Suspicious unsupported comments on liberal sites

I'm beginning to wonder whether the Republican presidential money machine is paying folks to post non-sense, ad hominem responses to articles on liberal web sites.

Case in point are comments (replete with egregious spelling errors) attached to a current article by George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling on the Common Dreams site.

Do these comments really come from regular readers of Common Dreams? I don't think so. So what brings them to Common Dreams? The Koch brothers?

If the comments made any sense at all, or addressed the issues raised in the article, they would have value. Instead they are vacuous rants devoid of any substance.

Herbert hits the mark — again

For the second Saturday in a row, Bob Herbert of the New York Times, has hit the mark. This time the reader has to get to the bottom of his column to find the target, but there it is for all to see.

Among the many heartening things about the workers fighting back in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere is the spotlight that is being thrown on the contemptuous attitude of the corporate elite and their handmaidens in government toward ordinary working Americans: police officers and firefighters, teachers, truck drivers, janitors, health care aides, and so on. These are the people who do the daily grunt work of America. How dare we treat them with contempt.

It would be a mistake to think that this fight is solely about the right of public employees to collectively bargain. As important as that issue is, it’s just one skirmish in what’s shaping up as a long, bitter campaign to keep ordinary workers, whether union members or not, from being completely overwhelmed by the forces of unrestrained greed in this society (My emphasis. RS).

The predators at the top, billionaires and millionaires, are pitting ordinary workers against one another. So we’re left with the bizarre situation of unionized workers with a pension being resented by nonunion workers without one. The swells are in the background, having a good laugh.

As George Lakoff has observed, politics is all about "framing" the issue. As long as this is about Republican politicians versus Democratic unions, the real culprits remain invisible. Herbert is rightly using a much bigger frame and hoping that the political action fills it.

It may be wishful thinking.

When will the protest move from the state capitols and follow the money trail back to Wall Street, the offices of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the gated mansions of the super-rich?

When they are identified as the source of the problem.

What makes Herbert's columns so refreshing is that in very few places in the mainstream media do you see the issue framed as a symptom of a plutocracy. The reason should be clear: the media are owned by the plutocrats. When, and if, protesters direct their action against the real cause, rest assured the media will described those in the streets as "radicals waging class warfare."

Funny that all those protesters in the Middle East aren't also labeled "radicals waging class warfare." Instead they are "pro-Democracy forces." That's because they are over THERE and we are HERE, where the corporate boards are interlocked and the hefty media paychecks (from corporate advertisers and underwriters) get written and cashed.

"Bandwidth" and other unhelpful metaphors

I have a friend and colleague on a non-profit board who frequently complains that our organization “lacks bandwidth” to do this or that.

The image has limited his perception of our problem. I have the feeling that he isn’t alone — that the metaphor, and other computer images like it, are common in organizations.

The problem with the bandwidth image is that it suggests a solution that

a) requires money (one buys more bandwidth) and

b) is probably technological (in this case, the size of a data pipeline).

The fact is that our organization doesn’t require more money (although that would be nice) and its needs aren’t technological.

Simply put, we need more concerned, dedicated volunteers to join us. A simple invitation or an alluring event might do the job.

I’m increasingly sensitive to how our chosen metaphors narrow and distort our perceptions and hence our options. They cramp our understanding and bar us from solutions.

Warnings about the dangers of choosing the wrong metaphor are hardly a new. Vis George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their “Metaphors We Live By.”

When we find ourselves stuck in our thinking it is often because our defining metaphor has led us astray.

The answer to the problem often lies in asking more questions: What metaphor are we relying on? Is it helpful or misleading? Does it unduly narrow our options? Do we need to change the metaphor?

What would happen if we untethered ourselves and used no metaphor at all?