There is a particular methodology at work in Leftist thinking. I'm not referring to what might be termed moderate Democrats, if such a category exists any more. I'm obviously not referencing the Far Right who, despite the best efforts of the Left, are politically invisible. We are supposed to believe that Klan members and their white supremacist allies are a genuine threat (alongside parents opposed to mask mandates and Critical Race Theory), but they don't seem to be especially close to winning a Presidential race or establishing a majority in Congress. In fact, they don't have a single seat in either house, whereas the Democratic Party – the current vehicle of the Far Left Progressives – have control of both houses and the President himself. Therefore, the phenomenon I am about to describe, whilst capable of being utilized by extremists at either end of the political spectrum, is most usefully examined in its Leftist guise.
I am referring to the practice of 'framing the narrative', a concept particularly dear to political hacks. In simple terms, it is the ability to set the tone of a debate, by fair means or (more often) foul. And by that I mean, usefully and truthfully or otherwise. Framing sets the basis for discussion, steers it in specific directions, establishes the acceptable limits by defining what is verboten or wrong-think and what is the accepted party line. The practice is not characterized by a moral framework. Theoretically, it can used for good as well as ill, by framing the narrative in such a way as to draw attention to the true nature of a particular issue; but more often it is not. Framing involves leaving things out as well as including things and, if the one doing the framing was confident enough of their ability to carry the day with the force of their argument, there would be no need to frame anything; no requirement to emphasize, de-emphasize, promote, deny or hide.
There is a particular branch of this practice or, more accurately, a specific tactic that has proven so effective that it serves as the starting point for all framers and that is to commence debate at a point of their choosing whilst characterizing what came before in favorable terms, but without providing a shred of evidence to back it up. I'll illustrate the point with three of the biggest issues of the day, issues which provide the basis for all other matters of import; climate change, election integrity and vaccines (both generally and specifically).
The technique is the same each time. It's not an attempt to steer the discussion in a certain direction once the facts have been established. It's an attempt to bury the facts that would disprove the narrative from the outset. In other words, it isn't just a particularly partial interpretation of the game, where no quarter is given to the enemy, no acknowledgement of the power of any of its arguments. At least then, the enemy could counter with reference to the facts that are accepted, some of which, at least, support their position. No, this is a method by which salient facts are not allowed from the beginning and other 'facts' are inserted into the narrative. These 'facts' form the bedrock of the subsequent debate, as they are treated as the unchallengeable truth and any attempt to say otherwise is met with volleys of criticism and abuse.
For instance, call the January 6th riot an 'insurrection' and keep repeating it endlessly. Insurrection is a big word, especially for an occasion when most of the uniformly unarmed 'insurrectionists' were ushered into the Capitol by police and then wandered about looking at artifacts and taking pictures. But if you can get that word into the narrative early on, there is no room for dissent. Bank on the fact that nobody will be courageous enough to point out that the Democrats (in this instance) are overreacting or mischaracterising.
A year later, of course, there is a growing chorus of voices complaining about bogus commissions and political prisoners; at the time, there were no voices urging restraint or pointing out there had been something in the order of 489 Trump rallies before and since and that all had passed without incident. Maybe, just maybe, further scrutiny of the narrative was necessary and I'm sure that a number of conservatives knew that. But every commentator prefaced their remarks by condemning the 'attack' on the Capitol, despite a mountain of evidence, both direct and circumstantial, that the narrative was incomplete and being manipulated for political ends.
The story put out about the circumstances leading to the death of a Capitol cop was another egregious example of narrative framing. The policeman in question did not die after being hit with a fire extinguisher, but rather from a stroke. How was it then, that the other version took root, if it was false? But no politician had the brains or the courage to question it at the time and, by the time the truth came out, the damage was done. The rules of the game decreed that no Republican could risk even a soupçon of empathy for the protesters. And, as is usual, the Left started the narrative part way through, not at the beginning.
The beginning was an election that has all the hallmarks of a massive fraud on behalf of the Left, which has resulted in a bloodless coup. This is the impression of a substantial minority of Americans, at least one in three, and held by independents and some Democrats, too. It is not a figment of the imagination; it is a belief founded on hundreds of affidavits and statistical near impossibilities, but one that has never been tested in a courtroom as judge after judge dismissed election fraud cases without hearing the evidence. Americans know this and they knew most of it by January 6th. They know that there was a potential solution to what gives a convincing appearance of a stolen election and they knew that it wasn't going to go that way.
The whole Capitol episode has a co-ordinated feel to it, with genuine protesters being duped by a combination of agent provocateurs and police complicity. Neither of these assertions is made carelessly. There is ample video footage to support both contentions. There are also prominent rioters, whose identity is known, who have never been sought or apprehended, while others on the periphery have been hunted down and jailed, pending trial. However, evidence and nuance are cast aside, as with the election itself. Allegations of election fraud are now the Big Lie, according to the media, and anybody who says otherwise, whether on the TV or on social media, stands a very good chance of being doxxed or cancelled. People who have absolutely no idea what happened parrot the phrase. There has never been a proper reckoning and there never will be. However, anyone who states that there is no evidence of widespread fraud is either a liar or blessed with a room temperature IQ. There's plenty, but nobody has the courage to address it.
Some little known facts about the US election of 2020:
Of the 21 election cases decided on their merits, Trump won 14 of them.
He hugely over-performed in states he was expected to win; West Virginia polling showed him up by 17%, but he won the state by 39%. Kansas polling identified a 9% lead, but he won by 15%.
Six states (or parts of states) stopped counting within hours of each other, all of them battleground states, five of them controlled by Democrat governors; Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump was well ahead in all of them. He subsequently lost all but North Carolina.
Democrat stronghold Milwaukee had a 61% turnout for Hillary, a 71% turnout for Obama and an 85% turnout for Biden. Wisconsin's turnout was 89.25%.
Trump won 18 of 19 bellwether counties, by an average of 16%. On a larger list of 58 bellwethers, Trump won 51 by an average of 15%, Biden won 7 by an average of 4%.
Trump gained over 10 million votes from 2016.
There were 27 House seats viewed as toss-ups by the unfailingly neutral New York Times; Trump won them all.
No incumbent President who received over 75% of the primary vote has failed to be re-elected; Trump won 94%. He also won over 18 million votes in the primaries, double the previous record held by Clinton.
The climate change farrago is perhaps the purest example of the tactic – get in first, say whatever you want to, don't bother with actual evidence, tell the lie as often and as widely as possible and then label anyone who challenges you a 'denier'. It seems that very few people are ready to call out the obvious flaw in the argument; there's no evidence of global warming or man's complicity in it. But in this instance, at least, there is a degree of accuracy to the accusation; deniers are indeed denying what the alarmists are saying. Not because the evidence is there and they don't want to believe it, but because the evidence isn't there and the alarmists are perpetrating a giant scam. However, by using the word 'deny', the activists are hoping that most people understand that they (the activists) were there first with the facts and that denial is always a negative.
It seems to me that there is adequate evidence that the Holocaust really happened. It also seems that there is ample evidence that, whilst man is undoubtedly contributing to the levels of atmospheric CO2, nobody can declare that we are therefore causing a climate emergency, nor that the globe is warming. Therefore, I am not a denier in either instance.
Just for the hell of it, six fun facts about climate change that you almost certainly don't know.
Any relationship between CO2 and temperature is the other way round; temperature first, then a rise in atmospheric CO2. The lag time is usually around 800 years, give or take and is probably mostly to do with the release of carbon dioxide from the oceans, the greatest repository of readily accessible CO2. Sea water absorbs more carbon dioxide when it is cold and releases it when it warms.
Global temperatures today are no higher than they were fifteen years ago. If the more accurate measurements taken by satellites are relied upon, there has been a slight decrease.
We are currently living through an inter-glacial, where temperatures rise. The next big temperature change will be downwards, perhaps as soon as mid-century.
Temperatures in the Roman Warming and the Medieval Warming were higher than they are today. Neither period is noted for its heavy industry and coal fired power stations.
Global temperature declined between 1945 and 1975, the exact time frame associated with an increase in atmospheric CO2.
Atmospheric CO2 is a little on the low side, at around 500 parts per million. It has been twenty times higher in the past. 180-200 parts per million would leave mankind's survival in doubt; 1,000 parts per million would be good, as would a degree or two more in temperature.
These facts are, of course, not part of the narrative. The narrative starts with the fact that CO2 is a pollutant (the US has actually designated it so), that man made CO2 is the cause of rising levels in the atmosphere (if we are to believe that there are actually rising levels of atmospheric CO2) and that this will lead to runaway global warming within a decade unless we agree to revert to cave living; or similar. And anybody who tries to draw attention to the fact that none of these assertions are backed up by a shred of evidence, is a denier.
With the Covid 'vaccine' argument, the technique is a slight variant (ironically). Instead of focusing on a substantial minority's resistance to one particular 'vaccine', the accusation is that resistance is either the preserve of a fringe lunatic group of people who are anti all vaccines as a matter of principle, or the 'hesitant', who are timid souls that might just be brought on board when their anxiety has been assuaged. Anti-vaxxers can't be trusted as a reliable source of information on this 'vaccine', because their beliefs are articles of faith, rather than evidence based. A bit like the 'deniers', implicitly compared to Holocaust deniers and therefore portrayed as despicable as well as dumb.
Once more, another debate that has been commenced partway through. Because why is the efficacy of vaccines, in general, taken as an article of faith? Why is it that there is an automatic assumption that sticking a needle in your arm and vaccinating yourself against a variety of diseases is a good thing? Where is the evidence for that?
The correct place to start this debate, as with the others, is at the beginning. Make the case for vaccines – why are they necessary? Not just as a concept, but each individual vaccine and each individual person. If, after that, we can agree that a particular jab is worth doing for a particular segment of our community (or even all of it), we still need to know what else is in it (because there are always other ingredients in vaccines), what the adverse effects are and whether the risk/reward ratio is, therefore, in credit. Then we can have a discussion about anti-vaxxers, but not until then, because there needs to be a proper understanding of why we think that we can improve on nature first.
For your edification, and to show that questioning the efficacy of vaccines in general is not mere awkwardness or heresy:
Studies demonstrate that unvaccinated children are healthier than vaccinated ones.(1)(2)(3)(4)
The rate of autism in children was 1 in 250 in 2—1, 1 in 100 in 2009 and 1 in 54 in 2020, according to the CDC. A survey in New Jersey found autism at a rate of 1 in 20 in boys (2020); one in the UK found a rate in boys of 1 in 16 (2018).(5)
The autism rate in the pre-vaccine era was 1 in 2,500.(6)
Autistic children carry high levels of auto-antibodies, indicative of an immune response to the measles virus; exposure through the MMR vaccine.(7)
In the US, between the years 1981 and 2006, vaccinations in the under 5s went from 23 different jabs of seven vaccines to 48 jabs of fourteen vaccines. Children's vaccines (still) contain thimerasole, which contains mercury, a known neurotoxin responsible for “neurodevelopmental disorders, …tics, …speech delay, language delay, attention deficit disorder, and autism.”(8)
Figure 1: heartcom.org
Figure 2: lewrockwell.com
The same argument applies to the US Presidential election of 2020, the so-called Big Lie. The Democrats and their lackeys in the media, together with the administrative state, have commenced their defense partway through and declared that the election was valid, despite copious evidence to the contrary. Because, as is always the case in these instances, they have arrived at their position without having the evidence to defend it, they cannot let anybody actually examine the results of the election. If that was allowed, in even one state, the entire edifice might be at risk.
And so, there are multi layers of defence; election boards, state senates, state attorney generals, the courts, the media....the list goes on. And party lines means little; the vested interests, back room funding, promises of future advancement (all of which qualify as corruption) are rife across the entire political spectrum. Trusted allies are hard to come by.
And, even in the highly unlikely event that all these layers of protection prove insufficient and evidence of malfeasance emerges into public view, they still have one last excuse; that they acted in good faith because revealing the truth would have revealed a loss of faith in the electoral system, or 'vaccine hesitancy', a rise in populism, insert any suitable obsession of the Left.
They never stop to think that maybe, just maybe, the evidence that they have worked so hard to deny and suppress should have caused them to review their position, instead. That they are automatically ignoring evidence that proves their original belief is incorrect. That is the kind version, because it includes the word 'think', which is something they don’t actually do at all. They are spoon fed something that they want to believe, for whatever complicated reasons, perhaps because it fits their view of the world, or what the world should be, at least. The cognitive dissonance is deafening. They would never ask themselves which is the bigger sin; a political coup? Or protesting about a political coup?
There are reasons for this:
“Before men can act, an issue must be polarized. Men will act when they are convinced that their cause is 100 per cent on the side of the angels and that the opposition is 100 per cent on the side of the devil.” (9)
I've said this before elsewhere, but it bears repeating. The Left believes that it is fighting against the equivalent of Nazis. It believes that it is right and anyone that opposes it is not just wrong, but evil. It believes that any tactic is, therefore, justifiable. Cheating in elections, lying about vaccines, gaslighting the people with epic falsehoods about man made climate change are all acceptable if it gets them closer to their desired end state and anybody trying to stop them getting there is, you've guessed it, a Nazi or similar. To try and reason with them, to use things like evidence and logic is doomed from the start. They will not negotiate with Nazis.
And so, they seek to frame the narrative. They have to, because if they don't, someone else will and that someone is likely to be the Nazis. There is never any attempt to examine evidence, to be self reflective; there is no self doubt. This is why, whenever an attempt is made to reason with the zealots, it ends badly. They cannot get beyond the fact that you are evil; they don't listen to what you've got to say, because that is bound to be evil too.
So, what to do? There is only one option really, and that is to reject the frame. Accept that they won't listen, that there is no possible compromise, that there is evil in this equation and it's coming at you, from them. The worst thing you can do is accept any premise that you know to be false in the hopes of achieving progress downstream. Be uncompromising, but don't expect them to ever admit that you are right. Because you cannot be right, because you are evil.
Don't accept any part of the climate change scam. Don't refer to Biden as President. Don't express outrage at 'vaccine' mandates for kids. Sure, they can't give informed consent, but how many seniors in nursing homes can, either? Where were you when that was happening? And, think about the logic of your position. Is it that a mandate is morally wrong across the board? Or that it is morally wrong with minors? Or that the 'vaccine' is harmful and children shouldn't be made to take it? Which is it? Because if it's any of those things, you're way too late to the party.
Go back to basics and refuse the frame. Don't play any part of the game. Tell the Leftie to prove that vaccines are beneficial, this one in particular. Tell the climate activist to give evidence of global warming. Likewise, with the Big Lie. Why is it a lie? Where's the evidence? They probably won’t want to play and that is how it has to be. Regrettably, this is the only way. They cannot be converted. Talk of unity is a waste of time. That's not to say that there isn't a moderate cohort, in the middle of the spectrum, that is amenable to reason, because there is. But they aren't the framers of the narrative. They are the ones duped by it. So, we must resist and call out the lies that ignore the basic truths. Compromising with those that won't compromise isn't compromising. It's losing.
Citations
(1) https://az.childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/Vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated.pdf
(2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7268563/
(3) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7709050/
(6) https://answerstoall.com/language/what-was-the-autism-rate-in-1960/
(8) https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/dont-fall-for-the-cdcs-outlandish-lies-about-thimerosal/
(9) Saul Alinsky, Rules For Radicals