Blog

Scapegoating youth and misplaced anger: a bad week for adults.

admin
Sat 2019-01-26

This quote speaks true to me. It seems accurate and eloquent, calling out a true phenomena we are seeing: To much of this country, black lives don't matter, while mistaken accusations against white kids are the apocalypse. The parents who watch black children get shot without lifting a finger, now freak out that all the kids from Covington High are called racists on a day where only some of them were caught, that day, in clear acts of contempt.

Techniques: 
Avoid Displaced Anger
Separation of the Righteous

Exercise on Framing: Refugees fleeing Central America at the Border Wall

admin
Wed 2018-12-12
The border wall is a hot topic right now in the news. Exercise:

(1) What are the policy choices? What are all the different frames you can think of — the different ways to focus on the story — that you hear?

Important: people can usually take either side within a frame:

Take relief => the frame is that taxes are an affliction. "No new taxes" and "The rich should pay more" => both positions treat taxes like an affliction, opposite positions within the same frame.

(2) [usually easy] Which of these frames is more focused on the values you want to emphasize?

Techniques: 
language and frame

Facts Do Work — Bricks or Artillery?

admin
Fri 2018-12-07
When you have political conversations, how do you use facts? Do you lob them at opponents like artillery? And then your opponent digs a deeper trench to avoid the blast? If you use facts like artillery, your opponent will dig trenches and build bunkers: facts work in the story you use them. Or do you architect a building of shared values, and build it by placing facts like bricks, building up the story of your values? A story people are welcome to explore if they are curious — not a battle for you to win and them to lose. Facts work there too.
Techniques: 
Facts: When They Work, When They Fail
conversational frame