptitiously and deviously implement rules that only benefit elites.
You've said it all.
Well done, mcoyote! I concede all your points. My rebuttal to the initial comment was sloppily constructed, and quite vulnerable to your critique, so I thank you and stand corrected.
I'm actually reading "The Science of Liberty," by Timothy Ferris, and am early in his chapter on the Enlightenment. His defense of liberty (first) and liberalism (second) does indeed identify liberal economics as a core principle of liberalism, and raised a warning flag with me that your comments above have helped gird me as I finish the book.
I think my initial comment was resonating more with Ferris's description of the antiauthoritarian nature of many early scientists, particularly Locke and Newton. This, of course, goes back to the days when liberty meant things like overthrowing the monarchic states of the time in favor of liberal and secular democracies. Tolerance was a key component in the development of liberty and essential to the development of modern science. When the commentor who provoked my response described liberalism as incurably ill, it seemed intolerant.
Liberalism's economic "free market" idealism is repugnant to me, and if we take liberalism to be "first and foremost a set of economic principles," as you say, then there's not much useful left of liberalism. On the other hand, liberalism historically produced precepts such as common law (or equal protection under the law), secularism, and tolerance. Let's not throw those babies out with the bathwater.
Again, thanks for your post. Peace.
mcoyote -- One of the best comments I've seen on CD, clarifying what generally floats around unsaid and unacknowledged. It ought to be inscribed on the walls of everyone who aspires to systemic change.
Fast Eddie -- My usual "drive-by" comment approach can sometimes lead to misinterpretation. I'm not denigrating the "liberal" accomplishments against unitary/monarchic rule, for civil rights legislation, etc. But the Lakoff article seems to me to exemplify (almost embody) the major and central problem delineated by mcoyote, which is the *primary* problem not only blocking the establishment of any kind of leftist movement or program, but taking the earth down the tubes toward oblivion because of the refusal to acknowledge the reality behind the narrative smokescreen. Until we understand how central this problem is, we'll just chatter away impotently.
(As I don't have a television, I've never seen Glenn Beck. But from what I've read, he seems like the "compleat fool".)
I hope there are no hard feelings. I've only seen Beck on Jon Stewart's show--he's certifiably insane.
I agree that Lakoff's a bit of a puzzle. As I said elsewhere, his book "Philosophy in the Flesh" (with Mark Johnson) is one of the more interesting, challenging, and provocative works I've read in some time (and that's from my point of view as a biologist and monist/deep ecologist). Perhaps, politically, he is so wedded to his previous, popular books that he hasn't had the mind-space to test his "narratives" against reality, or he's trying to fit reality into narrative clothes that are several sizes too small. Honestly, I still think many of his ideas are apt, and that he can do better than this essay (in particular). But maybe I'm wrong--maybe he's a shill for the elite.
Well, I'm off to chatter impotently elsewhere! Peace!
FastEddie says, "I hope there are no hard feelings." Of course not.
I don't know Lakoff well at all. People all over the place were recommending that "Elephant" book (I forget the title at the moment), so I tried it and couldn't get through it. It seemed sadly superficial to me, although maybe of some use in political campaigns. (Possibly the book would have improved had I stuck with it.)
As to his other works, I'll take your word for it because you are a poster I respect. I would read "Philosophy in the Flesh", but my "to read" list is about 100 pages long already!
Thank goodness for commenters like this and most others on Common Dreams ! The only way to retain sanity is to come here to read.
So well stated, mcoyote. It used to be that liberals represented things like gradual change and ameliorating some of the harshest aspects of the capitalist system. Liberals could be frustrating in their cluelessness and sense of owning righteousness, but they were not actively trying to do harm. These days the "liberals" like Pelosi and Obama and Clinton are stealth privateers, (privatizing everything) and aggressive imperialists dedicated to enriching military profiteers and those who are are already super-wealthy. They are more skillful at this agenda than the Republicans at this point, because as mcoyote states, many of us are are "looking out the tent flap watching for the approach of those dreaded right wingers, and the enemy is behind us right in our own tent."
Liberals may be culturally liberal, allowing gay people to serve openly in the imperial army for instance. But then again they believe in indefinite detention without charges and in putting out hits on anyone they can call a terrorist. No trial, no evidence required. They would rather see the oceans die than challenge the privilege and power of corporate oil. They are not about empathy.
Forget about the narrative of empathy. What kind of flimsy grad school analysis is that, where everything is a "narrative" with little or no underlying reality? No narrative can clean up the Gulf or raise the dead killed in our optional invasions.
Joe
This is the worst article I have read in a long time. It does not remotely match the title. I can only understand it as government/Obama propaganda and misinformation/damage control. It is horrible.
Yeah, it was rather ridiculous. I could just imagine the corporate oligarchs laughing themselves silly reading it.
But this: "The president should support the Cantwell-Collins CLEAR ACT, which will actually cut gasoline consumption radically by 2050 and carbon emissions by 80% by 2050...." WTF? 2050?! Is he kidding or what? The human race is seriously f**ed if we dont accomplish this by 2020.
The idea that Obama is going to make all these connections and start a moral crusade against the excesses of unregulated capitalism...well, I guess I have had my laugh for the day.
What empathy? Any bozo can smile and pretend empathy but Obama isn't even remotely close to being one with empathy. Check out Obama's latest moves to set up a "debt commission" to wipe out Social Security.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/146970?page=entire
One of the members is the CEO of a big defense contracting firm and he makes sure that Congress spends for him every year. A leader who allows a war spending pushover to gut care for the elderly has no chance at being empathetic. Sorry Lakoff but you're not keeping up !
IMPEACH OBAMA !!
Where can I get the t-shirt and buttons?
rvrwalker
This would seem to be appropriate considering the war crimes that Obama, like Bush, has committed against the people of the Middle East.
http://www.cafepress.com/+impeach_obama_bumper_sticker,278744717
University of Illinois professor of law, Francis Boyle, has sent a complaint to the International Criminal Court (the Hague) - which they have since acknowledged - against Bush and his cohorts. He is now working on one against Barack Obama.
rvrwalker
Excellent news!
What Lakoff fails to understand is that a stinkweed by any other name smells just as bad.
Labeling is indeed a powerful sales technique and works quite well until it bumps up against too much reality. After that it works only as a defense mechanism against reality. Eventually it doesn't work at all.
Let us hope we have gotten to that last stage ......
It's hard to have a "moral narrative" when you have no moral to narrate .....
-"I grew up in Hawaii where the ocean is sacred. And when you see birds flying around with oil all over their feathers and turtles dying..."
I'm not crying!...there's something in my eye!!!
Yes your dear leader sounds very sincere, as sincere as when he said he wanted to do something for Americans who were suffering under your non-healthcare system...before he strengthened that same system that looks for every reason to not treat patients...
...as sincere as he was when he was when he yelled at the bank CEOs...who gambled and lost, before he bailed them out with your money, and then proceeded to leave them unregulated...
...and now after giving exemptions to oil companies to waive environmental laws and okaying new drilling permits that were given in areas that were protected for decades before he came along, Obama is very, very cross at BP, or at least at the live feed of the leak that is available 24/7 for everyone to see.
...But I'm sure Obama loves turtles! Who wrote that speech? heckov'a job!!
I guess Obama is afraid this drip, drip, drip coverage of the leak will be his version of the Iranian hostage crisis? Didn't do Carter much good, did it?
But yeah, Mr Lakoff, keep looking for that "moral narrative". When you find it, will it cure the sick? Will it end corporate corruption in government? Will it reverse the damage to the environment?
Obama is paid well to be who he is.
His masters speak with the same voice as GW's did. The problem is that the only difference between him and GW is that he is capable of giving the finger and velvet fist in complete sentences to the US public.
As long as we deny our vets and the jobless and our senior citizens and our mothers with children and serve the greed of our oligarchic MIC by spending what's left in the treasury on illegal wars fought with tactics that exemplify the barbarity of our society, we are complicit in his actions.
Wake up!
David Michael Green had it right ... Obama is a careerist. He is an errand boy for the Business Round Table. Isn't this obvious. Just look at his debt commission ...
Lakoff and all Obama's other apologists needs to wake up to this fact. Lakoff only losses his own moral narrative when he blinds himself to the cold hard facts ...