$60 million.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the mountain of cash plunked down on TV ad buys by Karl Rove\u2019s Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity as of mid-August 2012.\u00a0 Those two groups alone have outspent all other political-action groups combined on both sides of the political divide, including political-action committees, unions, and trade associations.<\/p>\n

You can bet Rove and his cadre of undisclosed donors aren\u2019t putting down that kind of money for nothing.\u00a0 They know it and we know it. Political attack ads work.\u00a0 And if they\u2019re based on lies, so what?\u00a0 George W. started it and Romney et al. in their desperation to kick a black man out of the White House are modifying it, shaping it, \u00a0and perfecting it. Repeat a lie often enough and people believe it, especially if their preconceived notions and prejudices are ripe for the picking.<\/p>\n

If you harbor any lingering doubts about how profoundly cleverly chosen words hold sway over our how we think about issues and form and choose our belief systems, there\u2019s no better person to set you straight than George Lakoff, professor of linguistics and cognitive science at University of California, Berkeley, and co-founder of Rockridge Institute, a progressive think tank.<\/p>\n

Professor Lakoff has made it his life\u2019s work to enlighten us about the whys and hows of communication and why we should care. In a series of books on the topic, Don\u2019t Think of an Elephant, Metaphors We Live By, <\/em>and The Political Mind, <\/em>Lakoff exhorts us to be mindful of how we frame what we want to say, particularly in the political arena. \u00a0Why?\u00a0 Because how we frame issues has implications far beyond the words themselves.\u00a0 Ask almost any young, sexually active woman today how she feels about Republican framing of the debate raging about when and how she should be able to decide her reproductive destiny\u2014which, let\u2019s not forget, is actually her life destiny\u2014and you\u2019ll understand what\u2019s at stake.<\/p>\n

Articles and opinion pieces by Lakoff in print and online are coming fast and furious as he tries to sound the alarm for Democrats to get their act together before Republicans dominate all three branches of government and kill the American dream by ushering in what Lakoff calls \u201cthe nightmare.\u201d \u00a0In this season of extremism masquerading as mainstream thought, Lakoff warns that losing this election to the right wing of the Republican party will mean losing democracy itself.<\/p>\n

One of Lakoff\u2019s most recent postings on his website, coauthored with Glenn W. Smith, is a must-read discussion about \u201cthe public\u201d and the American dream. The article addresses the same concept brilliantly articulated by Elizabeth Warren in her discussion of the interconnectedness of wealth and financial success with public investment in infrastructure, education, and publicly financed safety systems.\u00a0 (Interestingly, President Obama wasn\u2019t quite as successful with the same messaging, perhaps because he borrowed the argument from Warren and lacked her innate framing conviction.)<\/p>\n

Here is an excerpt from Lakoff and Smith\u2019s \u201cWhy Democracy Is Public:\u00a0 The American Dream Beats the Nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0America has, over our history, called upon citizens to share an equal responsibility to work together to secure a safe and prosperous future for their families and nation.\u00a0 This is the central work of our democracy and it is a public enterprise.\u00a0 This, the American Dream, is the dream of a functioning democracy.<\/p>\n

Public refers to people, acting together to provide what we all depend on: roads and bridges, public buildings and parks, a system of education, a strong economic system, a system of law and order with a fair and effective judiciary, dams, sewers, and a power grid, agencies to monitor disease, weather, food safety, clean air and water, and on and on.\u00a0 That is what we as a people who care about each other, have given to each other.<\/p>\n

Only a free people can take up the necessary tasks, and only a people who trust and care for one another can get the job done.\u00a0 The American Dream is built upon mutual care and trust.<\/p>\n

. . . We are now faced with a nontraditional, radical view of \u201cdemocracy\u201d coming from the Republican party.\u00a0 It says that \u201cdemocracy\u201d means that nobody should care about anybody else, that \u201cdemocracy\u201d means only personal responsibility, not responsibility for anyone else, and it means no trust.\u00a0 If America accepts this radical view of \u201cdemocracy,\u201d then all that we have given each other in the past under traditional democracy will be lost; all that we have called public. . . . Everything that made America America, the crucial things that you and your family and your friends have taken for granted: gone.<\/p>\n

The democracy of care, shared responsibility, and trust is the democracy of the American Dream.\u00a0 The \u201cdemocracy\u201d of no care, no shared responsibility, and no trust has produced the American Nightmare that so many of our citizens are living through.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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