The Galloping Beaver
Asking if Harper is a great leader is as asking if Hitler was a great leader.
Don't just dismiss this as Godwin's rule.
Heh. Godwin's Law suspended for this thread. 
I have always been more of a 'radio person' than a TV person. (Probably something both "Freuidian" and McLuhanesque there) - after listening to O'Reilly (the good O'Reilly)) for a while he has changed the way I see the whole medium. WOW - a mixed metaphor.
and his delivery, slow and considered begs you to understand the message, not the package. (He says, dangerously flurting with mixed metaphors again.)
Zorpheous has outdone himself once again
Excuse me but Harper doesn't look like that anymore....way too fattering. Opps meant flattering.
The shit is insidious. Just today I found myself agreeing with someone who complained that the only problem with the Liberal Party was that they didn't have a really strong leader.
It was only after I blurted out some "Yes, but..." response that I realized what I had done. That I had had subconsciously bought into the Conservative media machine mistaking charisma for leadership.
All this while I was literally stuffing envelopes for my Liberal MP.
I am deeply ashamed.
Jennifer, please, there's no need to be deeply ashamed. Chagrined, maybe, in the spirit of "Fool me once, shame on me", but no more than that. You got caught, that's all, as we all do, even those of us who have been in the biz ourselves.
The good news is this: you caught yourself falling into the trap, and it won't be as easy for you to slip into it again.
The bad news is this: it takes (well, took me, anyway) a long time and a lot of deliberate deprogramming/reconditioning to get to the point where I could rely on my unconscious mind to (1) spot the fallacy, meme, or propaganda trick at first go, and (2) snap out a response that didn't tacitly legitimize the boundaries of the false frame.
For example, one can train oneself to respond not with a "Yes, but...", but rather a "Sez who? Where's their proof? Who wrote this crap anyway? Who's paying them? Why are you believing them?"
I'm still figuring out why it's so easy to fall into false frames, but I think one part of it has to do with how we treat assertions. We'll often accept an assertion as valid because we ourselves will supply the evidence in our own minds, instead of insisting that the false-framer supply the evidence. And so we respond with the "Yes, but..." -- when your interlocutor implied Dion wasn't a strong leader, that set off a chain of associations in your mind, and there were certain rings of truth to it because, if one were to ignore M. Dion's actual history and only rely on what his enemies say, one could make a case that he is not strong.
(I think that's idiotic, really; I've said before he reminds me of Lester Pearson, outwardly a mild-mannered rabbit, inside a flint-steel core.)
Anyway, there is "evidence" in your mind that tends to support the false-framer's assertion, and in a perfectly natural reflex you acknowledge this "evidence" and say "Yes,", while also you know that this "evidence" is dubious, and so you say "but..." -- but by then you're already fighting on ground of the enemy's choosing.
Another aspect of the kind of exchange you experienced is the politeness factor. To me, somebody repeating a Harperite talking point has committed a hostile act, and should be responded to in kind (No quarter, no prisoners!), but I know I'm in the minority here. Most of us are willing -- or perhaps conditioned -- to give the twit the benefit of the doubt, rather than smack them in the chops until their eyeballs bleed, and thus we inadvertently concede ground to the enemy.
Further, we all know by know that if we don't respond to one of these twits with perfect civility and decorum, they will shriek their dismay to the rooftops. So it's hard to play hardball, but it seems to work more often than not, and over time it gets easier.
Chin up! Carry on.
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