Framing Questions

“When did you stop hating puppies?”

Maybe you’re an American politician, and you really do hate puppies, but I hope the point of that question is clear. Of course, in a real situation, if someone asked you that, you could say, “I never hated puppies,” but what if the question was a multiple-choice survey question, and that wasn’t one of the choices?

Photo by Fran on Unsplash

Here’s an example from real life: “Should we be drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?” How are we not answering this with a collective, emphatic, hell no? How is this even still a question?

We can answer that last bit, at least partially, with framing. Of course, it isn’t always as obvious as that first example in the title, and the bigger problem is actually more subtle. The problem is not always the ‘politicians in smoke-filled back rooms’ trope playing out in real life, but at the same time, politicians are aware of the thing I’m talking about here, and there’s no denying that public opinion is knowingly manipulated. Looking at the example of drilling in the ANWR, consider the fact that the DNC removed ending fossil fuel subsidies from their platform. I’m certain that the fact that oil companies basically run America has more than a little to do with that, but it was also at the very least somewhat enabled by the fact that they’re being attacked by Republicans as…