Cracking the Code, Chapter Ten

Continuing from this post.

Framing is another tool in this kit. It's in the way one uses words to describe a situation to evoke our feelings into supporting a particular worldview. One example is in how the estate tax was framed. Conservatives called it the “IRS death tax,” invoking fear through the images of large government control through taxes and that much dreaded image, death. Early American framers like Jefferson argued for an estate tax, realizing that such accumulated wealth would likely lead to a return of the very landed aristocracy which America fought to overcome with its new democracy. Unfortunately such a tax was not instituted until 1916, when ordinary people rose up against just such an American aristocracy of robber barons and monopolists controlling our society. It was Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican no less, that proposed the estate tax, framing it as the wealthy having higher obligations to the State due to the special advantages granted them by said State. We don't see Republicans like that anymore.

So taxes can be framed as the following to conservatives who think they are self-made and earned it all by their own efforts: Taxes contribute to one's business success by providing all those necessary services and infrastructure that enabled it: public utilities and transportation, banking and financial regulation, public education, Social security and Medicare. Without such public support businesses would have to spend an enormous amount for those services and would go out of business due to the losses. Which is pretty much how President Obama framed it, having learned this lesson. Although he made the mistake of using the slogan: “You didn't build that,” which conservatives took out of context and required the President to further explain and frame properly.

Hartmann rightly notes that the conservative frame was designed to reinforce the American aristocracy, who were the beneficiaries of the estate tax, which applied to only 0.27 percent of the population, the infamous 1% of the 1% who control this country. The used the 'death tax' frame to make it seem like it applied to everyone, see we all pay taxes and we all die, both really scary things. It was a direct attach on the very democracy on which America was founded, and which these wealthy aristocrats do not want implemented in anything other than name only, which they use to manipulatively frame other issues of 'patriotism.'

The only way to counter such negative frames, which often use lies to bolster them, is to reframe the issue in positive terms backed with (but not solely with) accurate facts to meet the ecology check. We've seen examples like the above with the liberal position on taxes.