I'll talk policy in a later blog. For me, the extreme demonizing of the opposition and the refusal to disavow conspiracy theories get to the emotional heart of my viewing the current Republican Party as a party on the fringe of reason. * [update below] Now, I understand that there is always going to be a bit of mudslinging in political races. I don't like it, but I get it. People are not truly rational; they are motivated by emotion. Candidates want to move the emotional meter in their favor, so they dredge up anything about the other candidate that might not be too shiny and besmear their opponent's image some more. However, the Republican Party and its advertising allies have taken this besmirching to new lows. The now iconic Willie Horton ads of of George H.W. Bush's campaign against Michael Dukakis relied upon racial fear for their effectiveness, and that method has been used over and over again in campaigns since then: associate the opposition with some scary figure, with someone or some group that will activate racial or ethnic fears.
When we were living in Georgia (the first time), we witnessed Republican Saxby Chambliss's senate campaign against Democrat Max Cleland, a man who had lost both legs and one arm fighting in Vietnam. Chambliss's ads followed the pattern established by those Willie Horton ads. This time, the scary figure was Osama bin Laden. The personal attack ads began with bin Laden's photo ("scary Muslim"), followed by a photo of Max Cleland. The ads questioned Cleland's courage and leadership and distorted Cleland's voting record on Homeland Security. They also illustrate another tactic that I've seen over and over again in Republican ads: question the patriotism of the Democratic opponent. It was an irony evidently lost on a majority of Georgian voters that Chambliss, who received student and medical deferments to avoid the draft, was questioning the courage of a man whose limbs were blown off while fighting for his country.
Questioning the patriotism of an opponent descended to new lows in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (an ironic title if there ever was one) attack ads on the military career of John Kerry, in the 2000 presidential campaign. While the ads weren't official ads of the Republican Party and were heavily financed by a billionaire known for his financial support of Republican causes, Houston home builder Bob J. Perry, funding was also supplied by President Bush and Tom Delay. And George W. Bush and the Republican Party didn't repudiate the ads, did they? Again, the irony is that the one whose military career raised real questions was George W. Bush, who landed a cushy appointment with the Texas National Guard while John Kerry was fighting in Vietnam. But those attack ads, vicious and untrue as they were, worked: questions about Bush's military career were dropped while Kerry's military career was smeared.
And this is the way Republican campaign ads work: question the patriotism of the opposition, associate the opposition with people who arouse ethnic or racial fears, and label the opposition as "elitist" and "other." Barack Hussein Obama is a Republican campaign advertiser's dream: the Muslim name, the black father, the childhood spent in a foreign country, the Harvard degree. Have a Muslim name? You hate Christians. Not wearing a flag pin in your damn lapel? You hate your country. Have lived in a foreign country (even though as a child and your living situation wasn't of your choosing)? You hate your country. Have an Ivy League degree? You hate your fellow citizens. Have a dark face? You hate whitey.
In 1996, Newt Gingrich compiled a list of emotionally-laden words and provided that list to a conservative Republican group to distribute to Republicans for use in their campaigns. The title of his memo is revealing: "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control." Controlling whom? You, dear citizens. Us.
"Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party," Gingrich advised:
anti-(issue): flag, family, child, jobs; betray; bizarre; bosses; bureaucracy; cheat; coercion; 'compassion' is not enough; collapse(ing); consequences; corrupt; corruption; criminal rights; crisis; cynicism; decay; deeper; destroy; destructive; devour; disgrace; endanger; excuses; failure (fail); greed; hypocrisy; ideological; impose; incompetent; insecure; insensitive; intolerant; liberal; lie; limit(s); mandate(s); obsolete; pathetic; patronage; permissive attitude; pessimistic; punish (poor...); radical; red tape; self-serving; selfish; sensationalists; shallow; shame; sick; spend(ing); stagnation; status quo; steal; taxes; they/them; threaten; traitors; unionized; urgent(cy); waste; welfare. [my emphasis](Your homework: find a political speech by Newt Gingrich on You-Tube and see how many of these words and their derivatives he uses to describe Democrats or other opponents.)
I'm not advocating abolishing emotive words in campaign speeches. But when someone uses language to distort reality, to manipulate emotions so as to distort the truth, that's a serious problem. Demonizing the opposition (calling them "traitors," labeling them as anti-flag, anti-family, claiming they endanger life and decency) suggests to me an inability or unwillingness to grapple the serious issues of governing a democracy.
Update:
I mis-wrote here, I think, in saying the Republican Party is on the fringe of reason. Republican Party leaders are pandering to the unreasonable fringe within the party (more discussion in a later post) to gain power and are using language effectively to appeal to emotion in order to circumvent reason. Studies in neuroscience are showing us just how much emotion and the use of emotional code words affect our reason. Drew Westen, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, discusses the results of such studies in his book The Political Brain: How We Make up Our Minds Without Using Our Heads. Folks need to be made aware of how they can be manipulated. Emotion AND reason are required to make good decisions (or so I think). A review of Westen's book is here: The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of a Nation, by Richard M. Waugaman.
More on this kind of stuff, if you're interested:
- "Your Brain on Politics: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Liberals and Conservatives," Andrea Kuszewski guest-posting on Chris Mooney's blog The Intersection on the Discover Magazine web site.
- [more to come--got to do some other stuff now]
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