Political Discourse and the Media.

Political Discourse and the Media.

All politics is moral. The facts of any given political issue are filtered through a moral world view. Every determination is colored or even dictated by the underlying morals of the world view applied to that issue. Even the facts are accepted or rejected based on that. It’s in our brains. It’s how we work. This reality MUST become the basis of a new 21st century model for political discourse, if we are to avoid catastrophe and warfare. In America, we have 2 parties, and one of them has been leveraging this knowledge to their benefit for decades, almost completely unchecked by the other. Let’s examine the issue of immigration through 3 different world views in America.

For progressives, the morality of immigration all about support and nurture. They see immigrants at our border as folks who need help, and they want to do what good progressives always want to do?—?to help and support people who need help. Every response to the issue of immigration can be understood through that moral lens. To accusations of wrong doing, progressives mostly reject that wrong doing occurred?—?rationalize it away as asylum seeking due to extraordinary circumstances. Even if we acknowledge that crossing a border without papers is legally wrong, progressive corrective action is guidance and support, especially for a minor offense like not having your paperwork in order, so there should be no punishment. But really, it’s the moral impulse to help that guides progressives.

Conservatives apply a different set of morals to this issue, the morals of sanctity, of following the law, and of social order. Their only possible response, given their world view’s exclusive method for corrective action, is punishment, not guidance or support. The simple judgement is that those folks broke the law, and should be punished, because that’s what you do to people who break the law. It doesn’t matter how trivial the infraction is, and pointing out that it’s a misdemeanor will not persuade. It’s a simple moral calculation, and reason has nothing to do with it. It doesn’t matter that that is barely true that they “broke the law,” because the facts don’t matter?—?the morals matter.

There is a third group. Liberals?—?real liberals?—?would see the border itself as an infringement on freedom and liberty. These are the “free trade” kind of people. They might make arguments about how the border was completely open before the 1950s (yes, really), and the appearance tickets you’d get for crossing it without paper work, was barely enforced before the 1990s, and only really enforced after 9/11/2001. But reason and rationalism don’t persuade.

(Liberals are the most distributed group, taking up space in both parties. They often refer to themselves as “centrists,” but that’s just not an accurate label. They make up the increasingly unpopular leadership within the Democratic Party, and social conservatives who are liberal on economic policy in the Republican Party, and the strange Republican Libertarians. The old Washington consensus of neoliberals are economic liberals, with varying social leanings. That’s why they agree to privatize everything, and on free trade. It’s a moral agreement between the parties?—?all politics is moral.)

If you see the issue of immigration as a law and order issue, an argument about freedom or nurture might as well be the sound of wind. Only if you see this as a moral issue about liberty, might you be persuaded by an argument about liberty. Only if you see this as an issue of nurture, might you be persuaded by an argument about help and support. If you have multiple leanings?—?the race is on?—?who’s going to apply the most compatible moral frame first? This is why rational arguments don’t persuade in politics.

For progressives, this is a simple issue, with a simple moral calculus. It’s the same with conservatives, and the same for liberals. And it’s the same for people with multiple world views?—?and we all have multiple world views, even though they aren’t compatible with each other. We make judgements about these issues based simply on which world view we are applying to an issue in the moment. And there are tricks we can use (and that Republicans have been abusing for decades) to activate the world view compatible with your desired judgement.

Some people are remarkably consistent on which world view they apply to political considerations?—?but most people are wafflers, applying a different world view to different issues, and even applying different world views to the same issue, in different contexts (conservative at home, progressive at work, for example). It’s true?—?humans have a remarkable ability to believe multiple incompatible “truths” at the same time! Well, not exactly at the same time, we mostly switch world views unconsciously, rarely being forced to reconcile them, and never at the same time. There is no blended world view. There is no rational “centrist.” They do not exist. (There is a way to put things in balance, but not without understanding the foundations, and not without accepting that some moral precepts simply conflict. That’s for another article.)

Narratively, we can activate one or the other, before explaining our policy. This is what is meant by moral framing. If I’m talking about immigration, and my judgement is we should help those folks, because my morals say we should help those who need help, then I might choose to tell empathetic stories about the plight of the immigrants, and connect their current situation to the situation our fore-bearers experienced. Or I can simply explain that how we treat people is more about us than it is about them, and demand that America is and be a kind and nurturing place —then demand we provide support. If I’m conservative, and have a knee jerk reaction that says those “other” people are not like us, then I need to come up with a rationalization to justify punishment. They don’t have their paperwork in order, etc. That’s enough reason to separate their families, and lock everyone up, right? Oh, it’s about the drugs, you literally just made up out of thing air… Got it, you want to punish them.

We can choose a world view to apply if we are aware of them, but only if we are aware of how this works. If we are not aware, we are almost certainly getting manipulated. Republicans have been using and understanding of moral framing for decades in their marketing, almost completely unchallenged by any other political group?—?least of all the Democrats, and especially not the media.

So what do we do about it?

My preference is education?—?I’m a progressive?—?nurture and support. If we can get a broadly disseminated understanding of all this, we can have real dialog again. But I can’t wave my hands and get the entire country to understand this, so instead we must use this information to lead. Let’s frame this righteously, that’s the point, right? To a liberal, whose world view is all about individual liberty, maybe this feels manipulative. No it isn’t. It’s just clear communication and leadership. This is what leadership has always been, selling the moral vision?—?taking us to the promised land. The way to persuade on any given political issue, is to invoke the right moral world view, before describing policy or judgement. Everything in politics is a moral equation, not a rational one. If we ignore that, we cannot be effective political leaders. If you are in the media an ignore it, you cannot hope to explain any given issue to your readers effectively.

If it’ll ease our liberal conscious, we can simply also explain the trick. Honestly, it’s so hard to get anyone to truly understand this stuff, that it won’t have much of an impact, but let’s try anyway.

This is so important for journalism. Journalists are supposed to be the intermediaries?—?that’s where the word “media” comes from. It’s true that Democrats suck at moral branding, which you in the media often conflate with having “a message”. Democrats have a message?—?they just don’t have branding, and because of that the media is just essentially ignoring it, in favor of the right wing’s brand messaging. But Democrats frankly shouldn’t have to have a brand strategy to make headway in the media. The intermediaries in should know what a politician’s bias is, and be able to explain it to their readers effectively. If you write about politics, and you can’t take any given issue?—?including economic issues, not just social or justice issues?—?and write three paragraphs, one for each of the 3 major world views in America, then how can you call yourself a political reporter? How can you repeat focus group tested talking points from one party or the other, designed to manipulate as part of a strategy, without understanding how that strategy works? How can you analyze data, when all the questions follow a Republican lead? How can you write about this stuff, without explaining to your readers what the strategies employed by the politicians and parties are? How could you possibly educate your readers? You can’t. The Democrats are failing to manage the media sure, but the media?—?America’s 4th estate, is utterly failing in their core responsibility to tell the whole truth to their readers. Utterly failing.

Every time a journalist asks Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden for their message (by which they mean, brand message), after an hour long press conference, they are demonstrating that they understand none of this, or at least are not applying that understanding, if they do. A journalist shouldn’t have to ask a politician for their world view, which is what they are really asking. Joe Biden’s world view is obvious, if you understand what that is, and listen to the words he’s saying. It might even help ask better questions. It’d certainly help write better, more informative articles. Maybe it’d even move units.

It’s the morals, stupid.

The arguments liberals and progressives and the non-partisan media make sound rational. But they mostly just repeat what different groups say about any given issue, without even trying to describe the moral context, or highlighting the shared world views at play. Rarely do they put the rhetoric in a moral context?—?and all politics is moral. Because of that, journalists, the well meaning ones anyway, are often entirely manipulated. They do occasionally touch the moral substance, but usually only after repeating right wing moral phrases, and usually only after things get really bad, like armed insurrection on January 6. Honestly, it’s maddening.

What will it take? World War III? American Civil War II? What will it take for the media, Democrats and Progressives to finally learn how this works. What will it take for them to finally respond in kind to a Republican machine they’ve been building for decades to manipulate the population on this ground? What will it take for the well meaning among us to finally fight on equal footing? What will it take?

And one more thing for the Democrats?—?this is not about brand marketing. A lot of Democrats in particular seem to write this stuff off as “branding,” throw up their hands, and continue to try to persuade with rational discourse. It doesn’t work. Branding, incorrectly applied, doesn’t work either. But this is NOT about branding?—?not exactly. There is cross over with marketing and branding, because brand marketing is largely built built on an intuitive understanding of this kind of groupish cognition. In particular, if you can adequately frame a political issue in a moral “value” you can indeed sell your “product” (policy) more readily. Republicans do this a lot. They don’t actually have a moral core, morally speaking, they don’t stand for anything (Biden is right about that, and everyone knows it)?—?they just know the difference between a political moral world view, and brand value. Brand marketing works on top of moral cognition (sometimes intentional, sometime accidentally), but its not the same thing. This is deeper than brand marketing. This is about political morality, the basis for all political judgement. It has to be incorporated in our discourse. Even better, if we can start to think more clearly?—?even rationally?—?about all this, we might even be able to discuss it rationally again. But we can’t just ignore it, and fail to respond to Republican attempts to manipulate the discourse. We definitely can’t just reject it as brand marketing. That’s been losing elections for decades.