This column was originally published by Sheila Kennedy on her blog, “A Jaundiced Look at the World We Live In.”
By Sheila Kennedy
July 28, 2025
The most important thing I learned in law school can be summed up with the adage “he who frames the issue wins the debate.” The most consequential move a lawyer–or any debater–can make is to define what the argument is all about. (Our idiot-in-chief clearly does recognize that, at least at some subconscious level, since his response to any and all accusations is always to insist that the real issue is whether the accuser is “fake.”)
What reminded me of that old law school conclusion was a recent article in the New York Times, citing a communications professor from Texas A&M, one Jennifer Mercieca. According to the article, her recent book addresses that issue– what she calls “frame warfare.” Mercieca argues that the power to name things is the power to define reality, and she identifies that tactic as Trump’s most potent. As she points out, it’s a tactic that goes hand in hand with his constant assertions that fly in the face of facts and evidence. Redefinitions of reality, she writes, have been central to his success.
As Mercieca explains frame warfare, “What you call a thing determines the contours of the debate around it — or precludes debate altogether. Did you borrow a car without permission, or did you steal it? Was the crush of migrants at the Mexican border an invasion or a humanitarian crisis?”
The importance of framing is obvious in the fulminations of America’s White Christian Nationalists. One of the most obvious examples is the debate about abortion. “Christian” paternalists focus on the “sin” of terminating a pregnancy–on the propriety of the decision being made by a pregnant individual. Civil libertarians insist that the issue is really who decides? In our frame, we ask: is this a decision government should have the authority to make, or is it a decision properly made by the individual woman? As I used to tell my students, the Bill of Rights is essentially a list of things that government is prohibited from deciding – what prayer you say (or whether you pray at all), what political opinions you hold, whether you have a right to travel without offering justification to authority…
Back when Republicans could credibly claim to be proponents of limited government, many weighed in on the side of individual liberty. (I remember–back in the day– being part of a group called Republicans for Choice.) Barry Goldwater famously said that government didn’t belong in either your boardroom or your bedroom. (That belief also led him to support gay rights–he even got an award from PFLAG.)
Rather obviously, if we decide that the role of government is to require people to live in accordance with God’s will, we have to decide whose version of that will government should enforce. “Christian” nationalists are fine with giving government that power, so long as they get to be the arbiters of what is “godly.’ They also talk a lot about religious liberty – for them. They aren’t so solicitous about religious liberty for adherents of other (wrong) religions. Their version of religious liberty turns out to be their liberty to use government to impose their particular religious beliefs on those who don’t share them.
It isn’t just the “Christian” nationalists whose framing is perverse. It’s also MAGA.
Just what makes America great? Or more properly, since “again” is a prominent part of that slogan, what DID make America great? If you listen to Trump’s base, it’s pretty clear that their version of “greatness” requires the social dominance of straight White males.
Over the past several years, Americans have stopped debating policy–after all, policy debates require evidence, consideration of past experience ….FACTS. It requires respect for people who come to the conversation with a different–but reality-based perspective. The reason we can no longer engage in civil discourse is that MAGA has
framed control of government as a fight between the resistance of those of us who live in the real world and their right-their need– to impose their “alternate reality”–their preferred frame– on the rest of us.
I think the proper frame for the culture war we are fighting is this: Both MAGA and the “Christian” nationalists want to take America back to a time that never was.
Sheila Suess Kennedy is Emerita Professor of Law and Public Policy at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. As an attorney, she practiced real estate, administrative and business law in Indianapolis before becoming corporation counsel for the City of Indianapolis in 1977. In 1980, she was the Republican candidate for Indiana’s then 1th Congressional District and in 1992, she became executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana. She joined the faculty of the School of Public and Environment al Affairs in 1998.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
