PoliGazette

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

As the 2008 elections move into the arena of partisan gladiatorial combat, the potentially unique features of both candidates are already getting lost as the political chattering classes return to their old worst habits. And while its leading lights love to congratulate themselves on the new power of the blogosphere, the reality is much more mundane…and much more depressing. The blogosphere in 2008 is largely populated by tired reiterations of very old partisan scripts.

Chief among these is what I would call the presumption of bad faith — the idea that those who disagree politically are not only in error, but are actually bad people. Defeating the other side has been raised from the level of instrumental necessity (needed to prevent bad policies) to primary good (worth it for the emotional satisfaction of watching them lose alone). And opposition is attributed not to intellectual disagreement, but to moral failure. For example, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald deems those he disagrees with on telecom immunity to be “evil” and pretty much everyone he disagrees with on foreign policy to be “warmongers”. The greatest possible crime to Greenwald is to compromise with the Bush administration on anything. And rather than being called out on this, Greenwald is exalted as one of the blogosphere’s most widely cited and influential commentators. He is joined in the elite ranks by other extremists on left and right — legions of haters at DailyKos and HuffPo are matched in equal volume by Hot Air and RedState. Both sides use the same demonizing language and the same accusations of moral corruption — they differ only in the direction of the withering rhetorical fire.

The legions of “Bush Derangement Syndrome” victims have been matched in recent months by seemingly equal numbers of “Obama Derangement Syndrome” victims on the other side. To the ranks of BDS/ODS sufferers, no story is too unbelievable and no spin is too inane if it works to bash their selected demon. And no story that might be positive is ever credible or even worth talking about. Oblivious to the impending end of Bush’s term, BDS victims rant on unimpeded with dark speculations about canceled elections , looming dictatorship , and an attack on Iran just to enhance Bush’s power . They have nothing to say about foreign policy success in North Korea, of course, nor about the consistent evidence of the multilateral approach consistently adopted by the Bush administration towards Iran. Bush’s dwindling supporters are simultaneously mocked as pathetic and hopeless “dead-enders” and as malevolent and all-powerful “neocons”. Bush hatred has even grown to include the purely juvenile hijacking of mundane city government processes .

Conversely, ODS sufferers miss no opportunity to deem him an “ empty suit ” and a “ liar “, often putting themselves through remarkable rhetorical contortions to slam Obama for what they would never bat an eye from any other candidate. Those who support Obama are dubbed “cultists” bereft of either intelligence or integrity. For example, blogger Larry Johnson spent the better part of a week spreading colorful rumors of a tape where Michelle Obama was caught using racially explosive rhetoric. Unable to actually prove the existence of the tape, Johnson turned away to focus on other anti-Obama tall tales with no apparent loss of his link-ability in the blogosphere. Truth of the charges, it seems, is secondary to maintaining the endless hateful drumbeat.

What lies beneath all the invective is the same: a presumption that anyone who disagrees does so in bad faith. Rather than responding with argument, the typical response in the blogosphere is an accusation, of corruption, of hackery, of mendacity. The practice extends even to issues unrelated to the narcissistic world of American elections. On this site, for example, posts about the historical debate over whether or not there was a “genocide” of Armenians in Turkey during World War I routinely result less in the examinations of dusty historical data as in lurid charges of Turkish government payoffs allegedly channeled to this small site’s authors.

The reality rarely turns out to match the hate, even from a critical perspective. For example, I myself was among the most vicious critics of Hillary Clinton’s overly extended presidential run, but there appears no evidence of her fulfilling the demonic stereotype of a power-at-all-costs shrew willing to destroy the party. Quite the contrary, her post-campaign persona has been quite normal . And there seems nothing new or contrived, as Hillary Clinton’s honest earnestness goes all the way back to her college days . It should be possible to criticize her policies and campaign tactics without making her out to be Lady MacBeth, but those kind of nuanced critiques don’t get a reading in today’s blogosphere.

And that gets to the heart of the issue — the problem is cultural, not individual. The blogosphere encourages, nay demands obstreperousness and obnoxiousness as the price of admission to its higher ranks. An author that offers a standard regurgitation of hateful partisan scripts receives an automatic reward in the form of legions of dedicated readers and commenters eager to use that site as an outlet for their emotional outbursts. An author that tries to give a fair shake both sides merely receives abuse as the partisans of hate zero in on the heresy that the other side might be anything but thoroughly malevolent. It is worth noting that Greenwald’s most hated targets are Congressional Democrats who commit the crime of failing to be obsessively anti-Bush 24/7. Go ahead and look through the most popular threads on any broadly political site you want to — you will find that the most popular threads are the most abusive and intolerant ones. The posts that are analytical rather than polemical are rhetorical deserts, speaking to none but the eerily chirping crickets. Bloggers, like anyone else, respond to incentives. They want to be read and the way to get what they want is to be extremist, purist, and obnoxious. In political matters, cynicism has been elevated to a virtue and fair-mindedness is a betrayal.

Part of the problem is structural. The way that one rises in rank in the blogosphere is through the exchange of links — one site linking to another, usually a bigger site linking to a smaller one. How does one get noticed by the Big Boys except by being outrageous or by regurgitating the Big Boys’ preferred script? If you share Glenn Greenwald’s foaming obsession with hating everything about the Bush administration, you have some hope of getting Glenn’s attention and having him share some of his traffic with you. But if you criticize Glenn Greenwald’s abusive approach, you’re not going to get Glenn’s links, period. And getting lots of links from like-minded extremists gets you an immediate route to the top of the list at Memeorandum , resulting in more links and more influence. A similar dynamic covers commenters — they will flock to a site that shares their obsessions and will reject a site that puts limits on their outbursts.

So this lengthy indictment begs the question: What’s the point? There seems little that a single contributor to a relatively minor group blog like Poligazette could ever do to change the pattern, especially when I’ve more than a few times been a part of it. But I can refuse to play the dumb rhetorical game any longer. And I can refuse to link to those that do. So that’s what I’m going to do from now on — analyze and comment on issues where I might have something interesting and useful to say (usually foreign policy and international affairs, my own area of expertise), but without participating in the debased rhetoric that has grown to dominate and even define the blogosphere. And I will encourage, even challenge readers to consider the actual reasons that those who disagree might have instead of simply assuming that they are evil. I will also return to an old concept that I used back in the days of Fidonet echomail conference, before the internet became widely available to the bpulic: I will ask that commenters focus on what they are for instead of just whatever they may be against . Those who can only hate and throw around accusations of corruption or mendacity will not be welcome.

Maybe a presumption of good faith is too boring to work and maybe the chirping crickets is all I will hear in response. Or maybe my opinions aren’t as interesting as I like to think they are. But someone has to dissent from the endless memes of sophomoric ideological purism. If you want a consistent repetition of the same-old, same-old scripts of intractable ideological combat, well, there are lots of authors willing to provide that for you without me adding my inferior imitations of it. I hope that at least someone out there agrees enough to support.

UPDATE :  Glenn Greenwald was apparently misquoted in calling Steny Hoyer “evil” for his support of telecom immunity, but Greenwald hastens to endorse the remainder of the sentiment that Hoyer is a “craven enabler of the Bush administration”.  In doing so, Greenwald yet again reaffirms my underlying criticism of his style — that he places opposition to the Bush administration ahead of all other considerations (BDS) and that he does so not by criticizing his opponents as to substance, but rather attacking them as persons.  If there remains any doubt, Greenwald’s near-reflexive use of the slur “warmonger” to describe anyone and everyone he disagrees with about foreign policy demonstrates it as well.  The point is that Greenwald and the legions of admirers that he both provokes and promotes operate by attacking persons moreso than substantively engaging arguments.  They believe their own righteousness to be a matter of pure assumption and thus conclude that any who disagree are “evil” whether they use that word directly or not.  Thus, I stand behind my overall criticism and rejection of Greenwald’s obstreporous style, no matter how influential he and his acolytes might be in the blogosphere.