Op Ed: Oregon Voters Facing Character-Test Climax As Crucial Decision Nears

(SALEM) - For more than twenty years the ongoing, sometimes passionate, linguistic and psychological debate in communications research has been “framing” vs “symbolic logic”. Skip the academic jargon. What’s at stake here goes to “the heart of the matter”: How people understand what is said and written in ordinary language. If you accept the “logic is all” regime, you rule out the entire emotive spectrum, including how we now know the brain processes thought and language, or any aspect of human experience, cultural or personal. Economists make the parallel assumption when they build their work on an obviously false-foundation that ALL persons react precisely the same way, ALWAYS in response to financial gains-ONLY.
We've learned the longtime impacts of that partiality during the Bush Presidencies.
(See PLENTY OF NOTHING; Thomas Palley; ISBN 0-691-04847-9) This new “framing”-research shapes how one perceives and permits such horrendous attacks on humane and moral appreciations and expectations embodied by the Founders in our famed First Amendment;
now openly denigrated and diminished by desperate means for the gain of desperate politicians. The working proof is heavy dependence on manipulation and misrepresentation broadly substituted for open, honest political dialog. I.e. you “swallow hard” --or simply ignore-- the malign manipulations exercised against your democratic understandings --at rapidly-growing endangerment for all you hold dear. It matters little that you “know better” --built/in ever since your first day in our universal “common school” conceived and demanded by those same Founders-- via the common experience we all share regarding how people really react, mirroring how they really think. (Documentation available for further exploration, on request to HCR, covering work by Lakoff, Pinker, Chomsky, others). You can surely be “framed” --it happens every day, in far too many ways, right where you are living-- and still learning. Advertising has worked on ways to do so for fifty years, succeeding in such depth that manipulations are exercised in every daily newspaper, in radio and television, even along the highways, shaping and now threatening our society in many ways. That’s why some people, faced with rational, reasonable facts and figures, still find themselves unable to accept the result of rationality: the meanings simply “don’t make it” through the false framing of the issues and their solutions. That’s why the overwhelming usage of “dirty-dig” attack-ads and similar corrosive perturbations of century-long moral, open, honest political-campaign operations operate as well as they do. Further depth-research clearly shows that later and wiser consideration --after the fact of the malign influence is felt in full and thus more deeply appreciated-- most often reverses the affect of these derisive and destructive ad-impacts. It is a side-effect of some of this same research that shows clearly the unconscious abandonments of normal rationality --and thus surprising perturbations and even reversals of expectable actions. This destructive dollar-driven descent continues its decline through television and radio, unavoidably for our politics, and the only thing that matters is who can extract the most massive dollars from “donors” as piled-high “campaign contributions”. That those “deafening dollars” come in large part from private-side persons and organizations intent only on their own advancement, despite the desperate damage to our remaining remnant of “democracy”, is an open secret; still reported in some partial-depth required by law, if not the currently excruciating detailed description demanded as a full “free-press” responsibility; by media empowered via the First Amendment; and broadly assisted as profit-producer businesses by government postal, roads, and other expenditures; making community service an unavoidable foundation for commercial conversation. (See CREATION OF THE MEDIA: Political Origins of Modern Communications: Paul Starr’s ‘04 Pulitzer-winner; ISBN 0-465-08193-2) That’s why the FCC still demands operation “in the public interest” for every broadcast channel --in the physical spectrum of “the airwaves” wisely still held IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. Periodical license renewal depends on solid proof of that essential requirement -- now under challenge from the long-continued perversion permitted via the broadening presentation of attack-ad distortion and the unavoidable destructive impact on our political process. That’s why the Congress continues to concern itself --even in its current deprived/depraved/distorted existence !!-- with the major and minor elements always demanded to preserve, protect and even further-extend the impacts of the Founders’ “First”-choice for action following that historic burst of creativity crowding our first century. What does all of this have to do with the current campaign to confirm our choice of Governor for the coming crucial years in our beloved State of Oregon? Those who follow-along will find a parallel in the path of prior perversion, from some of the same practical, psychological and political reasons, in the Legislature, completely obvious even without close review. For others, caught by common misapprehension or some lack of basic information, it may be a bit harder to comprehend and accept without further reference to the easily-accessed research records. That’s why we supply specific, detailed documentation, sometimes in PDF-format ready for use. Boiled down, it becomes a simple understanding that voters face choice-soon between failed, outmoded and malign continuance of 19th Century political philosophy; right in the face of 21st Century knowledge, and application of far more democratic and detailed understandings for operations now essential to Oregon’s future. That is a simple character-test, based on both understandings and learning-action. To refuse to learn, when such opportunity is open and compelling, demonstrates certain character-traits. To build understandings and form up public opinion for essential, rational, reasonable next-steps for democratic governance also demonstrates certain character-traits. Which will it be?
Will dollars, malignly manipulated, overwhelm conscientious and common-school/taught “common sense“? Will we make that “leap of faith” laid out so irrationally in such depth by those who, wittingly or unwittingly, stand to gain in depth and dollars by doing so? Happy Landings !!!