Comments on: Does Noise Trump Contemplation In The Blogosphere?

[mikezwolf]

Speaking of Digby, another moderate radicalized by the past few years (which seems to be the case for a surprising number of the most articulate voices online -- Glenn Greenwald's case being the most striking), there's no way I could put it as eloquently as him: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com /2006_05_01_digbysblog_archive.html# 114659591122600668 (...) I suspect that many others who are engaged in the netroots like me became radicalized in their 30's and 40's by a Republican Party that started to behave as an openly undemocratic institution. Why so many of these establishment Democrats and insider press corps aren't exercised by this after what we've seen, I can't imagine. Perhaps they just can't see the forest for the trees. This past decade has not been business as usual. History has many examples of societies that enabled radical political factions to dominate, through inertia, cynicism or plain intimidation. It happened in Europe in the 25 years before I was born and almost destroyed the whole planet. I know it's unfashionably hysterical to be concerned about such things, but I have never believed that America was so "exceptional" that it couldn't happen here. (...)

[mikezwolf]

And, by the way, given what passes for news on most of television these days (if you can still call 'news' the 'newstainement' we have today -- Aruba anyone?) I'd be a little careful about throwing stones at other people's ceilings. Anyone who regularly reads Daily Kos, or Digby, or Atrios, or Glenn Greenwald, knows that, while there may be the occasional rant, the quality of the writing and of the discussions and the depth of information put most of the traditional media to shame.

[mikezwolf]

Oh sweet Jesus. Ragegasm Malkin, who flirts with eliminationist rhetoric, who wants to bring back internment camps, who incites her mob of racist readers to violence against peaceful student protesters -- she is a poor victim of the unwashed masses? I'm speechless. How low can you go? I'm sure you spent the past 20 years lecturing everybody about the dangers of the hatred and anger coming out of right-wing talk radio, and then Fox News, and then Free Republic, Little Green Football, Malkin and co., etc. -- I just must have missed it. Even now, after twenty years of unanswered hatred flowing out of every cog of the right-wing noise machine and with five years of this Administration dragging the country into the mud -- even now, nothing in the center and left-of-center blogs comes anywhere close to what the right-wing hate machine keeps spewing and inflicting on the country. It's just that you people have grown to accept anything as normal and acceptable as long as it comes from the right -- and always seem all too glad to accommodate to it. But now that people in the center (where I've always been politically) and left-of-center have been given a medium to speak and shocked into using it -- because they have not been so corrupted by the Washington established as to think that a crushing debt, war based on lies, torture, etc. are just business as usual -- now, oh dear me, your sensibilities are so offended. No wonder you didn't get Colbert's joke. YOU ARE THE JOKE.