Democracy in Question

Usually I have editors to blame for my published pieces that have problems, but this time the subpar performance is almost all mine. (They cut one sentence and screwed with the paragraphs which upset the all-important rhythm, but that's it this time.) Still, you might get something out of this review of two new books, Whose Freedom? by George Lakoff and Does American Democracy Still Work? by Alan Wolfe. I recommend the Wolfe book.

If you are left aghast and amazed by politics and government today, these two books are for you. There are plenty of screeds and exposes on the details, but Boston College political scientist Alan Wolfe and UC Berkeley professor of linguistics George Lakoff concentrate on the bigger picture of what is happening and why.

This is not your grandfather’s democracy, they say; it’s not even your father’s. Most Americans over 30 -- especially liberals and moderates -- who formed their impressions of political institutions and the political dialogue before, say, 1984, are in for a rude awakening.

Continued at the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review.

Update: An article in the Washington Post today seems to support one of the central assertions of these books--it cites a study which purports to show that political ads need to engage emotions to be effective. Well, duh. I don't see that the extrapolation--emotions matter, ideas don't--necessarily follows. It's such bipolar thinking, don't you think?

Anyway, there was this interesting side-finding: It is comparatively difficult to persuade anyone to change their mind on an issue. What works much better, because it influences people at an emotional and subtle level, is to get people to focus on a different issue -- the one where the candidate is the strongest. Of course, I thought immediately of Al Gore in 2008. And it is interesting that the Wapo writer linked "emotional and subtle." Since when are emotions more subtle than ideas? Only when you conceive of ideas as yes/no, up/down bipolar positions. Or when you're so spooked by the unconscious or the preconscious that you think of anything that operates on that level as voodoo.