Posted on 02/25/2017 8:39:07 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
George Lakoff vividly recalls where he was and what he was doing the night Donald Trump was elected president.
“We were having some tacos,” said Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley. “I felt pretty bad afterward. And it wasn’t just the tacos.”
A lot of people had heartburn that night, unable to understand how such a uniquely unqualified candidate could be elected to the highest office in the free world. Lakoff understood exactly what had occurred.
“Why was it that all the polls were wrong?” asked Lakoff, speaking to a packed auditorium Thursday night at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club. “They were wrong because they only looked at demography. They looked at things you could find out about in the census — religion, income, gender, etc. But not about your values.”
Not only did Trump appeal to people with certain values, his shrewd messaging energized that base while confounding Democrats. In fact, Lakoff hinted at such a dynamic in his 2008 book “The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st Century American Politics with an 18th Century Brain.”
Nothing defines 21st century America like the torrent of information, misinformation and, yes, fake news available by all manner of means and at all times of day. Journalist Robert Rosenthal, who joined Lakoff at Thursday night’s program, likened it to getting information from a fire hose. It flows so fast that nobody can process it all. It’s not unusual for people, forced into selective consumption, to favor that which conforms to their core beliefs.
“We are now in an information civil war,” said Rosenthal, executive director of The Center for Investigative Reporting, “because you believe what you want to believe, and you don’t want to believe what they believe.”
Behold, then, Trump’s twin towers of power: information (Twitter being his specialty) and intractable tribes of “us” and “them.”
“You have to understand something about the brain to understand what’s going on here,” Lakoff said. “Every idea is physical. It’s in your neural circuitry. What that means is if you have an ideology, you have lots of complex circuitry, lots of ideas. Your very identity is wrapped up in that world view. That’s who you are. If you have that world view, then certain things must be facts or else your whole identity goes.”
So when Trump lies?
“The strong Trump supporters will take lies,” Lakoff said. “The lies are not as important as the truth that defines who they are. You can say, ‘He’s a liar,’ and it won’t matter.”
We have. And it doesn’t.
Beyond the untruths lie Trump’s genius for messaging, such as his recent contention that the free press is the enemy of the American people.
“The press did something really dumb after that happened,” Lakoff said. “They came out with a Twitter (post): ‘Not the enemy.’ Nixon said, ‘I am not a crook.’ Everybody thought he was a crook. (Say) ‘Not the enemy,’ and you’re going to think of them as the enemy. The reason is very simple. In order to negate something, you have to activate in your brain what is being negated. And every time you activate something in your brain, it becomes stronger. So the more you negate something, the stronger it gets.”
Somewhere Crooked Hillary nods her head knowingly.
That’s called framing an argument, and it’s one of Trump’s go-to ploys. Another is floating a trial Twitter balloon. And yet another is the good, old-fashioned diversion.
“The question arose about the emoluments clause and whether he should be thrown out of office because of it,” Lakoff said. “So what does he do? He talks about Meryl Streep. The media, like dogs following a ball … ”
Rosenthal, grudgingly one presumes, said Trump’s “use of Twitter is brilliant.”
Even at 3 a.m., Lakoff said, “He knows exactly what he’s doing in every single tweet.”
What lies has President Trump told? To this point none that I can see.
I believe reasoning people all eventually come to that conclusion. I stopped trying to reason with liberals some years back. It is a waste of time.
They are more familiar with Alinsky tactics, even if they are unaware of Alinsky. Ridicule works better, especially when it is reinforced with repeated and embarrassing defeat at the polls, in their employment (including losing their jobs), in public, with merciless, very merciless, ridicule.
They have done all this, and more, to build their army of borg drones.
Mercy is wasted on communists and muslims. They can all convert or die. They are all a threat to human civilization.
George Lakoff seems to be a long time hard Left socialist, who uses linguistics and the halls of academe as a facade for that agenda.
He’s been caught off guard by Trump’s success and wants to find a way to explain why the American people are rejecting the “progressive” goals that he socialist movement has been pushing his entire life. Lakoff not only hides behind linguistics, but is active politically.
—He was a party to the Spanish Socialist Workers Party
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDEAS_Foundation_for_progress
— and was a principal in the “progressive” Rockridge Institute.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockridge_Institute
This delusional ass wrote an article that itself shows that he is specifically what he believes he isnt. It doesn’t get any nuttier than that...or sadder.
They brought it on themselves.
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