to exaggerate your later point, even though I did.
One has only has so much money, and there will come a point when they price most people out of as much gas as they are using. (I see a lot of opportunity for a better life in that, but that's another subject). So there is a hard ceiling beyond which any producer can shoot themselves in the foot. They should be free to find it, because we are indebting ourself to prevent that now. I think it is an unwise investment of taxpayer dollars to chase a dying resource, and maybe would be better if we trained up a bunch of people and set them to work finding better solutions for our future.
Lakoff thinks liberals ought to mount a greater offense, pushing liberal moral values, take the conversation away from the radical right. (I wonder if he means the liberal morals of old, or the newer ones?) We could also do that by proposing a big job or training program on the scale of the WPA. Talk about how we invest in our country in a bigger way, instead of cuts to the Minority Business Development Agency (35% unemployment and they want to cut THAT? Ought to be ashamed, and ought to be ashamed of taking heating assistance from poor people while we insure tens of millions in bonuses at banks that screwed the entire country). New morals, phooey.
In any event, I do think studies and writing are important, but I don't think most voters read such things in depth. I'm not even sure they check out the bullet points they hear to make sure there is some basis for it. Today they watch the shiny box and do what it tells them, look for the person that seems to agree with their self-interest and vote, if they even bother. There were and are lots of people who read things related to that "trickle down economics" crap, selfish people who saw a way to take from others to enrich themselves. But I think that most people who voted for Reagan never read an economic philosopy paper on "trickle-down". They watched tv and listened to speeches, talked with their neighbors. They were offered a picture in their heads of a Carter presidency where they had to grow up and bite the bullet for the good of the nation, or the "city on the hill" clown who promised them a better life (and because they don't read the papers I think most voters didn't realize that it meant much of their money and jobs had to go to someone else before it could trickle down). Should be coming back any day now...
Because we have no greater program , we fight FOX and the addled limbaugh character, certainly not because they provide anything much of a factual basis, but because they are disrespectful and hurt people 24x7. If Lakoff is correct, however, they are part of a larger campaign that intends to take every office it can in this country, and what it can't take it will obstruct until it is dead or they are in charge.. The radical right are metaphorically chaining themselves to the doors of any elected office and stopping anything until they get power.
They would rather see the country in ruins and dead than live without the strong father figure model that encapsulates most of their beliefs and policies (see Lakoff on Santorum's Strategy - scary). They want men in control of women's reproduction, they want the government broken. It should scare the beejezus out of any rational person to think they will make the rules. But the ideas they live on are repeated over and over on the above two sources. I even heard high-school kids parroting that crap when I was teaching driving. Theirs is a campaign to keep those ideas at least warm in our brain circuits, for anyone who listens.
Studies and papers and information for liberal values need to get out there, but we need a way to constantly repeat the guts so they become and stay active in people's brains. Today that probably means our own news channel, viral youtube clips, getting a minute or the late night comedian talk circuit. Or we could try a program big enough to suck all the oxygen out of the opponent's gasbag spokespeople. Put them on the defensive for a while. Like those convoy bombs we used in Iraq, but without killing anyone. It would get real publicity, the free kind you get when you make such a big fuss that all the media (except "those people on the right"
report on it, have interviews, specials, etc.
Not gonna hold my breath.. Too much corporate influence. You can't save slaves unless they know they are slaves, said H. Tubbman. So the job is consciousness raising in a country , or on partisan web sites, where the dollar has as important a voice as any American.
Edit history
= new reply since forum marked as read
