Sorry, but the problem is that the news media doesn’t give us the facts. Even C-Span allows people to say whatever they damn please without correction. And the other posters are right: there is no punishment for lying…and we are on the road to Hell.

And now they are understandably growing unhappy with Obama and the Dems.

I think enough of the public gets the fact that our current policy course is the road to hell. There’s just no concensus on what to do about it. Voting in another batch of R’s and D’s seems unlikely to change anything.

Corporations, particularly HR departments and “placement agencies” feeding “heads” to the mill, have long been familiar with the psychological principals described in U-MI’s research. One reason “businesses” prefer to hire younger applicants rather than the seasoned is directly attributable to the disruption and cost of (re)training an experienced new hire who has a dissonant reaction to new, factually different information.

The principle also shades the means by which customer-facing marketing programs are structured. Did you think it was solely a lack of creativity and insight that makes most marketing so repetitive and – in today’s parlance – narrowly brand-driven? Once a customer is “educated”, it’s not only easier (and less expensive) to keep that customer brand-connected, but it’s also much harder for a competitor (or heaven forbid a non-commercial non-pillager) to “capture” the customer as that would normally require new facts displace old facts.

Of course, there are the “long tail” cases of extremists who vacillate from pole-to-pole – and usually wind-up as testimonial candidates in the “euphoric” phase of their transition experience. Coke! Pepsi! Coke! Pepsi! Dr Pepper! Coke – and so it goes….

Framing is the ability to communicate your ideas using the narratives and idioms already in our heads. The frames in our heads are the cognitive structures we think with.

So, isn’t framing just another word for manipulation? No. Framing is a tool that can be used for either good or evil. Through lying, deception and other manipulation tactics, Republicans like Karl Rove and Glenn Beck use framing to distort people’s perceptions of reality away from the truth.

As progressives, we can use framing supported by facts to bring our fellow citizens’ perception of reality closer to the truth. That is the difference between false framing and truthful framing.

We have two viable options for combating a conservative frame:

1) Come up with an opposing, progressive frame to compete with it. When frames compete, only one of them can win inside your head. So if it’s strong, impactful and based on the facts, it’ll take out the conservative frame.

Alan Grayson – Counters the Republican “socialized medicine” frame by acknowledging the fact that 44,000 die each year because they can’t get health insurance, and frames what Republican opposition really means for Americans.

2) Add to the frame to either change its meaning OR show its absurdity by extending it to its natural extreme.

Drew Westen – Adding to “Support the Troops” Framing

Stephen Colbert – Adding to “Leading from the Gut, Small Government, Liberal Bias, Government Secrecy, Liberal Media, Stay the Course” Republican Framing

Lewis Black – Adding to Glenn Beck’s Nazi False Framing

So, fact lovers, please do not get discouraged. Although we cannot achieve our objectives using facts alone, together with a strong narrative they are quite powerful.

- Tom

Any thoughts?

Conservatives’ world view is paranoid and hateful. They rely on cruelty to achieve their ends.