Deep Politics: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate

Once upon a time, I wrote:

To gain a deep understanding of politics, there are few writers I'd recommend more than George Lakoff.  During his lengthy tenure at University of California Berkeley, he was involved in groundbreaking work in the field of cognitive linguistics - the study of the relationship between thought and language.  Don't worry, we won't discuss anything near so dry here.  This is about Lakoff's opus, a 1996 tome called Moral Politics that claims to get inside the minds of conservatives and liberals respectively.

Lakoff's work is relevant and worth a study by anyone serious about understanding the construction of ideology for two reasons.  The first, which I won't get into as much here, is his emphasis on the use of wording and metaphors to craft narratives that invoke specific moral frameworks when communicating political ideas. He warns against using the conceptual framework of one's ideological opponents when debating contested ideas, as this gives the natural advantage to your opponent, who's framed the issue in a way that's advantageous to their world view.

I'd like to return to Mr. Lakoff and his work now, to discuss the first of those reasons here, the one I did not get into previously while discussing the Nation as Family Metaphor.  And that's the concept of cognitive framing - the mental structures that we use to see the world, and the use of language to create and advance a particular cognitive frame.  Terms like narratives are often used in the same or similar concept as frame: they denote a structured way of viewing the world that animates the positions people are more likely to take on political and social issues.

This sounds dry and academic, maybe even postmodern, and to an extent it is.  But it is also crucial to understand for those who wish to engage in dialogue with the intent on changing the world.  You will, whether you know it or not, advance a particular mental framework or social narrative, as will your opponents.  If your opponents understand this fact better than you do and are able to manipulate the concept of framing - as regressive leftists are as a result of studying post-structuralism and literary deconstruction, you will be at a huge disadvantage.  Conservatives also know about framing, and have used it to devastating advantage, such as with Newt Gingrich's infamous 1996 GOPAC memo: Language: A Key Mechanism of Control (the name really does say it all, doesn't it?)  Decades of marketing research, for both commercial and political application, has been invested in the study of cognitive framing, and you'd better believe that the powers that be use it to keen effect.

So the alt-left's main opponents are well versed in these theories. These also aren't new concepts: the use of language to create and mold reality was a major theme in George Orwell's 1984.  So this is a useful concept to understand.   

The first example that Lakoff sites in the first chapter of Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate is the oft heard term "tax relief." These two words together say more than their literal meanings suggest. Lakoff explains this frame in more detail: "For there to be relief there must be an affliction, an afflicted party and a reliever who removes the affliction and therefore a hero."  Taxation is thereby presented as something from which relief is needed.  This means of framing the issue of taxation is to the benefit of conservatives, who favor smaller government and are against state funded welfare programs for the poor.

The trap, warns Lakoff, is for social democrats to accept this core framework while arguing against conclusions derived from it.  One must not come out as being against tax relief, because this way of framing is inherently disadvantageous for the center left.  It is an uphill battle to advocate for a greater number of taxpayer funded social welfare initiatives if one buys into the framing of taxation as an affliction from which relief is needed, which one does implicitly through use of the term "tax relief." 

Better, argues Lakoff, to begin by conceiving of the issue of taxation in entirely different terms.  He describes it variously as "paying your dues, paying your membership fee in America", "what you pay to live in a civilized country" or similar concepts, all based around what citizens get for their tax dollars, rather than the burden that taxation places on citizens.  This shift in emphasis is what reframing is all about.

We can use this concept to look at contentious social issues from new angles.  Consider the highly controversial constituent elements of intersectionality, for example: white privilege, male privilege and so on.  The term "privilege" has a specific meaning that both denotes and connotes very specific concepts.  A google search of the term reveals the following definition: "A special right, advantage or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people."

Like "relief", the term "privilege" makes certain presumptions.  For there to be privilege, there must be an authority with the power to bestow privilege, and that authority opts to bestow privilege based on arbitrary factors such as race, gender or sexual orientation, among others.  It is also conceivably possible for a privileged person to renounce their privilege, or for the authority granting said privilege to act in a more just and egalitarian manner. To fight against privilege is to fight for fair treatment for all, which we can also define as social justice.  One who fights can also be called a warrior.

The problem is that the term social justice warrior carries a lot of cultural baggage.  While the denotation - the literal meaning seems fair and reasonable, the connotation - subtler ideas communicated more through undertone and subtext is overwhelmingly negative.  The term invokes a frame consisting of fanaticism, zealousness, self righteousness, hypersensitivity and so on.  Why is this?  Part of the problem lies with the use of the concept of privilege to frame the issue of social inequality.

The "knapsack of privilege" consists of a bevy of benefits supposedly enjoyed by white males that are denied women and minorities: higher pay for the same work and less discrimination to actually get that work, men are raped and sexually harassed far less than women, whites are hassled by police less frequently than minorities, and so on.  To view these things as "privileges" presupposes - if only subconsciously - that someone capriciously made the decision to confer these benefits on white males and not women and minorities.  The implications are that not being raped, being paid fairly for the work one does and freedom from arbitrary police actions are not rights, but rather privileges that are unfairly enjoyed by some and not others.  Think long and hard on this.

Implied is the notion that all white males enjoy these privileges while no women or minorities do.  This subtly legitimizes an attitude of collective resentment on part of the less privileged and collective responsibility on part of the more privileged.  It is these implied resentments and this implied responsibility that formulate the subtext of a considerable volume of media informed by feminist and critical race theories, and why they provoke such defensiveness from their white male targets.

Privilege is therefore a counterproductive way of framing many issues that we now see in terms of racial and gender identity, such as sexual assault, wage inequality and abuse of police powers.  Assuming that the advantages supposedly enjoyed by white males are "privileges" implies that some authority somewhere, presumably white and male itself bestowed the advantages on white males as an act of personal favoritism (it didn't), it presumes that white males are able to individually or collectively renounce these privileges but won't (they can't) and that it is therefore acceptable for the less privileged to hate on those who are arbitrarily favored in this manner (it isn't, since it doesn't work this way in the real world.)

The self righteous militancy that the privilege frame tends to engender in those who accept it - the SJWs - also acts as a barrier to the exploration of alternative explanations for unequal outcomes. SJWs will see an attempt at a reframing of the issue as an attempt on part of the privileged to duck their responsibility for the unfair advantages that they enjoy and thereby jeopardize the morally superior status enjoyed by the SJW, and call out such actions accordingly.  Plus, many white males have, to varying degrees, internalized the privilege frame and the ensuing guilt serves to paralyze their will and bring about rapid capitulation in the face of feminist accusations of defending privilege, especially on college campuses and extremely liberal urban areas where these ideas enjoy cultural dominance.

Since the privilege framework does not effectively diagnose the true nature of the grievances, legitimate or no, that women and minorities have vis-a-vis white males, things are not likely to improve for them for so long as this framework holds.  This will intensify resentment on part of those whom this frame holds as being less privileged - and deepen their commitment to this flawed means of framing injustice, and paralyzing guilt on part of those deemed more privileged.  The end result isn't likely to be good.  Zimbabwe and South Africa present an unpleasant glimpse at where this could potentially end up.

To present a solid and defensible way reframing of social inequality in a more productive manner should be a key task of the alternative left.

Do you, dear reader, have any ideas for a more productive way of framing the issues of racial and gender equality?  Let me know in the comments.

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Progressive Reformation

It becomes increasingly clear as time goes on that we need a progressive reformation.

Wait a minute.  Why just the progressives?  Why not the conservatives?  Anyone wanting a conservative reformation certainly has my blessing and best wishes.  Really.  Good luck with that.  But that's not my thing.  I'll stick to the lefties for now, because that's my world.  That's what I'm familiar with.  Plus, I think the left really should strive for a higher standard of intellectual and moral honesty.  To be honest, I expect dishonesty and opportunism from the right.  Rationalizing abuses of power and obscene concentrations of wealth and denying the harmful effects of these is a major aspect of what right wing politics has been demonstrably about for as long as I can remember.  Witnessing the waxing of dishonesty and opportunism of liberal activism over the last several years has been especially unnerving.

So without further ado then, here are my theses:

1. Exceptionalism based on white male guilt has been a profoundly negative influence on the 1st world political left.  It minimizes the flaws of foreign peoples and governments, and minimizes the strengths of western peoples and governments, and drives the profound distortions that plague the progressive world view.  Recognizing this does not preclude an honest and critical assessment of of western civilization past and present.
2. Karl Marx was a brilliant man with many useful insights.  But the historical dialectic, this determinist, bipolar division of society into oppressive Empire and marginalized and oppressed Rebels needs to die.  This is not a call for a blind moral relativism and especially not a call to exempt rich and powerful elites from scrutiny, but rather a call for a more nuanced view of history and social conflict.  That said, the idea that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" belongs at the center of any sane view of society.
3. It is flattering to believe oneself a part of a larger than life, heroic struggle against some kind of oppression or another.  A world view like this adds excitement and meaning to any otherwise drab or spoilt life.  It also enables self righteousness in favor of self reflection, and a tendency to demonize others.  This does not mean that opposition corruption and abuse of power should not be undertaken, but rather that it be done in a spirit of sobriety and self awareness rather than a spirit of zealotry and crusade.
4. Privilege theory has done vastly more harm than good.  This is not to say that discrimination cannot be identified and combated.  But privilege theory is not about this.  Privilege theory is all about ego.  It is all about holding all white men collectively accountable for the worst actions of specific individuals, and for circumstances that are not in their power to change.  Were feminist and critical race theorists to be honest, they would admit that this is all about implying collective moral superiority.
5. "Power plus prejudice" - this self serving rationalization that claims that women and minorities cannot be sexist or racist because those things require power, which their self referencing dogmas claim they don't have - needs to die.  Again, were honesty to prevail, this post modern antenomianism (an old religious heresy that claimed that moral law did not apply to the "elect")  is all about smugness and licensing the shitty behavior of those fortunate enough to fall within the charmed circle of preferred identities privileged enough not to be "privileged."  
6. Privilege and inequality, where they still exist and are pressing in their nature, are now primarily economic in nature.  Income inequality and the undue influence of money in politics is addressed by center-left parties only at election time.  That these parties are often in the back pockets of moneyed interests perhaps explains why identity instead of economics have become such central issues on the left in the last few decades. The need for this to change is urgent.
7. Willful misuse of terms like "racist", "misogynist", "homophobe", "Islamophobe" and so on was not a wise idea.  People are becoming increasingly less easily emotionally blackmailed or kafkatrapped into accepting liberal positions on issues by intentionally falsified accusations of bigotry.  Doing this also trivializes these terms and erodes their seriousness in the public eye.  Remember the story of the boy who cried wolf?
8. Particularly galling is the exploitative misuse of bigotry smears to shield people, ideas or policies from otherwise legitimate criticism and scrutiny.  Branding all opposition to mass immigration as "racist" or refusal to support Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign as "misogyny" would be cases in point.
9. It is incumbent upon progressive people to convince others of the merits of their world view.  It is not, under any circumstances, an entitlement of progressive people to be agreed with on anything.  Progressives must act accordingly at all times.
10. Thesis 9 holds true even if you have a vagina.  Or black skin.  Or any other marginalized identity.  Identity does not determine truth (see theses 4 and 5).  Progressives must stop resorting to identity to smear opponents or sidestep arguments made against their positions.
11. Your political views, voting patterns, stances on social issues, marginalized identities or any combination thereof does not make you either morally or intellectually superior to others.  Stop acting as though they do.
12. People of color can be racist, even against whites.  Women can be sexist, even against men.  LGBT people can be cis/heterophobic.  Denying this undermines the entire purpose of being against racism, sexism or homophobia.  Stop falling back on the worn self serving rationalizations of privilege and power plus prejudice - see theses 4 and 5 above.  Progressives will be taken more seriously when they hold themselves to their own moral codes.
13. Expressing disdain for working class and poor white men in liberal terms - implying that they're stupid, inbred, inherently racist and bigoted is the utmost height of arrogance and hypocrisy.  Doubly so if this is done from the privileged upper middle class bully pulpits of academia or mainstream media. That the left has no business stigmatizing poverty for anyone, but especially on the basis of race, should require no elaboration.
14. Stop lying.  Really.  Just stop.  Stop denying that any progressive pundit or academic holds unpopular or controversial views when it is demonstrably the case that at least some of them do. Don't claim that there are no feminists who hate all men or equate heterosex with rape (as two examples of many) when this is demonstrably and provably the case.  Once the lie is exposed, do not minimize or rationalize it, or play semantic games to avoid dealing with the implications.  Admit, and distance yourselves from stupid or mean spirited views on the left. 
15. Deal with dissent and counter arguments in an open and honest manner.  Stop with such passive-aggressive behaviors such as playing stupid and willfully misinterpreting or misunderstanding arguments that challenge your world views.  Correctly understand opposed arguments before responding to them - even if they trigger you in some way, and address their central thesis and main supporting points when in contention with them.
16. Do not cherry pick opponent's arguments and present them out of context in order to make them say something they're not.
17. Do not derail conversations by making issues out of minor details in opponent's arguments that are not essential to their main point or thesis.
18. Do not exploit faux outrage - of the "I just can't even" variety - or treat opponent's arguments as morally abhorrent or intentionally provocative or insulting without clear evidence to support your outrage.  Remember that emotional states do not constitute arguments.  See theses 9 and 10.
19. When your views are protected in academic safe spaces, are funded by big business and the state, are protected from criticism and scrutiny by "harassment" or "hate speech" laws, and enjoy unchallenged favorable bias in mainstream media outlets, the group that you belong to can no longer call itself or the people it claims to represent "marginalized."  The status enjoyed by feminism and anti-racism in western societies are the very textbook definitions of privilege.
20. Your emotional states are not claims on other people's behaviors.  It is not incumbent on males to cross the street or vote for Hillary Clinton because you're a woman (see thesis 5) and are afraid of the consequences of males not complying with what would, if honestly assessed, be prejudiced and ideological assumptions underlying those fears. 

The Bernie Bro's Send Their Regards!

Responses to the Democratic debacle across the internet show that important lessons will be slow in learning for the center left.  Typical might be comments like this:

I live in liberal land where the Mayor of LA and the Governor have already come out said they will enforce no fascist Presidential orders and my Senator just submitted a bill to ban the electoral college. I make enough that I'll greatly benefit from Trumps tax cut even if he ditches the Head of Household single parent deduction. Unless the secret police catch me making out with a drag queen, I'm pretty much safe. My kid is safe. I'm not being marginalized.

That's kinda the definition of privilege.

I think it's important to look at things like this and ask ourselves what could have been done differently so that there would have been a different result. Because, and I frankly don't give a toss what anyone says about muh white male privilege - the outcome of this election was a fucking disaster.  For all kinds of people.  Not just gays.  Not just blacks.  Not just Latinos.  Not just Muslims.  Not just women.  Not just LGBT people.  Not just the poor.  Not just the working class.  Not just the middle class.  Not just anybody who makes less than 500K/year.  All kinds of people.

When I look at the paragraph I just wrote, it occurs to me that a LOT of people would be vastly better off without a GOP presidency and a GOP congress than with them.  More people than for whom the reverse would be true.  So my question is: how did we get here?

We got here when the working class white males were smugly dismissed with "angry dudes" and "privilege."  When an unemployed father in the rust belt was lectured for his "privilege" by a fucking 150K/year tenured black woman's studies professor in some shitty rag like the HuffPost.

We got here when BLM types attacked "white feminism" or crashed Gay Pride Parades, making other people's struggles all about them and bandying about accusations of "racism" and "privilege" for no other reason than that they know damn well it shames and silences people.  Or it used to.

We got here when our news-feeds were innundated with crap like "Cis/het black males are the white people of black people"

We got here when Halloween costumes became "Cultural Appropriation" and equated with slavery and genocide.

We got here when compliments and civil greetings of women by men became stalking, harassment and rape culture.

We got here when white cisgender gay men were banished from campus LGBTQ groups for not being marginalized enough.

We got here when supporters of a presidential candidate who would have given the entire country universal health care, free college and a $15 minimum wage, if he could, were smugly dismissed as "Bernie Bro's" because they felt that real tangible economic benefits that would really help the most vulnerable were better things to base a voting decision on than some feminist blogger's vagina or African ancestors.

We got here when we were asked to ignore Clinton's abyssmal record of supporting regressive neoliberal legislation going all the way back to her husband's presidency.

None of the above are solid reasons for voting for Donald Trump.  But they are valid reasons for NOT voting for Democrats either.  And that was all Trump needed.

Now obviously, I'm not the cry-in type. But I'm also not the one being marginalized. My partner is a pretty big Hillary supporter, both vocally and financially, and she's scared. She's scared about women's rights. Minorities are scared. Gay people are scared.

I hope the hysteria turns out to have been unwarranted and Trump turns out to be more of a Nixonian moderate than /pol/ on 4chan in the White House.  I am sorry about your partner, [name redacted], and I hope that women's rights, minority rights and gay rights come out of this unscathed.  I don't mean to pick a fight with you, or anyone, and I wish harm on none.

Problem is, plenty of harm was wished on me.  Not by any of you personally, but by those who dismissed any disagreement with them as "angry white dudes", "privilege", "white/mansplaining" , "#killallwhitemen", etc.  Now I know full well that none of the above have any actual teeth and pale in comparison to real oppression suffered by people of differing identities over the years.  But then again, trigger warnings, safe spaces, misgendering and microaggressions also pale in comparison to real oppression suffered over the years too.

The problem was the smugness, the double standards, the glaring lack of self awareness, the hypocrisy, the sick competitive victimhood, the empty virtue signalling, the utter and complete lack of policy substance, the censorious mindset, the puritanism, the anti-heterosexualism, the manipulativeness, the flagrant weaponization of grievance, the arrogance and the entitlement masquerading as social justice - a bastardization of language that would make George Orwell cringe were he alive to see it.  It's about recognizing your need for allies, and treating those allies with respect instead of spitting in their faces all the time because "privilege" or because "old white dudes" and then wondering why they abandon you in the crucial hour.

Come 2020, we'll be much more likely to get different results if the attitude is SOLIDARITY instead of "check your privilege."  If the attitude is "an injury to one is an injury to all" instead of "I drink white male tears."  What a farce!  You're all going to learn the hard way that the people who drink white male tears do so out of crystal goblets.  They're on Wall Street.  In the Pentagon.  In the State Department.  In the offices of defense industry lobbyists.  They're not on tumblr or buzzfeed.  And they drink white female tears too.  And black tears.  And gay tears.  And the drinking's looking to be pretty good for the next four years.

If you want to make the left great again, come check out places like this, view videos like this and read articles like this.  Just for examples.  There's hundreds more like them.  But until then ...

On Nov. 8, 2016, the SJWs of America had their Red Wedding.  And guess what?  

THE BERNIE BRO'S SEND THEIR REGARDS!

Class and Gender: Engendering Failure II

Anita Sarkeesian writes:

There's no such thing as sexism against men.  That's because sexism is prejudice + power.  Men are the dominant gender with power in society.

 This is a line of reasoning one encounters frequently in so called social justice circles.  But is it accurate?  And if it is not accurate, is it merely hyperbole intended to raise awareness of legitimate issues, but doing no harm otherwise?  Or is this actually a dangerous idea?  It is an idea that distorts our understanding of how power and privilege really work?  Does this idea draw our attention away from where real power and privilege lie, and scapegoat people who are actually powerless?

What is wrong with this statement.  It's based on an understanding of power that's wrong and self serving.

Since most of the very real powerful and privileged – the super rich – are white males, therefore all white males must collectively constitute an upper class?  This is bad logic on the face of it.  But to assume that males collectively constitute an elite that’s organized around recognition and defense of its privileges as a gender completely flies in the face of the behavior of corporations and governments daily.  Corporate and state power rarely meets a feminist cause it doesn’t like.  Could it be because feminist causes usually entail an expansion of state power?  Could it be because the real value that women have as far as capital is concerned, is as workers, consumers and as tax payers? 

Those who defend the concept of “male privilege” may indeed have some valid points to make overall about how men have it easier than women.  The point of my saying this is not to be yet another anti-feminist commentator to toss his hat, or should I day his fedora, into the messy dispute over gender and privilege.  Rather, I question whether or not “privilege” is actually a useful concept in describing the advantages that men do enjoy.

Privilege, by its nature and definition, implies a source of power sufficiently strong to grant special prerogatives to one segment of the population but not to another.  If there was so strong a power in our society, would this individual or body be the more logical target for the critics of institutional power and privilege?

Those who defend the notion of male privilege point out that women still make less money overall then men.  77 cents for every dollar or something like that.  The real nature of this pay gap and the reasons for it have been explained time and again and I won’t get into them in detail here.  Suffice it to say, that when your value is measured more in pure economic terms, you’ll place a higher premium on economic reward when making your career choices.  This often comes at the expense of longer hours and harsher working conditions.  But even if it were true that men were paid more money than women for the same jobs, does this make men the real bearers of privilege?  Seems to me as though those who sign the paychecks are the ones with the real power and privilege in this scenario.  Why no analysis of corporate structure and power, Ms. Sarkeesian?  Perhaps because you’re a beneficiary of it?

Which raises another question.  The narrative presented by Sarkeesian in this tweet is one that is repeated frequently, in academia and “left” leaning corporate media and disseminated very effectively by a vast network of bloggers, academics and professional activists.  It is frequently pushed on social media platforms whose multi million dollar CEOs openly embrace this line of thinking, to the point that critics of it can face blocking on these very social media sites?  Does it make sense that the truly rich and powerful would openly embrace a very real criticism of institutional power?  Does access to this kind of influence really characterize a powerless and marginalized segment of the population.  Anita Sarkeesian herself has addressed the United Nations on behalf of causes important to her.  Similar access to the UN has not been extended to her opponents and critics in social media, some of whom have many more followers than Feminist Frequency does.  Is this what we’d expect from a marginalized demographic?

Sarkeesian’s statement assumes that prejudice against powerful groups is okay - it is based upon a "two wrongs make a right" kind of mentality. Note that real, concrete measures to erode power differences are not a problem. But that is not the purpose of this statement.  Sarkeesian’s statement obscures who the real holders of power are, and therefore makes even holding them accountable, let alone fundamentally reshifting the balance of power in a more egalitarian direction, more rather than less difficult.  How can you redistribute power away from people who already have very little power, except to become more powerful than them.  Which is what this is really all about.

None of this means that it is actually men who are the oppressed class – there are plenty of both men and women out there with nothing but their own labor power to sell as a means of sustenance, and the lack of access real power and influence that this entails.  Nor is this to be taken as a denial of female mistreatment at the hands of males in many circumstances.  I do not condone this, and I would urge my male listeners not to take what I’ve said as a license to look down on or mistreat women in any way.

Sarkeesian’s statement’s real purpose is to be a self serving statement in that it enables women who agree with it to assume a stance of moral superiority vis-a-vis men, which can be exploited for personal advantage.  She does not seek to obstruct those who would enable violence against women.  She seeks to obstruct those who would bring to light and criticize female mistreatment of men, in both private and public contexts.  There is no place for either in any real progressivism worth its salt.  Any version of the left that does not have “an injury to one is an injury to all” as a core motto is not a left worthy of anyone’s support.

Her statement is a conservative; a reactionary statement in that by defining a powerless people as the ruling class, those who really are powerful escape scrutiny.  It seeks to establish gender rather than class solidarity, and the beneficiaries of this can only be the rich and powerful.

Note too that much of Sarkeesian’s social criticism is directed at the preponderance of sexual imagery in popular culture, and the portrayal of sexuality in media.  This kind of criticism has typically come from the far right rather than the left.  In light of that, and the high levels of institutional support that Sarkeesian’s variation on feminist ideals actually receives, what does this tell you about how “progressive” her agenda really is? 

With "social justice leftists" like this, who needs conservatives?

(View this Video on Samizdat Broadcasts!)