Decius wrote:

adam wrote:
I, although I'm English, believe in a decent America, a moderate America that speaks at the ballot box but is generally quiet and modest.

...
I hope you're right, that there is this great, silent, moderate America, but it has no voice, and its hard to beleive that its real when you never hear from it...

But where would you hear it? What outlets will amplify the voice of anyone in the group you describe?

The media won't do it because it's not good business and for all the vaunted power of the internet, it's become dominated by shrill partisans or complete nobodies without clout or trustworthiness.

You want a return to civilized dialogue and respectful disagreement, but you'll have to forgive my cynical laughter. It ain't happening this cycle or the next. In the most crucial battle of all, the far right has won -- they've equated politics with morality. They've created a link between your political opinions and your essential human goodness. There is no respectful disagreement with people who are evil, with your enemy, and I see the problem getting worse before it gets better.

The democrats, some of them, still want to have a discussion that's founded on logic; but they get drowned out by the rhetoric of emotion or ignored by a media they can't buy. I'd like to believe a straight democratic ticket would edge us back in the right direction, but I fear a sense of entitlement will vindicate the kind of democrats who just borrowed from the republican playbook and turned the debate into a battle of good and evil.

Religosity -- and i DON'T mean Faith -- is the greatest threat to the United States since the civil war. It has infected every debate, every issue. What used to require reason and analysis now requires only that one view the issue through the lens of whatever ideology they've adopted. What was once called a nuanced opinion is now called "elitist" or "weak" when it's even noticed at all by a populace who's less and less interested in or capable of bothering with the intellectual exercise of finding truth.

The system has been poisoned. Poisoned by absolutism. By intolerance. By moral superiority. By money. I no longer see a way out. Only a vague hope in the cyclical nature of everything... a hope that the pendulum will swing back. I have almost no faith in the proposition that I can do anything to help it. Even after all this, I myself am too angry to be objective, too demoralized to be fair minded and far too frustrated to believe anyone, ANYONE can be convinced of anything through reason or analysis.

And I'm too emotionally exhausted to even really care.

RE: Media Matters - Media uncritically reported Bush's false claim