Comment by nickff
7 days ago
Even the language that the different parties use is targeted at certain sets of values; Arnold Kling wrote this short book on the subject ("The Three Languages of Politics"): https://cdn.cato.org/libertarianismdotorg/books/ThreeLanguag...
"The Righteous Mind" by Jonathan Haidt is another, more nuanced (and complicated), but extremely interesting take on the subject of how values drive political affiliation.
Framing has always been used in political debate just to target certain values; what may have changed (or not) is as a deliberate tactic to keep people divided: folks who do not speak the same language cannot communicate.
On a lot of issues, I think 80% of folks are in 80% of agreement, but the partisans (whether politicians or activists) are framing the issue to prevent that consensus, because the partisans want something in the 20% that 80% of folks don't agree with.
Kling and Haidt would agree with your respective paragraphs, though they do add a lot of color, and their books are worth reading.
I've listened to Haidt speak about it and his book is in my tall stack to read; I don't think I'd heard of King but I grabbed the PDF. Thank you.