Thank you, George Lakoff.  Personally I subscribe to the idea that our political ideas are driven by behavior, the subconcious mind and emotion.  I just purchased 'Whose Freedom'  and 'The Political Mind', after seeing the theses of these books fit well with perceptions I have observing our political culture.  I have thought many times about writing on these things, though I am tending to do so using a more pedestrian narrative style ( I am a pretty pedestrian individual ).  It is not a straight forward thing to explain we have emotional triggers and these preceed our attachments to an ideology.  We believe ideology emanates from metaphysical or celestial ideals, not as a high level abstractions of desire, and fear, driven at the biological and social-pyschological level.  What George Lakoff does so well is elucidate features of our nature as people that deeply influence our ideological views.  Ideology easily becomes apologetics for any political stripe or motivation. 

'Conservativism' or 'Liberalism' are not pure political paradigms.  They are conventional political expressions that have social aggregations, diverse personality types and much more.  Ideology emanates from the bottom up, not the top down.  It gets 'pushed' from the top back down.  This may not gel with George Lakoff's theses completely.  But I think we agree about what lies at the root of our confusion.

Star spangled black and white

Rumors whispered in the night

Fear like love is blind

What we choose is a matter of grace

One door opens and another one closes

We choose fear or love, which ever is closer

Sherrod and the Spooners hold love more dear

They made this country a better place

Today on Morning Joe, Marco Rubio made an statement about the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf.  His opening statement, paraphrased, was "This was a sign about the current administration's inability to deal with a crisis." You can see the video clip here, and be your own judge.  It appears to be post-Katrina partisan politics to me.

This political rhetoric is becoming cliche.  First, we do not want "big government" stepping into our business.  In the case of British Petroleum (BP) and companies like them, it is not the business of the government to regulate.  This would include regulation and oversight of risky ventures like deep underwater drilling for oil. If there is an blowout, the government is supposed to "mop up", but not be so instrusive to preempt a disaster in the first place with targeted regulation. 

It is a delicate matter to strike a balance for what kind of oversight is needed.  Unfortunately, the polarity of the ideological landscape in American politics is challenged to show aptitude for this nuance. The real failure to communicate happened on the front end, not in the aftermath. The end result is taxpayers are on the hook for the bill.  Does this sound familiar to credit default swaps going south?

Goverment could have done something about this crisis: it could have insisted on standards and verifiable oversight of implementing those standards in the first place.  Instead, we are faced with an unprecedented ecological catastrophe.  It is a bit offensive in these circumstance to listen to a politician preeminently concerned with election politics.  This preoccupation with image is a side effect of the electoral season growing longer.  What happened to the season to govern? What happened to a time to lead?

Washington D.C. is a product of our culture.  It is not an island, no matter how far from Main Street it may seem.  I am growing skeptical that blaming special interest adequately explains why the political machine is not being as effective as desired.  Politicians in the business of being reelected and building party majorities seek to answer to the feelings of their constituents.  In many ways, doing politics is a matter of reacting to the polity.

Strong emotion obstructs our ability to be informed and make good decisions.  Provocative rhetoric is entertaining, but it does not build consensus:  it's divisive.  CPAC recently provided guests a Nancy Pelosi pinata and Harry Reed punching bag for entertainment, while convening under pretense and gravitas of turning our country in the right direction.  It is surreal to see people 40 years and older speaking and acting like this.  When people assemble to do politics while engaging in these kinds of speech acts, we should not be confused by the patriotism and rectitude of their politics:  this is placing politics ahead of government.

As the rhetoric elevates, the credibility of the actor may not be an issue among sympathizers.  But there is a tradeoff between capitalizing on the emotions of a specific group of people who sympathize while expecting to appear credible to others.  In so far this is true, an opportunity has been missed to make a case for one's cause except to those who more or less already agree. 

In a year with mid-term elections, there is speech of challenging incumbents and 'sending a message to Washington'.  Yet the political rhetoric is the same.  The culture of doing politics is not changing.  The idea we can switch out people without addressing the culture of our politics will likely result in unfulfilled expectations once more.  Politicians who cater to zealousness may inadvertantly undermine the legitimacy of the institutions they purport to represent.

There is something amiss about creating a political identity around a common enemy.  No matter who or what the enemy is, the problem is that a singular entity which represents or personifies "the problem" enables unrealistic expectations that some thing surmises our existential situation aptly.   If our challenges could be so aptly reduced to a singular point, which they cannot, this would lead some to a belief that there may be some absolute answer.  By focusing political attention on something simple and symbolic, we favor a salient over long-term political solutions. For example, consider the debate on global warming. 

A common threat to humanity would be significant climatic change. Presently fossil fuels have shaped the debate. The argument goes that if we invent clean, renewable energy the problem is solved.  First of all, the debate over global warming oversimplifies the problem because global warming does not necessarily cover other issues like the impact of the global population boom on the environment. Are fossil fuels really the problem? 

Another concern is the role of utopianism intruding into the science of this debate:  If we discover clean, renewable energy has technology saved us?  Technology cannot simply "mop up" facts that are consequences of our behavior.  Technology does not resolve our existential dance with chance. But we want to believe it can.  We want to believe it will.  This desire appears to be compelling enough that it is almost like a quasi-religion that does not recognize the possibility of contingent outcomes very well:  A "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it" philosophical perspective.

The question is how aptly or gracefully can our political culture adapt to growing complexity?  Growing complexity means more ambiguity about causes and effects.  For example, E-85 became a trendy political solution to answer the "carbon question."  This sparked speculation on corn futures, leading more and more farms to remove other produce from their crop rotation in favor of pesticide heavy corn farming.  It became a boom for the bread basket and big business in Washington.  Side-effects of this political solution were food shortages and a hunger crisis in the third word despite the fact there was really no shortage of food. 

The debate over ecological integrity and stability is over simplified if the trend is to single out culprits and villains.  This detracts us from examining our personal responsibility, and in the theater of politics encourages a ritual of scape goating.  There is also the possibility that environmental politics will be pigeon-holed in the mainstream and a more replete discussion of sustainability will become a missed opportunity: what about the ecology of waste or population?  The idea technology will save us is especially disappointing:  this omits the role of human behavior, creates unrealistic confidence and expectations in lieu of this, and facilitates a politics of salient solutions over long term ones.