Too busy to say anything of any substance today, so sounding a little like a broken record, but look here:
As I’ve mentioned before, there seems to be some panic abroad that the disinformation spread by hardcore partisan bloggers is somehow shaping reality for the nonpartisan centrists who seem to be in hiding. I have always had my doubts—and if I have to cast my lot with anyone, it will be with the optimists and the anthropologists, who tend to see the big picture and the broad view. In other words, it should be reassuring that we live in intensely polarized times where the tyranny of the majority rests on the thinnest margin, and the minority isn’t shy about saying so. (I do worry though about the violence that can be done to the country and its constitution in such a brief burst of pressing a slight advantage.) It should be possible for a slight majority of voters within the next two years to lose the scales from their eyes, and see raw power-grabbing for what it is, and begin the slow process of fixing what’s been done to us. (Didn’t this guy just win a seat and now he’s already looking for a promotion?)
As for certain silly attempts to continue to “frame” the conversation, I’m with editor Anders Gyllenhaal—bring ’em on. The neo-con blogosphere has already run up against the glass ceiling of credibility. When the choir is already full, and you just keep preaching the same gospel, the only room for movement is back out of the choir, where the rest of us have plenty of doctrinal elbow room.
Take, for example, this litany of supposed lefty bias exhibited by Dan Rather. It only appears to be evidence of lefty bias if you yourself are biased in the other direction. There are times when the facts militate against a particular political paradigm—but then the right has never shown much respect for or interest in the facts. If you need a measure of hubris, it is when they believe their gotcha moments are self-evident, when they are merely self-defeating, risible indications of the troglodyte’s myopia.
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