Can Metaphor Persuade Us to Buy Healthcare?

For the past week, I have been exploring the power of metaphor; where metaphor comes from, how we define metaphor, and how and why we use metaphor intentionally and also subconsciously. I discovered that metaphor infiltrates many aspects of my life and the world around me, regardless of whether these metaphorical thoughts are intentional. And then my curiosity led me to the examination of the use of metaphor in media and how metaphor acts to persuade the masses.

I came across a fascinating article written in the Huffington Post by George Lakoff on the use of metaphor in politics. A particular example is the 2008 presidential campaign in which Barack Obama utilized a metaphor imposed by Republican Rudolph Guiliani stating, "if you want a flat screen TV, buy one; and if you don't have the money, go earn it. If you can't, too bad, you don't deserve it. The same with health care."Obama used this metaphor with the intent of having Congress regulate the insurance industry. Part of Congress' regulatory power rests in the Interstate Commerce clause, which is built around Obama's metaphor. However, the Supreme Court ruled the Interstate Commerce clause unconstitutional because it was "forcing people to buy a product." On top of that, there is a mandate which imposes a health care tax on all citizens, but those who already have health care are exempt from paying the tax.

In a way, this mandatory tax is another metaphor that acts as an incentive, or rather, an ultimatum. Essentially, the incentive is to have people buy health care so that they don't have to pay the health care tax. Rudolph Guiliani's metaphor works in the sense that "if you can't [afford it], too bad, you don't deserve it." Or in other words,  

All of you who can't afford to purchase health care, oh well, guess you're out of luck. And just to prove that you have no money to buy insurance, we're going to force you to pay even more taxes because you can't contribute a few thousand dollars a year to protect your own health.

Metaphor can be subtle, like in poetry, or it can be extremely obvious, like in this particular article. However, I find it interesting that the more obvious metaphors are often the ones that get overlooked. For me, I try so hard to look for the underlying metaphor that I completely miss the blatantly obvious ones. I'm sure this same habit applies to many other people too. We look so hard for what we can't see that we miss the bigger picture entirely. We deprive ourselves of the real meanings of things, and trick our minds into believing falsities. Metaphor is powerful, but it can have dire consequences. As John Green, author of Paper Towns once said,

“I always thought of it like you said, that all the strings inside him broke. But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we’re grass—our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is alive. We don’t suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you’re imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose the grass, you’re saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications. Do you know what I mean?”