keys-to-talking-to-difficult-people-revised 8-4-11

8/6/2019 keys-to-talking-to-difficult-people-revised 8-4-11

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Keys to talking to difficult people

1. Find common values

a. care for children b. safe neighborhoodsc. compassion for the working mand. honest governmente. the declaration of independence

i. equalityii. rights

1. life2. liberty3. pursuit of happiness4. government by consent of governed5. right to protest for change

f. preamble to the constitution

i. justiceii. Security

iii. Common defenseiv. General welfarev. Liberty for ourselves and our children

g. From Jerry Feldman [Framing Shop is Open ]i. Notice two aspects of narratives .. : focus on problem solving

over party and empha[size] short-term change in politicalbehavior as a risk worth taking to begin driving government in abetter direction.

ii. Threat of missing an opportunity to move an important project forward.And to make this kind offer successful, it must be tied to a trulypragmatic, truly urgent challenge.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice,insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare,and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establishthis Constitution for the United States of America.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed bytheir Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuitof happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their

just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and toinstitute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers insuch form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.


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iii. Example form 2008 elections: young man who confesses to being'pro-life,' but who put that issue aside for the 2008 election . Whatkinds of projects move a person with such deep religious commitmentsto put aside a key issue--temporarily--in order to vote for a Obama? Hed[id]not say, but I suspect they are global warming, healthcare,poverty, retirement, Iraq, the housing market.

iv. Instead of taking this approach, we allow our civic debate to bedominated by interests who benefit more from projects that fail thanfrom projects that succeed.

2. Lead with values: Some possibilities to stimulate your thinking:Lakoffs Ten-Word Philosophy for Progressives contained in Dont Think of An Elephant . Theten words are stated below:

- Stronger America - stronger on the defense, the economy, education; moreeffective in the world .

- Broad Prosperity - markets that provide every American a fair opportunity to prosper.

- Better Future - investing in improvement of the economy, education, and theenvironment.

- Effective Government clean, honest, efficient, and effective governmentworking for a better future.

- Mutual Responsibility values of families and communities: caring andresponsibility.

Some relevant biblical/religious/ethical concepts to incorporate(Thanks to Marguerite Reed for these , taken form Wallis Gods Politics. )

Measure candidates policies against the full range of religious and moral valuesPoverty Matthew 25:35-40Environment Genesis 2:15War Matthew 5:9Truth-telling John 8:32Response to Terror Proverbs 8:12-13A Consistent Ethic of Life Deuteronomy 30:19

3. Choose YOUR issue to lead upon. Everybody cant be an expert on everything.

4. KNOW their language and have your language already set

This means, for example: DONT say death tax back to them, it reinforces their pointand feeds their convictions. Say Paris Hilton Tax , to shake up their mental processes.They literally will find it very hard to even evaluate your point if you dont change thelanguage . See Drew Westons The Political Brain for a full discussion.


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5. Jim Willis:

a. if you are a believer, engage believers in their own language b. if you are not, be respectful of their beliefs, link the fundamental call for human

decency and compassion to your ideas. All believers claim these ideals as aminimum standard.

c. My favorite line from the Christian testament:i. by their fruits you shall know them in plain language, what you

value, what you believe is revealed by what you actually do, by theimpact of your choices in the world.

6. Drew Weston: The Political Brain: Where he uses the word, candidate, substitute thesmart persuader , Someone trying to convince or hold a substantive discussion with adifficult person Pay special attention to the pragmatic consequence of this analysis:

Two visions of mind and brain predominate in contemporary American politics.One is a dispassionate vision, which suggests that voters choose candidates byexamining their positions on the issues, seeing who has the best positions on themost important issues, and calculating their relative utilities. The other, a

passionate vision, suggests that voters are moved by the feelings candidates and parties elicit in them.

The dispassionate vision of the mind bears no relation to how the mind actuallyworks. It flies in the face of everything we actually know from psychology andneuroscience about the evolution of the brain and the nature and function of emotion. It flies in the face of research in political science, which finds that the

best predictors of voting behavior are emotional, not cognitive. And it flies in theface of modern American political history, in which strategists who have tried toapproach voters through dispassionate, issue-oriented campaigns have routinelyfailed.

The dispassionate vision of mind and brain takes as axiomatic a trickle-up theoryof politics, which assumes that voters start by evaluating policy positions, andthat the results of these evaluations gradually trickle up into voting decisions. Yetthe data from thousands of voters surveyed across multiple elections since the1940s tell a very different story.

Voters tend to ask four questions that determine who they will vote for, which provide a hierachy of influences on their decisions about whether and how tovote: How do I feel about the candidates party and its principles? How doesthis candidate make me feel? How do I feel about this candidates personalcharacteristics, particularly his or her integrity, leadership, and compassion? and

How do I feel about this candidates stands on issues that matter to me?

Candidates who focus their campaigns toward the top of this hierarchy and work their way down generally win. They drink from the wellsprings of partisanfeelings. They tell emotionally compelling stories about who they are and whatthey believe in. They read the emotional signals of their constituents well, andthey make use of strategists who share or complement their political intelligencewith intuition and science to help them express their principles, values, and

positions in ways that resonate with the voters back home. They run on who they


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are and what they genuinely care about, and they know their constituents wellenough to know where they share their values and where they dont. They canmove people to tears, laughter, compassion, anger, and feelings of sanctity. Theytell compelling stories. They speak at the level of principled stands. They provideemotionally compelling examples of the ways they would govern, signatureissues that illustrate their principles and foster identification.

Candidates who start at the bottom of the hierarchy and work their way upgenerally lose. They present voters with facts and figures to support their arguments, and they trust that voters will weigh the information carefully tomake informed decisions. They present laundry lists of issues and positionstatements showing how they would solve one problem after another. Theyappeal to voters material interests and assume that rational voters will vote withtheir pocketbooks. If they are attacked by their opponent with emotional or inaccurate appeals, they assume that voters are rational and interested enough toignore or refute it, and they either respond with more facts and figures or withsilence.

These visions of the mind are like vast rivers, whose tributaries extendthroughout the entire continent of a campaign. Each one naturally flows downcertain banks but not others. When you hear a campaign operative express someversion of, Weve got them beat on the issues, you know youre on thedispassionate river, and you know the candidate is going under.

It is time for those on the left to dam the dispassionate river, and to focus onnavigating and channeling the emotional currents of the passionate political

brain.

Pragmatically, what does that mean?

It means abandoning traditional Democratic laundry lists, with each specialinterest putting its issue in the bag, and instead telling and retelling compellingnarratives of what progressives stand for and what they wont stand for.It means recognizing the complex and conflicting networks that constitute publicopinion, which cant be mapped in one dimension.

It means recognizing that most issues that matter to voters are fraught withconflicting emotions, not only between people but within people, and that themost persuasive appeals are usually those that are the most honest: thatacknowledge the ambivalence, expose the limits of the extremes, and offer a

principled stand that avoids any need for hedging or defensiveness.

It means recognizing the shared and unshared networks of different emotionalconstituencies and searching for networks that bridge them.

It means recognizing the difference between conscious and unconscioussentiments, appealing to voters better angels, and calling hate by name.It means recognizing that elections are won or lost in the marketplace of emotions, and that political persuasion is about managing emotions by activatingthe right networks.


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7. seven crucial intellectual moves [ Lakoff]

a. first move is to distinguish programs from the value systems they representi. This separation between values and programs lies behind the presidents

pledge to cut programs that dont serve those values and support thosethat do no matter whether they are proposed by Republicans or Democrats. The Presidents idealistic question is, what policies servewhat values? not what political interests?

b. Progressive Values are American Values

i. Progressive thought rests, first, on the value of empathy - puttingoneself in other peoples shoes, seeing the world through their eyes, andtherefore caring about them. The second principle is acting on that care,taking responsibility both for oneself and others, social as well asindividual responsibility. The third is acting to make oneself, the country,and the world betterwhat Obama has called an ethic of excellencetoward creating a more perfect union politically.

ii. Empathy is not mere sympathy. Putting oneself in the shoes of others brings with it the responsibility to act on that empathyto be our brothers keeper and our sisters keeperand to act to improveourselves, our country, and the world.

iii. The logic is simple: Empathy is why we have the values of freedom,fairness, and equality for everyone, not just for certain individuals. If we put ourselves in the shoes of others, we will want them to be free andtreated fairly. Empathy with all leads to equality: no one should betreated worse than anyone else. Empathy leads us to democracy: to avoid

being subject indefinitely to the whims of an oppressive and unfair ruler,we need to be able to choose who governs us and we need a governmentof laws.

iv. he is not a progressive; he is just an American. That is a crucialintellectual move.

v. Those empathy-based moral values are the opposite of the conservativefocus on individual responsibility without social responsibility. Theymake it intolerable to tolerate a president who is The Deciderwho getsto decide without caring about or listening to anybody. Empathy-based

values are opposed to the pure self-interest of a laissez-faire freemarket, which assumes that greed is good and that seeking self-interestwill magically maximize everyones interests. They oppose a purely self-interested view of America in foreign policy. Obamas foreign policy isempathy-based, concerned with people as well as stateswith poverty,education, disease, water, the rights of women and children, ethniccleansing, and so on around the world.


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vi. Empathy: the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, theselflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friendlose their job, the firefighters courage to storm a stairway filled withsmoke, but also a parents willingness to nurture a childResponsibility to ourselves and others: We have duties to ourselves, thenation, and the world. The ethic of excellence: there is nothing sosatisfying to the spirit, so defining of character, than giving our all to adifficult task. They define our democracy: This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed.

vii. And to religion as well: By quoting language like our brothers keeper,he is communicating that mere individual responsibility will not get youinto Heaven, that social responsibility and making the world better isrequired.

c. Biconceptualism and the New Bipartisanship

1. biconceptualism, the knowledge that a great many people whoidentify themselves ideologically as conservatives, or politicallyas Republicans or Independents, share those fundamentalAmerican values -- at least on certain issues. Mostconservatives are not thoroughgoing movement conservatives,

but are what I have called partial progressives sharingObamas American values on many issues. Where such folksagree with him on values, Obama tries, and will continue to try,to work with them on those issues if not others. And, he assumes,correctly believe, that the more they come to think in terms of those American values, the less they will think in terms of opposing conservative values.

2. Biconceptualism is central to Obamas attempts to achieve unity a unity based on his understanding of American values. Thecurrent economic failure gives him an opening to speak about theeconomy in terms of those ideals: caring about all, prosperity for all, responsibility for all by all, and good jobs for all who want towork.

3. But hardcore movement conservatives tend to be moreideological and less biconceptual than their constituents. In therecent stimulus vote, the hardcore movement conservatives kept

party discipline (except for three Senate votes) by threatening torun opposition candidates against anyone who broke ranks. Theywere able to enforce this because the conservative messagemachine is strong in their districts and there is no nationwide

progressive message machine operating in those districts. Theeffectiveness of the conservative message machine led to Obamamaking a rare mistake in communication, the mistake of sayingout loud in Florida not to think of Rush Limbaugh, thus violating


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the first rule of framing and giving Rush Limbaugh even greater power.

4. Biconceptual, partly progressive, Republicans do exist inCongress, and the president is not going to give up on them. Butas long as the conservative message machine can activate itsvalues virtually unopposed in conservative districts, movementconservatives can continue to pressure biconceptual Republicansand keep them from voting their conscience on many issues. Thisis why a nationwide progressive message machine needs to beorganized if the president is to achieve unity through

biconceptualism.

d. Protection and Empowerment

1. The fourth idea behind the Obama Code is the Presidentsunderstanding of governmentnot whether our government istoo big or too small, but whether it works. This depends onwhat works means. The word sounds purely pragmatic, but itis moral in operation.

2. The idea is that government has twin moral missions: protectionand empowerment. Protection includes not just military and

police protection, but protections for the environment,

consumers, workers, pensioners, disaster victims, and investors.3. Empowerment is what his stimulus package is about: it includes

education and other forms of infrastructureroads, bridges,communications, energy supply, the banking system and stock

market. The moral mission of government is simple: no one canearn a living in America or live an American life without

protection and empowerment by the government. The stimulus package is basically an empowerment package. Taxes are whatyou pay for living in America, rather than in Congo or Bangladesh. And the more money you make from government

protection and empowerment, the more you owe in return.Progressive taxation is a matter of moral accounting. Tax cuts for the middle class mean that the middle class hasnt been gettingas much as it has been contributing to the nations productivityfor many years.

4. This view of government meshes with our national ideal of equality. There needs to be moral equality: equal protection andequal empowerment. We all deserve health care protection,retirement protection, worker protection, employment protection,

protection of our civil liberties, and investment protection.Protection and empowerment. Thats what works means

whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care theycan afford, a retirement that is dignified.


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e. Morality and Economics Fit Together

1. Why the quartet of leading economic issueseducation, energy,health, banking? Because they are at the heart of governmentsmoral mission of protection and empowerment, andcorrespondingly, they are what is needed to act on empathy,social and personal responsibility, and making the future better.The economic crisis is also an opportunity. It requires him tospend hundreds of billions of dollars on the right things to do.

f. Systemic Causation and Systemic Risk

1. Conservatives tend to think in terms of direct causation. Theoverwhelming moral value of individual, not social,responsibility requires that causation be local and direct. For each individual to be entirely responsible for the consequencesof his or her actions, those actions must be the direct causes of those consequences. If systemic causation is real, then the mostfundamental of conservative moraland economicvalues isfallacious.

2. Global ecology and global economics are prime examples of systemic causation. Global warming is fundamentally a system

phenomenon. That is why the very idea threatens conservativethinking. And the global economic collapse is also systemic innature. That is at the heart of the death of the conservative

principle of the laissez-faire free market, where individual short-term self-interest was supposed to be natural, moral, and the bestfor everybody. The reality of systemic causation has left

conservatism without any real ideas to address global warmingand the global economic crisis.

3. With systemic causation goes systemic risk. The old rationalactor model taught in economics and political science ignoredsystemic risk. Risk was seen as local and governed by directcausation, that is, buy short-term individual decisions. Theinvestment banks acted on their own short-term risk, based onshort-term assumptions, for example, that housing prices wouldcontinue to rise or that bundles of mortgages once secure for theshort term would continue to be secure and could be traded as

securities.

4. The systemic nature of ecological and economic causation andrisk have resulted in the twin disasters of global warming andglobal economic breakdown. Both must be dealt with on asystematic, global, long-term basis. Regulating risk is global andlong-term, and so what are required are world-wide institutionsthat carry out that regulation in systematic way and that monitor causation and risk systemically, not just locally.


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g. Concepts and Patriotic Languagei. As President, Barack Obama must speak in patriotic language. But all

patriot language in this country is contested. Every major patrioticterm has a core meaning that we all understand the same way. But thatcommon core meaning is very limited in its application. Most uses of

patriotic language are extended from the core on the basis of either conservative or progressive values to produce meanings that are oftenopposite from each other.

ii. For forty years, from the late 1960s through 2008, conservativesmanaged, through their extensive message machine, to reframe much of our political discourse to fit their worldview. President Obama isreclaiming our patriotic language after decades of conservativedominance, to fit what he has correctly seen as the ideals behind thefounding of our country.

iii. Freedom will no longer mean what George W. Bush meant by it.Guantanamo will be closed, torture outlawed, the market regulated.Obamas inaugural address was filled with framings of patriotic conceptsto fit those ideals. Not just the concept of freedom, but also equality,

prosperity, unity, security, interests, challenges, courage, purpose, loyalty, patriotism, virtue, character, and grace. Look at these words in hisinaugural address and you will see how Obama has situated their meaning within his view of fundamental American values: empathy,social and well as personal responsibility, improving yourself and your country. We can expect further reclaiming of patriotic languagethroughout his administration.

8. The message machine:

a. The president and his administration cannot build such a communication system,nor can the Democrats in Congress. The DNC does not have the resources. It will

be up to supporters of the Obama values, not just supporters on the issues, to putsuch a system in place. Despite all the organizing strength of Obama supporters,no such organizing effort is now going on. If none is put together, the movementconservatives will face few challenges of fundamental values in their homeconstituencies and will be able to go on stonewalling with impunity. That willmake the presidents vision that much harder to carry out.

b. The president hasnt fooled the radical ideological conservatives in Congress.They know progressive values when they see them and they see them in their own colleagues and constituents too often for comfort. The radical conservativesare aware that this economic crisis threatens not only their political support, butthe very underpinnings of conservative ideology itself. Nonetheless, their brainshave not been changed by facts. Movement conservatives are not fading away.They think their conservative values are the real American values. They still havetheir message machine and they are going to make the most of it. The ratings for


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Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are rising. Without a countervailingcommunications system on the Democratic side, they can create a lot of trouble,not just for the president, not just for the nation, but on a global scale, for theenvironmental and economic future of the world.

keys-to-talking-to-difficult-people-revised 8-4-11

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