Distorted Debates Benefit Elites Selling Branded Information
Some are criticizing President Obama's attempt to consolidate six departments that work on trade, trying to frame it as more Obama big government. This make no sense, or does it? Cap n' trade is now routinely dismissed by some as part of an Obama plan for American socialism, despite the fact that this idea was made law and passed by the first President Bush and, at that time, supported by Gingrich. It was also included in McCain's 2008 platform. 

But once President Obama reaches across the aisle to embrace their own idea, once the president demonstrates a willingness to work together to solve problems, then what started as their own idea becomes socialism.

One of the most divisive issues today, and likely in the upcoming election, the individual mandate, has now also incited frame flopping. Before President Obama agreed to withdraw his opposition to this idea in order to secure a compromise...before that, this idea was supported by Bob Dole, the Heritage Foundation, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney, among others. Now it is socialism and unconstitutional. 

The individual mandate emerged in response to private sector demands. It is an effort to save our world’s most privatized health insurance system, which is about the furthest thing from socialism that can be imagined in the current context, since it only makes sense as policy if we start from the premise that a single-payer system will not work. In that context, if we want insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions then they want to require everyone to be in the pool.

If we reframe this as a debate about how unfair (and financially unsound) it is to have an insurance system that does not cover the sick until after they are very sick, we can have a reasonable debate about how to address this conflict. But instead, we have to retrench and fight against the putatively unAmerican notion that believing in a role for government is socialism. And we never seem to get back to the problem solving debate about caring for the sick, supporting family values, and enabling resilient communities.

One friend agreed, saying he was disgusted by politicians just taking the position, whatever it is, that is in opposition to the other guy. But this type of distortion is more insidious than oppositionalism and deeper than what another friend highlighted: a poorly informed electorate. What we observe here is systematic bullshitting, intentionally misrepresenting one’s own and other’s intentions for a purpose, crafting messages designed to frustrate, mislead, and divide communities and constituencies. 

Seeing the power of branded information focuses our attentions on leadership and those with the resources to saturate communications channels with their interested messages. An irony of democracy is it depends on leadership, and dissipating public energies by focusing our attentions on less important or misleadingly framed issues is exactly the opposite of the type of leader needed if we want to make democracy both possible and desirable.