There are some missed opportunities and self-defeating tactics commonly used by Democrats. We can do much better. Here are the five frames I am most mindful of.

TIRED: LEFT & RIGHT
WIRED: PROGRESSIVE & REACTIONARY

The use of hands as a scale for political orientation is ultimately from Revolutionary France in the late 1700s, referring to where  in the National Assembly  (the legislature) people sat. Revolutionaries sat on the left and Royalists sat on the right. I don’t use left/right for two reasons. One is that in one sense it implies a neutrality, claiming a false equivalence. The other is that “right” also mean “correct,” and “left” also means “abandoned.” Those overtones are not helpful to us. I prefer saying “progressive” and “reactionary.” “Make America Great Again” is far from conservative. It is the very definition of reactionary, taking America back in time to a mythical and idealized past. Reactionary also describes the thoughtlessness in the GOP’s actions and its raw, counterproductive emotional outbursts.

TIRED: OLIGARCHS
WIRED: PLUTOCRATS

Oligarchy means rule by the few. America is always an oligarchy. That’s what a representative democracy like ours is meant to be. The few are elected periodically and govern until the next election. The problem America has now is that the elected rulers are far too subservient to the rich. Rule by the rich is a plutocracy. That’s what we have now.

Wealth buys power. That’s a global issue. The challenge of protecting everyone else from the rich is an ancient problem – since people started farming 10,000 years ago. But we can do much better. This is THE key reactionary element of DJT 2.0 – restoring plutocrats to 1890s levels of power. Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller would be proud. At least they were generous and philanthropic plutocrats, unlike Musk and Zuck. From electoral-vote.com: “In 1890, which is basically the climax of the Gilded Age, the top 1% of Americans owned 25% of the wealth. Today, the top 1% own… 31%.”

TIRED: SEXISTS
WIRED: PATRIARCHISTS

This is the most ancient issue, going back before civilization, before farming – in fact, going back millions of years and far predating the human species. It goes back to when we were hunter-gatherers, when women frequently died in childbirth, and infant mortality was so high that many pregnancies were necessary to ensure that a few children survived to adulthood. Patriarchy was a successful adaptation.  In the 21st century – where childbirth is far safer and infant mortality is much lower, where the typical gender-based physical strength difference is seldom a factor in productivity – patriarchy is, if anything, counterproductive. A matriarchy (no, I’m not advocating for that either) would make more sense than a patriarchy, since women typically have better social skills, better emotional awareness, and live longer.

TIRED: PEOPLE OF COLOR
WIRED: NON-WHITE

OK, Non-White is an antonym, not its own word, and maybe there’s a better one. Euro-American is too many syllables. I’m open to suggestions.  But racism is crackpot science. Lumping Latino mestizos with South Asians as Brown people highlights the absurdity. It’s just the gene for melanin they share. Kinda. And “people of color” refers to East Asians as Yellow and First Nations people as Red? Fail! As someone with Chinese and Japanese heritage, it evokes Yellow Peril for me. And anyone familiar with the name change of the Washington Redskins will know how people of First Nations feel about being called Red. America has a longstanding tradition of calling initially North Europeans White, then all Europeans as Italians got to be called White a century ago. African Americans were called Negros, then Blacks. The self-identified Whites and Blacks then placed everyone else into their paradigm, with alienating results.

There is an ancient tradition of  Us vs. Them being framed as Civilized vs. Barbarians. The Greeks, Romans, and Chinese were doing it two millennia ago, and none of them invented it. The Faithful vs. the Infidels or Heretics is also a common historical version of theme. In the Moslem world it’s the Land of Peace (dar al-islam) vs. the Land of War (dar al-harb). The current American racism stems from European colonial rationalizations like Manifest Destiny and the White Man’s Burden.  So as with plutocracy and patriarchy, this is a timeless and global theme. America is not alone in time or space in having this counterproductive problem. But we have done better in the recent past. Let’s do better today!

TIRED: CLIMATE CHANGE
WIRED: GLOBAL HEATING

Climate change is a de-escalation from global heating, aided by Wikipedia. It dilutes the emotional impact and refers to secondary effects of the core problem: we emit heat-retaining CO2 at catastrophe-inducing levels.  Sun radiates Earth. Earth re-radiates energy out as infrared. CO2 bounces some of it back down. From NIH (until Team DJT deletes it):

“Carbon dioxide primarily absorbs infrared radiation at wavelengths of 15 microns (strongest, bending mode), 4.3 microns (stretching), and 2.7 microns (stretching), with significant absorption also occurring between 9 and 10 microns. These absorption bands, particularly the 15 microns band, are critical for the atmospheric greenhouse effect.”

That’s physics, high school level physics that is true regardless of disbelief or ignoring it. Current global readings make clear via C12/C14 analysis that people are doing it. Geological data in glacial ice and sediment layers make the pattern unmistakable in geological time. If we don’t cut this crap out, we’ll flood every coastal city in the world in the next hundred years. The pain from the heating will be global. The only uncertainty is who gets hurt when the air, water, and earth get heated together.