The most important thing I learned in law school can be summed up with the adage “he who frames the issue wins the debate.” The most consequential move a lawyer–or any debater–can make is to define what the argument is all about. (Our idiot-in-chief clearly does recognize that, at least at some subconscious level, since his response to any and all accusations is always to insist that the real issue is whether the accuser is “fake.”)
What reminded me of that old law school conclusion was a recent article in the New York Times, citing a communications professor from Texas A&M, one Jennifer Mercieca. According to the article, her recent book addresses that issue– what she calls “frame warfare.” Mercieca argues that the power to name things is the power to define reality, and she identifies that tactic as Trump’s most potent. As she points out, it’s a tactic that goes hand in hand with his constant assertions that fly in the face of facts and evidence. Redefinitions of reality, she writes, have been central to his success.
As Mercieca explains frame warfare, “What you call a thing determines the contours of the debate around it — or precludes debate altogether. Did you borrow a car without permission, or did you steal it? Was the crush of migrants at the Mexican border an invasion or a humanitarian crisis?”
The importance of framing is obvious in the fulminations of America’s White Christian Nationalists. One of the most obvious examples is the debate about abortion. “Christian” paternalists focus on the “sin” of terminating a pregnancy–on the propriety of the decision being made by a pregnant individual. Civil libertarians insist that the issue is really who decides? In our frame, we ask: is this a decision government should have the authority to make, or is it a decision properly made by the individual woman? As I used to tell my students, the Bill of Rights is essentially a list of things that government is prohibited from deciding–what prayer you say (or whether you pray at all), what political opinions you hold, whether you have a right to travel without offering justification to authority…
Back when Republicans could credibly claim to be proponents of limited government, many weighed in on the side of individual liberty. (I remember–back in the day– being part of a group called Republicans for Choice.) Barry Goldwater famously said that government didn’t belong in either your boardroom or your bedroom. (That belief also led him to support gay rights–he even got an award from PFLAG.)
Rather obviously, if we decide that the role of government is to require people to live in accordance with God’s will, we have to decide whose version of that will government should enforce. “Christian” nationalists are fine with giving government that power, so long as they get to be the arbiters of what is “godly.’ They also talk a lot about religious liberty–for them. They aren’t so solicitous about religious liberty for adherents of other (wrong) religions. Their version of religious liberty turns out to be their liberty to use government to impose their particular religious beliefs on those who don’t share them.
It isn’t just the “Christian” nationalists whose framing is perverse. It’s also MAGA.
Just what makes America great? Or more properly, since “again” is a prominent part of that slogan, what DID make America great? If you listen to Trump’s base, it’s pretty clear that their version of “greatness” requires the social dominance of straight White males.
Over the past several years, Americans have stopped debating policy–after all, policy debates require evidence, consideration of past experience ….FACTS. It requires respect for people who come to the conversation with a different–but rreality-based– perspective. The reason we can no longer engage in civil discourse is that MAGA has framed control of government as a fight between the resistance of those of us who live in the real world and their right-their need– to impose their “alternate reality”–their preferred frame– on the rest of us.
I think the proper frame for the culture war we are fighting is this: Both MAGA and the “Christian” nationalists want to take America back to a time that never was.
I am not sure I’d frame Trump as a “success.” He’s ignorant, a bullshit artist, and a conman. Based on facts, he’s probably the most unsuccessful businessman this country has ever produced. He reminds me of the TV evangelicals who make a fortune off of ignorant people who send them money for nothing and feel proud.
Obviously, our entertainment media is what has made Trump a star. NBC presented a bullshit artist to play a successful entrepreneur on TV, and way too many ignorant Americans bought the schtick even though there are thousands of online documents showing that he is an iconic failure.
To be honest, I doubt many MAGAs can even spell “frame.” LOL
I’ve watched some of the most ignorant MAGAs online repeat Trump’s lies about not being part of the Epstein Coverup, but that “We should focus on Obama, who was part of that world.” I’ve never been a fan of Obama, but his name has never appeared in any documents related to Epstein over the years. If you ask AI, it will even tell you there is no evidence, but these brainless MAGAs don’t even check. I saw one this weekend repeat Trump’s Obama lie and say, “Get prepared, the Elite world is ready to crumble.” LOL
As a narcissist, lying is second nature. As a sociopath, lying is done with no consequences. Trump is both. I wouldn’t give Trump credit for knowing how to frame anything because he’s not capable of that kind of deep thinking. If anybody gets the chance, there is a video floating around on Facebook where someone imposed Trump’s famous story about dying by battery electrocution or being eaten by a shark into a group therapy session in “One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest.” The mental patients concluded that “You are dumber than fuc*!”
Yep, they nailed it…
That “never was” place only resides in Trump’s diseased brain. The “framing” has created a cult of followers who feel so aggrieved that they will believe all of his bullshit without a single fragment of fact.
Why don’t people talk about OUR illicit drug market and users? Hey, it’s a $6 + billion dollar enterprise. All that disposable cash heads into the pockets of the drug cartels – mostly in Latin America – who happily pass that money on to their impoverished employees growing and processing the drugs for American – and in other places – consumption.
Why are our citizens so enamored with illicit drugs that they eagerly turn their brains into mush? What is it about our society that drives these people to keep seeking an alternate reality? Is it boredom? Is it some sort of pain? What? How many social ills would be cured or reduced if THIS issue was part of the framework?
The so-called “war on drugs” barely scratched the surface of reducing the market for these drugs. Some war. Our DEA types capture maybe 20% of the illicit material. The drug kings consider that the cost of doing business.
Why aren’t our citizens and politicians framing this insidious and all-pervasive factor of America’s dysfunction. The whole world wonders.
One thing that MAGA has done is to alert me to how much I take for granted in being an American, and how fragile our democracy is and has always been. By their actions to destroy and erode the Constitution, bit by bit, like the famous frog in a pot of boiling water, I have become aware of what we are losing. This is an inadvertent result, an unexpected consequence of MAGA that will, I hope, wake Americans up. If not now, when?
Both artificial and natural intelligence are LLMs (Large Language Models). The artificial kind mimics, in hardware and software, the neuronal network that enables us to function. Mercieca argues that the power to name things is the power to define reality.
Words and numbers are abstractions, and when our eyes or ears hear particular abstractions, the auditory and ocular neurons take what is sensed to a part of our brain, it’s compared to what is stored there, and we imagine what has been associated with that word before.
When Sheila writes a word, the associations she remembers flash through my brain. That’s framing an argument. Connections are made that way.
It can be argued that we are not much more than army ants, specialized and independent, responding to sensory clues encountered in our environment. While that is unduly harsh, it also has some truth to it.
Trump is the Pied Piper of angry, entitled minds. They are mad about their imagined loss of influence and status. He is perceived as someone who has always had what they lost and will restore it to their short supply.
Particular minds are already lost, but we can outvote them forever. We are the greater number, but they have temporary power due to our outdated system of electing, which Steven Miller is a master of gaming. We are good at voting, but undemocratic in assigning real influence to our votes. That’s a problem.
We have to outvote them even more.
By making the main stream media bend to his will Trump is able to control the message, even the message delivered by news outlets like CBS. Just now CBS posted on their site the headline “Trump celebrates the signed deal with the EU.” There is no deal…only an outline of a deal! No details have been worked out! But those who once relied on CBS to get a clear picture of recent events are now being sold lies and distortions in order to paint a picture of Trump achieving yet another WIN!
Here is a man who can stand with weird hair & bad make up.
Ramble on for unlimited amounts of time saying nothing of importance.
Screaming ME ME ME. He is his audience. People who think THEY could be him.
Follow and become the leaders they always thought they should be.
CBS is “in” the news. Let us not forget that it was CBS that put this asswipe on the air as a bona fide deal maker, and CEO type. They taught him how to present himself for TV, and his favorite line was “You’re fired!”
It is sad, and shameful, that CBS, etc. have caved into his bluster. So, will CBS go the way of Faux News? Or, have they already begun to do so?
“He is his audience,” is brilliant! He just loves to hear himself talk, and then, probably, go and watch himself on the news.
Sheila, your framing perspective reminds me of a saying I heard many years ago, “He who makes the definition has the power.” same thing.
Here’s a thing about people here and now – we’re all angry. Maga hates liberal sentiments, and liberals hate authoritarianism, no matter its guise du jour. Call it conservatism, Republicanism, MAGA, whichever, if it quacks like a duck……
Everyone is being robbed by someone in government, and that’s causing fights.
At our age, the probability of enjoying the last act diminishes every day, but that doesn’t seem to matter to hardly anyone.
However, I’m tempted to yell to liberals, FOCUS, amidst the din of epithets served and returned, but anger can also be fuel for focus, so some is good as long as eyes are on the ball of drumming up blue votes.
We’ve got this next year if we can focus on getting our blue votes too.
Progressives have given up too many opportunities to frame the issues on any number of policy positions. Abortion is number one. We may never get over the damage that has been done to our values.
Number two is Immigration. We blew it big time by not having a bill ready to go on January, 22, 2009.:We had the power to get it through, but we let it slide. Now we’re seeing what happens when we sit on our hands. We have essentially a band of brown shirts roughing up hard working people, who look like they might be from another country, kidnapping them and whisking them off to God knows where.
Number three on my hit parade is the inability to codify the dos and don’ts of the Constitution. The current administration has been building a list of violations of the Constitution, which they took an oath to uphold.make it illegal to do that and be sure to set the statute of limitations at 17 years. It would also be great to allow any group to sue, not only the Department of Justice.
Mitch, the Apprentice was a big hit for NBC not CBS. Since the new owner is SkyDance Media and they lean pretty far to the right, it will be interesting to watch what happens. I learned long ago that the first thing to do after the coup is take over the media. My question is are there any wealthy liberals or constitutionalists with enough money to buy a network or two?
Thanks for the correction, Peggy. Saved me the space. And to reiterate, NBC owns MSNBC, so do you think they’ve been playing games for decades? I still remember the interview Maddow finally gave Bernie in 2016, and she was apologetic because she knew what she had been doing for Clinton. Maddow is a shill…
CBS is toast, along with all the other TV media. They will never have an answer for the oligarchy because they are all owned by the oligarchy. It’s not rocket science.
Soros and his son have been buying up radio stations and broadcasting rights, but I believe that when Trump took office, he started canceling many of the deals.
George and his son are cherished Third Way Democrats – the Clinton Wing – and also have NO answer for the oligarchy because, yep, they are part of the oligarchy. They would never even use the word. It’s cultural, primarily bullshit coming from the Democrats, and now all the ancients (70+) think they can win back Congress because they are not Trump. The level of ignorance is profound among the uniparty, as well as among the blue and red pillers.
Waiting for Trump to be inducted into the major league Hall of Frame.
Todd, Soros may have been buying things up, but he has not been alive for some years now. what his son is doing, i have no idea.
AndPeggy, thanks for the heads-up.
PRETTY GOOD FOR A DEAD MAN:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros
Jim, you linked his Wikipedia page but it has no death listed. He’s 94 years old but still kicking. Same thing for Mitch D.
As Simple Minds would sing, he’s “Alive and Kicking!”
Thanks, Todd.