Consilience Project: How to mislead with facts

The CP did an excellent job on this. A few comments though. They cited Lakoff on framing but have they seen how he recently and accurately framed the current US Republican Party? As it quite obvious they have absolutely no intention of joining their project "to allow for widespread learning and mutual understanding." We need to frame them accordingly and declare rhetorical war in defense of democracy or we'll lose it, not engage with them as if they are just another valid perspective to be included.

And according to Lakoff's description of real v. false reason the CP is engaging in the latter when it assumes the premises the former in that it re-contextualizes away the required emotional content for effective framing.  It strives to make facts "as empirical as possible" by "engaging the emotional dynamics" of the context of a fact, as if those dynamics are opposed to framing instead of necessary. They also assume that one can "piece all the facts together and place them in the right context," not recognizing that any context one chooses by default will eliminate some facts to emphasize the agenda in its preferred context, i.e. also cherry-picking. Will it be 'right' and for whom? The elites who subscribe to their own false reasoning with good intentions? By now we all should know what the road to hell is paved with.

So what then do we do? Is the above just more so-called postmodern criticism with no solution (itself a falsely reasoned claim)? We realize that in our hope of taking more perspectives into account that some are falsely equivalent. Some are right and some are wrong, e.g. democracy v. fascism. We pick a side and we fight for it. We create a factual and emotional metanarrative around our side and try to defeat the enemy, not appease it. Otherwise we can end up being complicit with that evil by giving it the benefit of the doubt. History has shown us what the latter approach has done and will do again if we let it. 

Rationalize that away by calling it propaganda. I call it effective framing.