Tag Archives: George Lakoff

Make Trump Eat a “Truth Sandwich”

Posted on by

At this moment, a few hours before Donald Trump takes yet another chunk of free network airtime to, most likely, shamelessly lie about a World War Z-like horde of terrorists laying siege to our southern border Twitter, the pundit class and TV executives are debating how to handle this.

In the good old days, before talk radio cynics dictated terms to Presidents of the United States, this was a pretty easy call. Whoever he was, POTUS got on the network tube and made his case. Times had changed though by the time Barack Obama was denied free time in 2014 … to talk about immigration issues choking government function. (Obama. Immigration. So boring. Can’t interrupt “The Bachelor”!)

But — startling news flash — there’s nothing ordinary, or usual or traditional about Donald Trump, and giving him another ten minutes to stoke rage and hysteria over a problem (the hordes of terrorists) that doesn’t exist, comes damn close to allowing a fool/madman shout “fire!” in a crowded theater. Nevertheless, very much like local news outlets, network executives are (still) extraordinarily worried about being called names by rabid Trumpists for not playing fair with their leader, the great flabby white hope of their foundering low-information sub-culture.

What to do?

I’ve long thought there was everything to gain by putting any Trump speech on a five-minute delay and then running a fact-checking banner under him as he preened and bellowed.

For example: “I was only given a small loan by my father. Maybe a million dollars.” [In fact, Trump was given over $400 million dollars by his father, most if not all through extremely suspicious tax avoidance schemes now under investigation.]

Like that. It’s pretty easy.

At Vox today, Sean Illing, a reliably intelligent character, interviews George Lakoff, professor of linguistics and cognitive science at UC Berkley. Lakoff  adds another layer to how to handle shameless, pathological liars practicing mass distortion. He calls it “The Truth Sandwich.”

Fundamentally, Lakoff believes the media should spend more time ignoring Trump than reacting to every coarse, corrupt, stupid and illegal thing he says. But journalism circa 2019 is a Twitter-based activity with no ability to resist herd activity and group-think.

So Lakoff recommends “the truth sandwich” for purely theatrical, cynically political stunts such as Trump slinging bullshit tonight.

“Journalists could engage in what I’ve called ‘truth sandwiches’, which means that you first tell the truth; then you point out what the lie is and how it diverges from the truth. Then you repeat the truth and tell the consequences of the difference between the truth and the lie. If the media did this consistently, it would matter. It would be more difficult for Trump to lie.”

I don’t about making it “more difficult” for Trump to lie. He will lie as long as he has a pulse. But it would certainly mitigate the networks’ problematic decision to give him (more) free airtime.

Basic concept: Assert the truth first. Then let Trump lie.

It would be valuable, for example, for Lester Holt to appear on our screens two minutes before Trump and say something like, “The President tonight is likely to refer to the influx of terrorists through the southern border as a rationale for building a wall he promised his supporters Mexico would pay for. Now, having never negotiated with Mexico, he insists American taxpayers must pay for the wall, which polls show only 25% of the public believes is necessary. If taxpayers don’t pay Mr. Trump will continue the government shut down he himself ordered and about which he has said, and I quote, “I will own”. The shutdown currently affects 800,000 mostly middle-class Americans — some of them TSA agents now calling in sick because they aren’t being paid  — and soon to affect thousands more landlords, vendors and contractors as effects spread out. For the record, a report by Mr. Trump’s government says that only six people attempting to cross the Mexican border in the last six months matched names on terrorist watch lists, and we have no accounting whether they were actual terrorists or were simply caught in bureaucratic error. Either way, six is not the same as 4000 as Mr. Trump, Vice-Present Mike Pence and others in his administration have been claiming in the most alarming tones. Moreover, 41 people were stopped at the Canadian border. But no one in the Trump administration has ever said anything about building wall to keep Canadians out. Finally, while Mr. Trump is demanding $5.7 billion to re-open the government, he was given $1.3 billion last year for ‘border security’ and has to even bother to spend the bulk of that money. Now … the President of the United States.”

Illing goes on to argue that Trump’s base — aka Gooberus Americanus — is so completely sealed off from objective news reporting they’ll never eat a “truth sandwich” even if NBC, ABC and CBS serve one up on avocado toast.

He then asks:

Sean Illing

Why do Republicans seem to be doing much better in terms of framing the debate?

George Lakoff

A lot of Democrats believe in what is called Enlightenment reasoning,and that if you just tell people the facts, they’ll reach the right conclusion. That just isn’t true.

People think in terms of conceptual structures called frames and metaphors. It’s not just the facts. They have values, and they understand which facts fit into their conceptual framework. You can’t understand something if your brain doesn’t allow it, if your brain filters it out in terms of your values.

Democrats seem not to understand this, and they keep trying to employ reason as a persuasive vehicle. I wish Enlightenment reasoning was an accurate model for how most people think and judge, but it isn’t, and we better acknowledge that fact.”

Enlightenment thinking. On the great evolutionary scale, not everyone is there yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

McFadden’s New Ad Proposes Scissoring Health Care System’s Unhealed Wounds

Posted on by

McFadden_Stiches_AdFollowing his sophmoric campaign ad about getting hit by a child in his, tee hee, senatorial privates, Minnesota U.S. Senate candidate Mike McFadden has a new metaphoric television ad about the harm he wants to inflict on Obamacare.

The ad opens with Mr. McFadden establishing his bona fides as a Common Man, just like us.  Sitting in a plush leather chair in a well polished den, the son of the CEO candidate — who is worth between $15 million and $57 million dollars — tells viewers about the McFaddens’ hardscrabble existence:

Conor McFadden (son of the candidate): “My dad, Mike McFadden? He’s cheap.”

Mike McFadden (candidate): “With six kids, it’s called a budget.”

In Romneyesque fashion, the “with six kids” and “budget” references are intended to imply that Millionaire Mike is struggling from paycheck-to-paycheck, just like a dang minimum wage worker.  This is as close to an obligatory “Honest Abe was raised in a primitive log cabin out on the wild frontier” yarn as Team McFadden can muster.   (Of course, the $2,000 hockey table on display next to junior doesn’t exactly support the Frugal Mike image.  But, hey, he didn’t get the kids the $3,000 table, now did he?)

Then comes the metaphoric meat of the ad:

Conor: “When I was 10 and had to get stitches out after a hockey injury, the nurse said it would cost one-hundred bucks. Dad was so horrified he grabbed the scissors and took them out himself.”

Mike: “You lived.”

Conor: “Trust me, nothing will stop Dad from trying to take out Obamacare.”

Mike: “Send me to Washington and give me some scissors. I’ll put ‘em to work.”

Mike_McFadden_stern_daddyNote the tough, no-nonsense daddy image that McFadden’s political consultants are constructing.  Linguist George Lakoff has documented how GOP candidates very consciously frame themselves as “strict fathers” of the  family — “you lived” — while portraying Democrats as the overly permissive mommies.

Wait until daddy comes home!  Daddy will stop mommy and and the children from spending irresponsibly. There is a lot of that patriarchal “father knows best” vibe here.

So, to recap the ad narrative,  strict daddy on a budget is so darn frugal he will remove son’s stitches with his own scissors to save money, and he will do that with Obamacare too!

There are at least a couple of major substantive problems with the mac daddy’s metaphor:

Problem #1:  America’s health care system is far from a healed wound.  In fact, America’s health care system is an open, festering wound.  According to the non-partisan Commonwealth Fund, the United States has the worst health care system in the developed world.  After Mr. McFadden “takes out” the ACA stitches in this gaping wound, what is he going to do about the bleeding:

  • The 99,643 Minnesotans newly enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) who would be uninsured again.
  • The 2,318,738  Minnesotans with some type of pre-existing health condition who would once again be denied insurance without ACA protection.
  • The 35,000 Minnesota young adults who, thanks to the ACA, are currently insured under their parents plans until age 26 but would be uninsured again without ACA.
  • The 2,043,000 Minnesotans who, thanks to the ACA, are free from worrying about lifetime limits on coverage, but would face such dangerous limits again.

Are we really prepared to let McFadden re-open that wound?

Problem #2:  “Taking out” Obamacare stitches with McFadden’s scissors doesn’t save money. In fact, it would cost a lot of money.  According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation (JTC), eliminating Obamacare would:

“…cause a net increase in federal budget deficits of $109 billion over the 2013–2022 period.”

In other words, McFadden may be cutting, but he is certainly not saving.  That’s an important little $109 billion detail to keep in mind.

Also, McFadden has made it clear that he wouldn’t use his scissors on fellow CEOs at private insurance companies.  McFadden opponent Senator Al Franken successfully authored an ACA measure that, for the first time, requires private health plan CEOs to spend at least 80 to 85 percent of the premiums they collect to pay for actual health care, instead of corporate overhead, salaries, bonuses, marketing and profits.  In 2012, Franken’s “medical loss ratio” provision led to the average Minnesota family with private insurance receiving a rebate of $303.

But Mr. McFadden has made it clear that he opposes Franken’s scissoring of private insurance companies’ overhead, salaries, bonuses, marketing and profits.   Instead, McFadden prefers to take his scissors to millions of Minnesotans benefiting from Obamacare.

So, McFadden wants to scissors an unhealed wound even though it will cost billions and cause massive bleeding.  Why?  Because the Minnesota GOP’s rabidly Tea Party base demands red-faced Obama-hating, and McFadden will say anything to curry their favor.  As McFadden’s son promises them, “Trust me, nothing will stop Dad from trying to take out Obamacare.”

– Loveland