FRAMES AND FACTS

John Mayard Keynes said many things including when the facts change, my opinion changes. Whether this was true for Keynes, I do not know, but I suspect it is not true for most people, and the political debate is more often about frames than facts, and in the case of the crowd around George Bush it is wholly about frames. Our emotions, when strong enough crowd out the facts. I have to go back to an earlier post for definitions. Therefore, to engage in a political argument it is necessary to understand the frame, as much, and sometimes more so, than to understand the facts.

Troppo was running under it banner a quote from John Stuart Mills to the effect that the person who only knew one side of the argument could not understand even that argument. Logic is often about apparent cleverness and not truth.

There are examples everything. I noticed a report, in the Sydney Morning Herald about the division in world views between Islam and Christianity, and yet largely the outcome of understandable ignorance, deliberately enhanced by the politics of fear and polarization, for which no mealy-mouthed politician will take responsibility. The failure to assume responsibility is in stark contrast to the social responsibility insisted on for welfare recipients.

As I have said previously the immediate withdrawal from Iraq is as much a grave moral issue in the face of the suffering inflicted on the Iraqi people by, in the simplest terms, imperialist greed (oil), hyprocrisy(aerial bombing, “shock and awe”), and criminal incompetence. Now, Rove and the crude crew, want to frame the opponents to their failed imperialist adventure as cowards (cutting and running).

Larry Beinhart, via Common Dreams, has the right appoarch, which in essence is do not accept the frame put about by Rove and the gang.

About these ads