Ever read George Lakoff’s book Don’t Think of an Elephant? It’s about how right-wing think tanks run focus groups to come up with mindworms that infiltrate the language so you always end up framing a discussion in terms favorable to them. Thus the “inheritance tax” becomes the “death tax”, “health care” turns into “death panels”, “flat-rate (non-graduated) tax” becomes “fair tax”, “sensible gun-control legislation” is framed as “gun grabbers”, “corporations” are found (after several centuries’ experience under the Bill of Rights) to have been “people” all along, just as “free spending” is now considered “free speech”, and here we see how even Lalo Alcaraz has stopped referring to “family reunification” and fallen for the jingoistic framing of “chain migration”.
When historians of the future refer to our era, they may find that the greatest crime the right wing committed was their hijacking of the language. And we’re just letting them get away with it.
Yontrop over 6 years ago
Trump is guilty of a lot of things, but “LEAVING anchor babies”??
Richard S Russell Premium Member over 6 years ago
Ever read George Lakoff’s book Don’t Think of an Elephant? It’s about how right-wing think tanks run focus groups to come up with mindworms that infiltrate the language so you always end up framing a discussion in terms favorable to them. Thus the “inheritance tax” becomes the “death tax”, “health care” turns into “death panels”, “flat-rate (non-graduated) tax” becomes “fair tax”, “sensible gun-control legislation” is framed as “gun grabbers”, “corporations” are found (after several centuries’ experience under the Bill of Rights) to have been “people” all along, just as “free spending” is now considered “free speech”, and here we see how even Lalo Alcaraz has stopped referring to “family reunification” and fallen for the jingoistic framing of “chain migration”.
When historians of the future refer to our era, they may find that the greatest crime the right wing committed was their hijacking of the language. And we’re just letting them get away with it.
Radish the wordsmith over 6 years ago
Republicans own the Trump plague.
zippykatz over 6 years ago
Ch-ch-chaaaain; chain migraaation. Reminds me of a song!
DonaldH1 over 6 years ago
I found lots of political cartoons in a book I got on amazon. “Fractured fairy tales: political monkey business.”
Daeder over 6 years ago
Hopefully sooner rather than later.
Night-Gaunt49[Bozo is Boffo] over 6 years ago
The first thing we must not do is to use the Reich Wing’s framing of anything. “Pro-Life”? No they are “Pro-Birth” at any cost.