Let’s Get Beyond Left “Groupspeak!”
by Susan C. Strong, Founder & Executive Director, The Metaphor Project, http://www.metaphorproject.org
As I write, the 2012 home stretch is still a few months away. There’s still time to get beyond our own disastrous Democratic/liberal/progressive “groupthink/groupspeak.” What is “groupspeak?” It’s the verbal equivalent of what Professor Haidt has described as “motivated reasoning,” preconceived ideas that get draped in rationalizations and then expressed in tired old words or phrases, because our biggest unconscious fear is actually group ostracism—by our own group. While “motivated reasoning” has deep roots in human history and may have led to our survival in the past, today Left groupthink and “groupspeak” are actually threatening our survival--our ability to fight back against the plutocratic coup now nearly complete in our country. The plutocrats don’t talk like plutocrats, of course. They hire very savvy spinmeisters, who figure out how to speak American to the American public, so they can sell them a fatal bill of goods. Unless we can quickly get to the point where we can outframe the Right, we’re in for a very long bad spell from which our country may never recover. Understanding that we ourselves are actually sick with a bad case of groupthink and “groupspeak” might help us get on the road to recovery now.
Having just spent several weeks on the East Coast going to progressive and liberal conferences, I’ve noticed plenty of Left “groupspeak.” But I’ve also heard and read a few really good suggestions about how to get over the problem. First though, let’s look at some of the most important “groupspeak” examples I heard, and how they could be fixed. In one of the saddest moments I witnessed, at one conference I heard Professor Paul Krugman describing the way his new book, End This Depression Now!, revolves around the central metaphor of what to do about a dead car battery. So far so good. But then he went on to say that the Right uses very simple language, ideas, and morality tales (“debt is immoral”) to push their agenda, but we can’t do that, because our policy ideas are too complex and nuanced.
