I think I'll try turning this thing on again.
I believe they are actually interesting times in the blogosphere, especially on the left side. Now it's a Democratic president red herrings, strawmen, ad hominem attacks, and impassioned appeals to 'loyalty' and to the wisdom of a "great man" are commonplace among blogs that should be striving to do much better (Yeah I'm looking at you John Cole).
It's alarming, if not surprising, that so many in the United States that call themselves 'progressive' resort to naked and manipulative appeals to emotion, high school name calling and cliquish snickering, and blind obedience to their "leader" now a (right of center) Democrat is in the White House. Now that the extreme malfeasance of the bushies has mercifully come to end - an era where only the truly immoral or stupid could support that man-child - it's become a lot easier to see separate the thinkers from the hacks. And it seems that there are more hacks than I had realized.
So yeah, it's a good time to get back into it. And I hope to develop some of these themes if I actually do make a commitment to regularly posting again, especially as they relate to bias and the so-called voting for the lesser evil.
To start with, here's a little "Hear Hear" (or two) from our man Greenwald.
Hear, all ye good people, damn well hear what this brilliant and eloquent speaker has to say!"
From last week:
... That said, I've been fairly repulsed by the 2003-like swarming, bullying efforts of the President's loyal supporters (both in the White House and from Beltway journalists and their partially cloned liberal bloggers) not merely to dispute, but to demonize and personally discredit, the bill's progressive critics as insane, crazy, childish, idiotic and drugged-out, Naderite, purist liars who -- we now learn today -- are the equivalent of "global warming denialists." Whatever else is true, progressive opponents of the Senate bill (virtually all of whom offer strategic arguments for improving it, not for preserving the status quo), have been making well-informed and substantive critiques. I don't want to overstate this: there has been some very responsible and informative debate among these various factions, the insults have flown in both directions, and it's understandable that passions run high on an issue of this significance among adversaries, particularly as the process mercifully draws to a close. Still, it seems clear that campaigns by White House loyalists in government and the media to destroy the personal credibility and malign the character of the President's critics -- and to depict "the Left" as shrill, unSerious losers -- obviously aren't confined to the Bush years or to Bush supporters.
And from today (good god why does this still have to be said?)
When it comes to Terrorism, discussions of motive have been declared more or less taboo from the start because of the dishonest equation of motive discussions with justification -- as though understanding the reasons why X happens is to posit that X is legitimate and justifiable. Causation simply is; it has nothing to do with issues of morality, blame, or justification. Yet all that is generally permitted to be said in such situations is that Terrorists try to harm us because they're Evil, and we (of course) are not, and that's generally the end of the discussion.
Happy New Year
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