Know thy enemy
Steven Taylor has a great post talking about the left/right debate.
He quotes Barbara O’Brien who wrote this “Blogging America: Political Discourse in a Digital Nation”
Steven had a positive review on her book (above) then seen her blog posts (Or, Freepers are the new barbarians.)
Steven must not be a rightie because he has a very civil and logical comment with real backing to his points.
I think that we all tend to get to isolated in our own little ideological worlds, especially in the current world of niche media. We all spend too much time reading columnists and blogs that agree with us, listening to radio that agrees with us and watching cable news shows that agree with us. As such, we find our own view reinforced, while the other side seems more and more foreign (and wrong). Perhaps the we should all take a trip on the other side of the aisle more frequently and try to view our own positions through alternative lenses. At a minimum, one will find that one is better able to defend one’s own positions if one knows how the other side will attack. And beyond that, it might actually cause us to actually think more deeply about our own views. Such a concept, yes?
The blogosphere needs more discourse like this.
We all need to become friends in this world. But then again I just might be ignorant.
Can’t we just all get along…
4 Comments »
4 Responses to “Know thy enemy”
Ogre on 30 Dec 2004 at 10:04 #
If they’d all just agree with me, then we’d all get along!
Michal on 30 Dec 2004 at 12:13 #
Thank you for agreeing with me.
Greg Turner on 30 Dec 2004 at 12:44 #
Yes! I don’t get why so many people can’t just be cool.
Christina on 02 Jan 2005 at 09:58 #
Off topic, missed the site yesterday. Hope everything is resolved. ‘-)
Happy New Year!