America has been subjected quietly to a Ricin attack -- but this time the deadly poison has attacked the body politic. This time, the terrorists come in the form of some political partisans, talk show hosts and even some bloggers.
Each day you see evidence of how intense partisanship and polarization is poisoning serious debate and solution-oriented politics in this country. And the pace of these highly personal “attacks” make the whole idea of Unity08 more crucial than ever before.
Consider:
Two brave young soldiers are grabbed in a professional operation in Iraq. They are brutally murdered by Al Qaeda. A top right wing talk show host then proclaims that “I perused the liberal, kook blogs today, and they are happy that these two soldiers got tortured. They're saying, "Good riddance. Hope Rumsfeld and whoever sleep well tonight." Oh, REALLY? What blogs were those? They’re hard to name because (a) leftist blogs were not saying that and (b) if one did exist that said that it was likely a tiny site and it does not represent leftist blogs. Meanwhile, a left wing talk show host, hours later, says that members of the Bush administration would have no problem at all cutting people’s heads off. A statement equally worth of contempt.
A prominent progressive blogger who blogged anonymously finds his identity outed by a major conservative website. The justification/spin is that it was to expose his alleged conflict of interests, which the exposed blogger convincingly later defends. Some others raise other conflict of interest claims against other bloggers -- but what’s interesting: in each case these “exposés” are aimed at people with whom the writers do not agree. Why aren’t they also going after people who are on THEIR side? You know the answer. (As I noted on my blog The Moderate Voice, this onetime anonymous blogger publicly defended the motives and intellectual sincerity of many conservative bloggers at a conference at Stanford last year and then joined some top conservative bloggers for drinks afterwards. HE didn’t see people who disagree as an enemy that must be eliminated).
Listening to four to six hours of conservative and progressive Air America talk radio on a drive is enough to make your head spin. Hosts of shows on BOTH sides seemingly feel their primary function is to portray partisans on the other side and their followers as evil. There is little effort (at times you do see some) to win people over with ideas or arguments; much of these broadcasts entail hurling pejorative adjectives. Left-right broadcasters have become mirror images of each other, working to arouse their party’s partisans’ passions against the other side.
Iraq becomes a big issue as both parties present resolutions that seem partially as attempts to define the other party in the run up to the election. The GOP use of the phrase “cut and run” to define Democrats and anyone who questions the war (I have supported the war and do not endorse an immediate pullout but I totally repudiate this kind of rhetoric) is a code word for the word “cowards.” It is a code word used over and over since Karl Rove used it in a speech about a week ago.
All of this points to a fact that Unity08 perhaps needs to stress more.
There are Americans who will balk at voting for a third party due to feeling that voting for a third party vote only helps a party get in power that he/she didn’t want to get in power and defeat the one that is actually closer to his/her political positions.
But there is a bigger issue than Unity’s main goal of a ticket with a Democrat and a Republican.
The issue today is that there CAN be a ticket that shows that a Democrat and a Republican can stand together advocating common values and showing mutual respect. The issue is that there CAN be a serious discussion of issues that transcends trying to demonize, discredit or take out (expose someone’s real name, etc., so they stop writing) political foes. The age of Road Rage does NOT have to be the age of Political Rage.
The body politic has been steadily and quietly fed a huge dose of Ricin the past 20 years in the form of intense polarization and rapidly deteriorating political rhetoric that has replaced issue and solution oriented debate with vilification and destruction. Arousing the intellect has been replaced by arousing hatreds (hey: it makes for better sound bytes, aka free political advertising).
Not a month goes by on my website where I don’t get an email or learn of a blog on the left or right that claims our centrist site MUST be “liberal” OR “closet Bush supporters.” We’ve been delinked, lost whole batches of left/right readers in stages (then we get new ones). Why? Because some folks apparently believe reading an opposing idea causes brain cancer. Many people now only want to read or listen to people who already agree with them. A writer who disagrees with them is the enemy -- hated, evil-intentioned with some hidden motive or agenda. (We were called ideologically “transgender” last week by a conservative site that delinked us).
Why is this and Unity08 important? Because if thoughtful people of BOTH PARTIES and NO PARTY don’t work to defuse and reverse this, and work to lift the quality of debate, this trend will worsen. And you can just see how in the future how some upset nut on the right OR left will feel he needs to take action to physically remove someone -- whether it’s a politician, a talking head or a blogger. Watching American political rhetoric steadily worsen is like watching two cars seconds before their fatal head on collision. We can see THIS one coming….
Ricin is dangerous to the body. Political Ricin is dangerous to the body politic. Unity08 can be an antidote.
