Why, Thank You

The god I don't believe in knows well how I feel about Red Blogistan, so this doesn't come casually. Captain Ed, of all people, in defending the 101st Fighting Keyboardists, wrote this, perhaps by accident but I assume because he's a nice, gracious dude:

Many on the left disagree, however, and often they provide challenging arguments and valuable perspectives on policy and the manner in which it gets implemented.

Given the severely divided state of the country, sharpened in the Red-Blue Blogistan divide, this is quite an admission. I wish others would admit as much. Kudos to the Kaptain for giving Blue Blogistan a teensy bit of credit. Maybe I'm an asshole, but I can't do the same (no offense to the Kaptain--this is a broader issue). That's not because I don't think most Red Blogistanis are sincere, it's because they're opinions are (mostly) based on falsehoods. If we were all working from the same base of information, this problem wouldn't exist and we could argue about solutions to problems instead of arguing about whether problems exist.

The broader issue is this. It would be wonderful if the country weren't divided. It would be wonderful if there were nothing but raucous debate from varying perspectives on all the issues of the day. But we have no such debate. On TV and even in the papers we have a restricted, narrow range of debate, usually limited to a couple of points of view reduced to a couple of sentences each. This is childish (and probably has a lot to do with the decline of the papers and the ascent of simplicity-prone, image-dependent TV--and I say that as a photographer and ad-agency employee).

To make matters worse, our country's being run by a Party who's wedding to bullshit marketing (read "outright lying") to push their agenda through, because few voters would approve of their agenda if they understood it. Not only that, but their followers have been eating this perfumed horseshit and not questioning it but instead declaring how good it smells and what an ingenious meal they've been served (Zagat rated!).

I used to suspect that the blogosphere was divided by perspective. But after extensive research into various issues (using, oh, I dunno, primary sources), it's pretty clear that one side, though biased in favor of certain policies and behaviors, is familiar with verifiable facts (or at least decent reporting) while the other is mired in bullshit.

It's not a matter of perspective, it's a matter of propaganda. And the propaganda is all on one side.