From an article by George Lakoff. (Discuss it here.)
The basic idea of a just war uses the Nation As Person metaphor plus two narratives that have the structure of classical fairy tales: The Self Defense Story and The Rescue Story.
Millions of people around the world can see that the metaphors and fairy tales don’t fit the current situation, that Gulf War II does not qualify as a just war – a “legal” war. But if you accept all these metaphors, as Americans have been led to do by the administration, the press, and the lack of an effective Democratic opposition, then Gulf War II would indeed seem like a just war. But surely most Americans have been exposed to the facts – the lack of a credible link between Saddam and al Quaeda and the idea that large numbers of innocent Iraqi civilians (estimates are around 500,000) will be killed or maimed by our bombs. Why don’t they reach the rational conclusion?
One of the fundamental findings of cognitive science is that people think in terms of frames and metaphors – conceptual structures like those we have been describing. The frames are in the synapses of our brains – physically present in the form of neural circuitry. When the facts don’t fit the frames, the frames are kept and the facts ignored.
It is a common folk theory of progressives that “The facts will set you free!” If only you can get all the facts out there in the public eye, then every rational person will reach the right conclusion. It is a vain hope. Human brains just don’t work that way. Framing matters. Frames once entrenched are hard to dispel.
Source: Doc Searls, via Too Much News