David Selbourne of The Spectator warns of a world of unreason:
There is a world, increasingly driven by unreason, in which voices in the wilderness denounce each other as ‘traitors’, cry out that ‘all I want is no more Islam near me’, or allege that Prince Charles is ‘waiting in the wings to declare the UK a Muslim country the minute QEII dies’.
It is the world of the American blogosphere of the ‘left’ and ‘right’; the world not of the lunatic fringe, though it may often seem so, but of vox pop. It is a world of which the ‘MSM’, or ‘mainstream media’, knows too little. Yet blog-site contributors’ opinions, threats and predictions — expressed in large volume on such sites as jihadwatch, littlegreenfootballs or Daily Kos — merit increasing attention for what they reveal of the temper of our times.
There is some truth but also considerable over-generalization to Selbourne’s views of the blogoshere. To a degree the blogosphere does reflect the worst of the polarization of this country. Any person, regardless of how radical their views, can post. The anominity of the internet makes it easier to express one’s most extreme viewpoints while showing little respect for the views of others. Paranoid ideas about the other side thrive without a responsible editor to demand that a writer look at both sides objectively.
However that is just one aspect of the blogosphere. Not all conservatives share the attributes of Little Green Footballs and I’ve had some rather cordial discussions with conservative bloggers. On the left, I’ve both agreed wth Daily Kos at times and have also been quite critical of them at other times. Similarly I’ve posted on disagreements with some liberal blogs, while there are also many liberal blogs which avoid the shrill hatred commonly associated with Daily Kos and LGF.
The relationship to the mainstream media is also more complex. The media has many biases and faults which have nothing to do with left versus right bias, which leads to frustrations on both sides. Desite its faults, the mainstream media remains our best source for information, and MSM reports become the basis of many blog posts, left and right. There is also a difference between the typical discussion of the mainstream media in the left and right. Critics on the right are more likely to attempt to discredit the whole mainstream media in the hopes of replacing it with their right wing media. Some on the left express distrust for everything and anything published by the minstream media, but they are a minority even in the left blogosphere. More often liberal bloggers, possibly due to lacking an alternative media as strong as that on the right, are more likely to be pushing for improvements in the quality of coverage by the mainstream media. The goal on the left is not to abolish the media but to get it to stop pandering to the conservative freak show and be more aggressive in their reporting of government claims.
Selbourne writes that, “In this war of words as well as of worlds, reason is under pressure on all sides.” While reason is under pressure, there are many of us on both the left and right who support reason over the hatred described by Selbourne. It would be useful for bloggers to keep Selbourne’s crticism in mind as we try to avoid the unreason he describes. Moving to Liberal Values was one move I took in this direction when the last blog I wrote for, The Democratic Daily, increasingly left the reality based community, increasingly substituting personal attacks and Michelle Mailkin-type activity for consideration of facts and reasonable arguments. The first signs that I should move on came with their defense of Deepak Chopra’s attacks on evolution and science. This was followed by their support for astrology, ghosts, absolutely any claim of election fraud regardless of the evidence, and ultimately their defense of Mel Gibson which caused me to leave.
Still, for every site on the left where irrationality rules there are many which calmly discuss policy matters without resorting to hatred and unreasoned attacks. Similarly there are far too many conservative sites which mindlessly repeat the same talking points without regards to their lack of validity, but there are also some which express an honest and reasoned support for conservative principles.
To some degree those sites which support reason might be rewarded with more readers, but we also know that sensationalism often wins where ratings are concerned. The blogosphere isn’t that much different from the mainstream media in that regard.
