Framed

Fear triggers the strict father model; it tends to make the model active in one’s brain. What conservatives have learned about winning elections is that they have to activate the strict father model in more than half of the electorate either by fear or by other means. The 9/11 attacks gave the Bush administration a perfect mechanism for winning elections. They declared an unending war on terror. The frame of the War on Terror presupposes that the populace should be terrified, and orange alerts and other administration measures and rhetoric keep the “Terror” frame active. Fear and uncertainty then naturally activate the Strict Father frame in a majority of people, leading the electorate to see politics in conservative terms.