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democrats
January 2007 
Election 2006: Time for Some Truth and Reconciliation?
Posted on Nov 8th, 2006
by 
ebbandflow
ebbandflow
Victory! The Democrats won the House, and are in position to also take the Senate pending Virginia.
We need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for all of the deception that we've been living with for the past six years. The wool has been pulled over collective our eyes, and how refreshing would it be to see and hear some truth about it?
Now whether or not the politicians ever really candidly admit to these deceptions is another matter, but the least that can happen are some Congressional investigations to expose some truth -- potentially the most explosive one is how the Bush Administration used and misused intelligence to lead us into Iraq. Also keep an eye on what Henry Waxman does with his chairmanship.
Unfortunately, there is already chatter of the next election two years from now, and preservation of power is already on their minds before even questioning of previous power abuses. The Democrats see that they've won a number of Red State seats, and they want to hold on to them for the next election by playing to the center. (via firedoglake)
In private talks before the election, Emanuel and other top Democrats told their members they cannot allow the party's liberal wing to dominate the agenda next year. Democrats will hold 30 or 35 seats that went for Bush in the past, meaning that Democratic candidates such as Brad Ellsworth in rural Indiana are likely to face competitive races again in 2008. Still, their interests are likely to collide with those of veteran liberals such as Reps. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.) and John Conyers Jr., (Mich.), who will chair committees.
It is so depressing to see this endless game of power grabs and strategizing.
I just want some aggressive, skeptical and honest investigations into the very real corruption and abuses of power that have been going on.
Yet I'm also aware and afraid that this election is not going to radically shift on the illness and unbalances with our society. I don't expect to see any real integral solutions coming from inside the beltway any time soon. Is Obama any hope of an integral candidate?
But today I just want to wallow in this optimism and hope for hearing some truth exposed to the American pubic.
Access: Public
I'm hoping that some of George Lakoff's ideas take hold within the Democratic party. Progressives, before the Gingrich revolution were so used to being on top, they thought basic arguments about the common good, would pursuade voters to go their way. Unfortunately the conservatives were creating this propaganda machine, honing their message in think-tanks and they took over.
Progressives, and the Democratic lawmakers who are supposed to represent us have done a horrible job of selling higher level ideas. You never hear even liberal politicians talking about how we must contribute to the common good, and taxes help us do that. They're talking about tax cuts/incentives too! They've been sucked into the the frame that Republicans succesfully imbedded in the American psyche - taxes should be lower.
I think it's incumbent upon Democrats to explain to everyone - even the mythic membership, sky-god worshipping trogodytes - that we pay taxes and take care of each other because it's good for everyone - especially the poor rednecks who tend to vote Republican. Communication is a huge part of why Republicans had power for 12 years even though their actions really only benefited the rich - and extremist middle eastern leaders. Democrats must get better at communication. Of course, they also must give up spineless pandering to the ultra-liberal base. :-)
This may turn into a blog post withing a few days.
Some food for thought for the blog post…
Re; Common Good.
I agree that there are certainly good structures and commons-based policies that the Democrats support, but I don't actually agree with all of them. I also think that the complexites of the situations go beyond the solutions from either side alone.
So while Lakoff's perspective has some grains of truth, I don't think that he offers a spectrum of frames that goes beyond the false dichotomies that exist in partisan politics. In spiral dynamics terms, he's covering Red/Blue and Orange/Green but I don't think he offers an integrative Yellow or beyond perspective.
Part of the problem is with a political culture that sets up an oversimplified dichotomy between Republicans and Democrats. So the middle ground is either lost to the extremes or diluted to the detrement of progressive and conservative principles. Often the Green Party and Libertarians are the ones who are filling in these gaps, but are not incorporated at all.
From an integral perspective, Democrats focus a lot on the Lower Right quadrant of structures and support systems while the Republicans focus on the Upper Left quadrant of personal intention, motivation and entreprenurial spirit.
Both are important and critical, but the question becomes how much of each approach do you take from a policy perspective? For example, with welfare – How much government support is necessary versus how much personal responsibility should be required? There may be an incentive with welfare to have more children to increase the amount of financial support, while at the same time increasing the dependency on external support and decrease personal responsibility.
It is clearly some combination of both, but there is a vast context and series of relationships that also come into play.
One X factor in the welfare example is how much real opportunity there is for lower-class individuals. With good-paying, working class jobs moving overseas, then there is an increasing gap between the rich and the poor – and an increasing importance in higher education.
Economies are seen in terms of the machine-like nature of the GDP – rather than an interconnected ecosystem that has geographic relationships. So globalization will bring short-term gains for the rich and corporate shareholders, but at the same time creates a gap of opportunity for the working class.
So yes, poor people need to get off of welfare and into meaningful and well-paying jobs. This I agree with the conservative perspective. But the Republicanism perspective is to send these jobs overseas. The Liberal and progressive response is to have welfare, and I agree that some social support systems are very important. The Democratic flavor is to have a Centrist Clinton-implemented Welfare reform to limit the amount of support offered.
No one offers a comprehensive solution because no one is looking at the biggest possible picture.
The existing complexity is so beyond our current maps of the problems, and I think part of the paradigm shift is to start viewing all policies as an interconnected organism – an ecosystems of relationships on the psychological, cultural, behaviorial and systemic dimensions. Some of it could probably be modeled with network theory, complexity theory, agent-based modelling, etc.
But our political system is a circus of non-stop power grabs from the two parties, and they need some fundamental electoral reforms to bring in viable competition from indendent parties. There needs to be more than two voices at the table offering a complete perspective on possible solutions.
Lakoff is important for helping frame and sell these solutions to a wide audience. But without any real meat behind the solutions, then Lakoff is just helping to sell the Democrats – like Rove sells the Republicans, but in a more honest way with more integrity.
This will seem like a total non-sequitur, but did you see the episode of Battlestar Galactica from two weeks ago? I don’t even know if you follow the show or not, but the end of the episode featured President Roslin calling for a Truth and Reconcilliation committee. I nearly stood up and applauded for the continuing parallels that the show makes, and the voice and philosophical postion that the show has continued to make.
If you aren’t following the show, you are missing some of the best television in years!
I should also say, you are quite right about taking an optimistic viewpoint of the recent shift of power in Washington. I have to admit that election night and the following day I was still working from a rather cynical viewpoint, and not seeing the victory for what it is.
Yes, there is so much more work to be done, and really, until the Dems become a truly progressive party, I really am not likely to swoon over the party. My personal nervousness also rests upon the insecurity that the Democrats will start to become comfortable in their “accomplishments”. Quite frankly, I don’t think they won this election, the electorate did. True to form, there wasn’t really anyone who stood for real change in the party (Obama in this case, I don’t think fully counts yet), this was about standing against the regime. And Bravo to them!
I think this is the wake up call the Dems should be hearing, not counting their victories. And yes, I think they should be pushing and supporting Obama to run ‘08. The country needs a complete change in so many ways, and I think Obama could very likely represent that change well.
Hey Kent,
I mostly agree with your analysis of what Lakoff offers. I read part of his book Moral Politics, where he states that both liberals and conservatives have the same values, they just prioritize them differently - so he's not clueless when it comes to analyzing the problem, but his solution is more partial than not. I must also admit my last comment didn't come from an integral head-space.
The existing complexity is so beyond our current maps of the problems, and I think part of the paradigm shift is to start viewing all policies as an interconnected organism – an ecosystems of relationships on the psychological, cultural, behavioral and systemic dimensions. Some of it could probably be modeled with network theory, complexity theory, agent-based modeling, etc.
I think this is dead-on accurate.
One thing I think Lakoff is doing right is thinking about communication to a lower level of development (although he doesn't refer to it that way). Whether or not a politician is at second tier will mean little if she can't communicate her inclusive understanding in a way that each lower lever can really identify with.
For me, this is the major challenge of affecting change from a second tier perspective - communicating and convincing those in the first tier to adopt the ideas and understand the benefits. Lakoff's sales pitch could be very useful in this respect - and it might be useful to help people at lower levels step up to the higher levels within first tier.
Darshan - I agree about Battlestar Gallactica. It's great they can put out that material in the context of science fiction while often making more poignant commentary that other, more realistic shows can.
For me, this is the major challenge of affecting change from a second tier perspective - communicating and convincing those in the first tier to adopt the ideas and understand the benefits.
Exactly. This is a huge issue, and one of the biggest bottlenecks – an effective translation and framing.
It's interesting to hear that Lakoff offers this, and I found another perspective from Adam Leonard – who I found when I went out searching for an integration of communications theory w/ Wilber's Integral theory a while back
It turns out that Adam Leonard blended integral theory & Spiral Dynamics with communications theory in this Master's level thesis.
He describes an approach for communicating the same message to different value system stages through different message constructions. He describes the message constructions in the appendices, and goes through a case study on PDF page 124 (marked page 112)
Here are the various message constructions from Leonard's thesis appendix
Message Construction for Red
• Demonstrate ‘What’s in it for me, now?’
• Offer ‘Immediate gratification if …’
• Challenges and appeals to machismo/strength
• Heroic status and legendary potential
• Flashy, to-the-point, unambiguous, strong
• Simple language and fiery images/graphics
Message Construction for Blue
• Duty, honor, country images of discipline
• Self-sacrifice for higher cause and purpose
• Appeal to traditions and established norms
• Use class-consciousness and knowing one’s place
• Propriety, righteousness, and responsibilities
• Insure future rewards and delayed gratification
• Assuage guilt with correct consequences
Message Construction for Orange
• Appeal to competitive advantage and leverage
• Success motivations and achieving abundance
• Bigger, better, newer, faster, more popular
• Citations of experts and selected authorities
• Experimental data and tried-and-true experience
• Profit, productivity, quality, results, win
• Demonstrate as best of several options
Message Construction for Green
• Enhance belonging, sharing, harmony of groups
• Sensitive to human issues and care for others
• Expand awareness and understanding of inner self
• Symbols of equity, humanity, and bonding
• Gentle language along with nature imagery
• Build trust, openness, exploration, passages
• Real people and authentic emotional displays
Message Construction for Yellow
• Interactive, relevant media, self-accessible
• Functional ‘lean’ information without fluff
• The facts, the feelings, and the instincts
• Big picture, total systems, integration
• Connect data across fields for holistic view
• Adapt, mesh, blend, access, sense, gather
• Self-connecting to systems and others usefully
Message Construction for Turquoise
• Multidimensional chunks of insight
• Use multi-tiered consciousness to access
• Renewed spirituality and sacrifice to whole
• Ecological interdependency and interconnections
• Macro (global) solutions to macro problems
• Community beyond nationalities or partisanship
• High-tech and high-touch for experiential knowing