"Read the bill!" they scream. (They didn't read the bill, either.)
The ability to read for meaning is dwindling. We still don't get it. We still think that Factcheck.org will set those angry citizens straight. George Lakoff tells us that our fights are won and lost at the gut level, not the brain level. Obama won not because of his policy positions but because he resonated with America at the core. We have to fight at the gut level.
Illiteracy is growing. How do we learn how to use a router? Read the manual or watch a video? Take a shop class? How do we learn about computers? Read a manual or use the Google tubes?
Even Apple people worry about this.
My neighbor Peter Rothbart teaches music at Ithaca College, and he's been noticing a disturbing trend among his students. Although they're capable of using the digital music software necessary for his courses, he says that many of them have trouble with the most basic of computer tasks, like saving files in a particular location on the hard disk. Worse, if something does go wrong, he finds, they have absolutely no idea how to solve the problem.
We happy few on this site have to absorb the framing gospel. We have to beat it into the heads of our reps and our orgs. Some of us are getting it.
SEIU's Burma Shave ads are great. But their website features factcheck and Sarah Palin! They haven't read "Don't Think About Sarah Palin." Their Burma Shave ads need to be on Yahoo and Google pages.
Dr. Dean gets it.
Dr Howard Dean bluntly tells it like it is, and that is without a public option there is no real health care reform even possible.
Great Dean Lines:
"Co-ops don't work. Blue Cross was a co-op."
"Medicare for all"
"No public option means this is an insurance company bailout bill."
Firedoglake is getting it. Junk Insurance!
We have to be simple and aggressive. ABC-Always. Be. Closing! If we are explaining, we are losing!