To go beyond simply countering the GOP, I'd say we should segue from criticizing the interference to saying, "Of course we agree with the purported sentiment of protecting the least among us. That's why the Republicans quoted Hubert Humphrey in making their argument. Because Democrats have always beleived in that. Now we'd like the GOP to join us in doing something that Humphrey deeply believed in--give us universal health care for all Americans, so that we can save tens of thousands of lives every year."

Too wordy for TV, maybe, but it's the drift of where I would go if I were Harry Reid.  And it's not systematic thinking. It's simply shifting the association of compassion back to its original place--with the politics of Hubert Humphrey, rather than Richard Nixon. (HMO's were a Nixonian invention, btw.)  

Real compassion for the least among us=universal health care. That's the association that I would push. I would have every Senator and every Representative do some sort of press conference, town meeting and/or photo op to underscore this point. Get photos with family members of people who died because they didn't have insurance.

Then bring those families to Washington for a lobbying day, and do a big press conference on the Capitol Steps to kick it off.  Make sure that local media came along to follow the families as they lobby helpful Democrats and heartless Republicans.

I think that the internet definitely has enormous potential for stimulating cognitive development. But I've also been dealing with techno-libertarians and other conservatives online for over a decade now, and these guys don't have a learning curve, not even a flat one. They don't have a curve at all, they have a pathologically discontinuous function, that doesn't even have a derivative.

So, it's up to those of us who can evolve to evolve as much as possible, and to work on shaping cybersapce to make it even more development-inducing.

As for why it's so hard to call Bush a liar: because it was his greatest weakness, it's what Rove worked hardest to make unthinkable. And he did so mostly through associational means. Cowboys are simple, straightforward folks (straight shooters, don'tcha know!), so Bush is portraryed as a cowboy.  

All that other folksy stuff is done with the same intent.  He's so much like us that if he's a liar, it's like saying we're all liars.  This is not a logical (linear) argument, it's an associational, largely subliminal thought.

Think of all those photo ops with ordinary folks. With firemen after 9/11. All to make it hard to criticize him without seeming to criticize the ordinary folks he seemingly hung out with.

It's also the case that most of the time Bush doesn't lie. In fact, he's careful not to lie, but rather creates a false impression--which is also a form of associational/sequential thinking in action. This maneuver itself is what makes the intent to deceive so obvious and irrefutable.

I first became starkly aware of this when Max Sawicky told me that Bush was not claiming that his tax cuts were an economic stimulus. The argument was being made, Sawicky told me, but the Administration was being very careful not to say it outright. They were getting the media to say it for them.

The same thing can be seen with the whole buildup to invading Iraq. There are a few blatant lies that stand out, but most of the time it's innuendo, or it's cleverly phrased to create a strong impression, but when you parse it, actually what's being said denotatively is defensible, while what's being conveyed connotatively is clearly false.  And, as I said above, it's the misleading statements that aren't lies which are ultimately more revealing, more damning, more indicative of the carefully-calculated nature of the deceit than the occassional outright lies.

Narratives are inherently sequential, so they can be either regressive or progressive. What stumps is is what stumped Kerry. He didn't create any narrative at all. He remained in a fragmented pre-narrative state.  This is fundamental. Everything else I have to say is just gravy. But I think the gravy is pretty good.

I think it's the highest purpose of art to take complex, high-level visions and express them in ways that people can grasp at a variety of different levels, from the visceral to the most complex.  So I would look to writers, artists, filmakers and the like for inspiration.  Not just to tell good progressive narratives, but to look for ways to tell complex ones that can be experienced at several different levels.

One of my favorite examples in this regard is Joss Whedon, creator of "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer." Whedon is a third-generation screenwriter, and a serious Shakespear lover. One Shakespearian device that Whedon uses repeatedly in different ways is doubling. Two different people, couples, or groups face a similar situation, and handle it in different ways, with different (or sometimes, surprisingly, similar) results.  

This device works on multiple levels, including the sequential, since it shows the sequential association breaking down--at least when the doubling happens in the same episode (much of it does, but much of the deeper doubling does not).  This provides a stimulus for sequential thinkers to gain some perspective and evolve.  But even if they don't evolve, they at least actively have to chose which one they identify with most, like most, etc. So it challenges them to think, at whatever they can think.

Although I think there is much, much more we can learn from art, this gives us one very simple place to start:

(1) Reactionary politics works on the premise of presenting people with no options. TINA (there is no alternative) as Margaret Thatcher loved to put it.  Tragedies like 9/11 are readily framed this way.  

(2) Progressive politics works on the premise that there are always alternatives.  So we should always try to present alternatives, even in the simplest, most basic terms.  Whatever we do, whatever we say, we should always present alternatives and choice, implicitly if not explicitly.   We should make these real alternatives--not black-and-white, cardboard cutout, easily dichtomized ones.  

The Stop the Killing signs could be used as anti-war signs. While the impulse for Life is in everyone's mind, use that to forward other agendas, such as, bringing home the troops.

As for Feed her, she's hungry, we have starving kids here in the US that need to be fed and medically treated.

Thats fighting fire with fire.

There is a good article on Slate right now about the case and it supports the parents, but does it within a framework of law. Also heard a lawyer on CNN talking who agreed with the parents about how poorly there case was argued in from of the 11th circuit judge. They mentioned things like that Vaticans opinion on cases like this (which is meaningless in court). He pointed out they should have just argued that since Congress had asked for the case to be completely reviewed anew, that would have led to the feeding tube being reinserted, but since they argued that the state judge was unfair he basically through the case out. The problem with non-systematic thinkers is that they can not even start to articulate arguments within our constitutional system.

But the question here is not about what's driving the underlying political vision. Lakoff has always said that he's not describing individual cognition, but rather the ideal patterns that individual cognition approximates to a greater or lesser degree.

So what I'm investigating here is supplemental to the sort of analysis that you're presenting, which I would put in the same category with Lakoff.  Yes, that's the underlying logic that makes everything hang together. But how are people drawn into that logic, with or without recognizing it as such?  that's the question that I'm dealing with. The ultimate point is that the more sophisticated your thinking, the less you fall for reasons that are obviously inadequate.  

Now, Allow Me To Confuse...

Hopefully, that has cleared things up a bit. Now, in the interests of getting deeper into it, I run the risk of muddying things again. But that's the way it goes. A dialectic process...

You can have systematic thinking that is fundamentally mistaken, I believe, particularly if you are embedded in it. [It would be useful to examine Dembski, the "Intelligent Design" theorist in this light.] It is only on the next-higher level--which Rosenberg said was too rare to study empirically at the time--that I think the Strict Father approach definitely falls apart.

The best way to understand this level is through another framework that has a pretty good correlation with Rosenberg's. This one comes from Robert Kegan, a Harvard psychologist/psychiatrist. Kegan's fundamental approach is to treat each level in terms of a subject/object structure. What is subject (the knower) at one level is object (the known) at the next. He associteds his level 3--corresponding with linear thinking--with noramtive adulthood in a traditional society, where the self is constructred of/subject to its social roles and relationships.

The person at this level is their social role. The person at the next level up has their social role. This corresponds to the birth of true personal autonomy--which is, not surprisingly, the core of political liberalism in the Western Tradition. It's only at this next level that systematic arguments are consciously made and analyzed, treated as objects outside the self, rather than being something one lives inside and cannot question.

Now, I'm not saying that this is a perfect fit, that no conservative is capable of systematic thought. But it is telling how routinely the epitome of conservative "thought" fails to rise to this level.

If you've ever tried to read Newt Gingrich's books or his college course material, you'll see this. It has the formal appearance of broad, sweeping integration of diverse material. But when you look carefully, you discover that he's always getting the details wrong, always jamming things together that just don't fit. He's usually not even making sense as a linear thinker. Yet, he was able to sell himself as this vast synthesizer of knowledge.

This was, essentially an act of sequential thinking. He created all these associations--hanging out with the Tofflers and using their lingo, claiming to be a disciple of Edwards Demming, etc.--which presented him in the light of being a super intellect.  Conservatives fall for this sort of lame act over and over again. And liberals don't know what to do with it, because it falls so far short of being coherent, they don't even know where to start.

He uses the example of Star Wars, where the youngest child relates to the endearing characteristics of Chewbaka, R2D2. C3PO, etc. The next level is where you ask a child what a movie was about, and they proceed to tell you the entire movie.  The next level up, there are themes, such as loyalty and betrayal.  I think that really good movies work on multiple levels, while the less good ones only work up to a point.  

For me, Star Wars tops out at the level of these themes. "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer" goes at least one level beyond, questioning what these mean on a regular basis in a way that Star Wars does only on the grand scale--as Luke discovers who his father is.

There seem to be an obvious strong parallels, but those with certain personality disorders can seemingly think quite clearly in some respects, at least well enough to qualify as linear thinkers.  I would really welcome input on this from anyone more knowledgeable than I.

Any psychiatrists in the house?

Of course, we all use sequential, linear and systematic thinking all the time.

Try not to see it as people per se, but macro, 30,000 feet high way of looking at things. By definition you would never run into a purely sequential thinker, you would have to turn up on one of those Tsunami islands and encounter groups of people with limited thought processes.

Can linear and sequential thinkers learn the art? of systemic thinking? Is it a discipline or a knack?

Is the DLC hopelessly locked into linear thinking?

Is the GOP hopelessly locked into sequential thinking?

Is this what is making compromise on so many issues impossible? Is the only solution to our political problems an enforced exercise of political power by one side or the other?

In a way, it's a pity the Supreme Court ruled so quickly.  But Jeb Bush still gives us hope that they'll prolong it, no?