perfidy

In the comments to a post by Ross below, I noted that the level of discourse around here is rising sharply with the addition of him and GeekLethal to our numbers. I am delighted that is the case.

On the topic of discourse, I came across a reminder by Daniel Drezner today of this oxblog post by Josh Chafetz about the verbal petards launched between left and right. Chafetz asks for a little civility, please, when talking across the aisle. His particular instance is taken from Matthew Yglesias' comments, in which his readers opine that there is no such thing as an intelligent conservative.

Oh, please. I know this kind of thing is common as dirt, and that it happens on both sides of the debate (Instapundit, Li'l Green Footballs, I'm talking to you), but just because everyone does it doesn't make it any less crass or lazy. Is it really such a stretch to assume that people who disagree with you have actually thought through what they believe? To assume otherwise is disingenous, yet it happens all the time, and it makes me sad and tired.

What brings this on? Yesterday, Instapundit linked to a techcentralstation column about the comic strip "Day by Day", noting that "it's starting to get the attention it deserves."

The main point of the TCS article is that Day by Day is an exemplar of the breakdown of the "political left's near monopoly on the dissemination of information." The strip features a 24-year-old black conservative who is "a one man wrecking crew when confronted with liberal shibboleths...[is] highly articulate, radiates droll coolness, but has thoroughly rejected hip-hop culture, and his usual foil, " Jan, who is Damon's age, but a young white leftist, believing every platitude generated by the DNC: that only the left can solve environmental issues; that the NAACP is the only solution to racial issues (in the strip's second comic, where Jan met Damon, she greeted him by saying "Power to the people!" Damon quipped that he thought she was discussing California utilities); that liberating Iraq was bad; capitalism is bad; meat is murder; free trade is bad, etc. Like much of the current far left, she's very much standing athwart history, yelling stop."

I read Day by Day from time to time, and agree it's pretty good. But part of author Chris Muir's stock-in-trade is pandering to its ostensibly conservative-leaning audience using by one of the favorite tropes of the new conservative movement: we're SMARTER than they are.

As I mentioned before, all sides in the debate engage in such ankelbitery. But really. Casting a 24-year-old "meat is murder" protectionist nonintrospective liberal as the foil is a pat and easy move for Muir to make. Wow! Watch the smart guy demolish the naive liberal! Bang! Smash! ZIng! Oooh, the DNC better watch their ass, cuz Muir's on a tear!

I realize I'm asking a lot of a comic strip to achieve a finely nuanced dialogue about politics, but this happens too often, and this time I have some free time to write about it.

Writers on the left, especially issue-driven radicals, tend to lean toward an earnest, sometimes smug, wild-eyed evangelism: "don't you get it? We're all doomed! Are you stupid, or just evil??" kind of thing. Lesser writers on the left, like Atrios' commentors, Maureen Dowd, and the folks at NPR do this all the time.

The right's preferred stance is the smug, weary, irritable condescention plied so well by Jonah Goldberg, the Instapundit, and in a debased form Billy O'Reilly: "Jesus, they're all beyond hope. Good thing we can count to twenty without using our feet." Each trope is totally unconstructive and incredibly wearying.

The problem is that the Left, such as it exists today, only gets big press when evil idiot fucks like ANSWER hold a rally calling for a US military defeat and nobody takes them to task for it. I mean, come on! I read a story last week about the most recent anti-war rally in DC, and most of the people there either didn't know or didn't care too much what ANSWER's platform was. In that regard, the left is guilty of a horrible lack of self-scrutiny, but the foolishness of picketers should not reflect poorly on the greater mass of left-leaning people.

(Naturally, others would counter that the press in general is too liberal, but I don't give a crap what others think about this. I see a lot of bias both ways.)

I'm very glad that my cobloggers are intelligent, reasonable people who realize that "reasonable people may differ." As the left/right political spectrum breaks down, leaving evil idiot fucks like A.N.S.W.E.R. in charge on the left and further enboldening the right to condemn all and sundry as Stalinist dupes, this becomes ever more important.

I don't blog about politics and war much anymore because keeping up with the stories makes me sad and tired, and I'm not in blogging to be sad and tired. Buckethead, Windy City Mike and I started this thing way back in March to give ourselves a sandbox to play in. Although I'm not taking my ball and going home-- oh, no, no!-- I do expect to not blog so much about the "partisan" side of "partisan" politics for a while. It's a clusterfark, and, Jesus, Jim! I'm a musician, not a pundit!