Quote of the Day: On Vietnam, Bush And The Blogosphere

From the Los Angeles Times’ Tim Rutten:

But if it seems as if the argument is less about an impending tsunami of Iraqi blood than it is about who should be blamed for it, it’s because one of the things this week’s exchange demonstrates is how divided politically engaged Americans remain by competing historical memories of Vietnam.

On the right, Vietnam remains an example of defeat snatched from the jaws of military victory by an ideologically motivated defeatist fifth column on the home front.

On the left, Vietnam is a morality play involving the horrific consequences of imperial hubris and political mendacity.

About the only thing on which red and blue agree is that the Southeast Asian war was a historic tragedy compounded by bad American decisions. The Web — even when it is serious and knowledgeable, as it was in this instance — remains an intensely politicized medium. People talk past rather than to each other.

He argues that the blogosphere started the real debate first, then the mainstream media chimed in. His last paragraph:

This new world in which online and print commentary complement each other already is deepening our civic conversation in ways that clearly matter. Will it help us move from cacophony to consensus? In a democracy, is that ever attainable — or even desirable?

Yes, we see this tendency by some — BUT not all — to want to talk past each other. Real dialogue comes about when weblogs can disagree on issues and there is a give and take on specific issue points and there isn’t this tone of anger because someone DARES to see things differently.

Talking past each other is when a website demonizes another website as whole or even tries to demonize a weblog writer due to one post. (In TMV’s case, we have so many posts we may move some of our archives to a new page or server and people who write on this site don’t even agree or at times get along with each other). Lash out blogging usually comes in the form of kind of written insult or an attempt to stick a label or derogatory term on them. It goes after the person who dared to differ versus the actual points they raised.

BUT the good news is that there are lots and LOTS of people in the blogosphere who WILL and DO discuss issues without having to detest, label or put down another website or writer. The TMV blogroll has sites of all kinds that in our own experience may have differed with us (or thought a given post written from a centrist, center left or center right perspective was total crap) but challenged us on specific analytical points. And when we link to all kinds of sites, you often see a genuine dialogue over issues occur.

So the web is indeed intensely politicized (so some feel if we run a post a bit to the left everyone on TMV MUST be liberals collecting a DNC paycheck or if we run one to the right the site MUST be Rush, Sean and Michael Savage writing under assumed names and pretending not to be registered Republicans). But many people who write weblogs do NOT talk past each other.

Just visit www.memeorandum.com and go through all the links or take a day (or two) and go through our entire TMV blogroll. You’ll see plenty of sites discussing.