So, I’ve been reading tons of liberal and conservative blogs, tons of MSM, just tons of information both fact-based and opinion-based. I have both liberal and conservative friends and coworkers. Here are some general trends I have found:
Conservative blogs are full of comments about liberals being all emotion-driven and brainwashed by Obama’s whatever-it-is-that-makes-him-popular. Liberal blogs are full of reasoned argument, references to source material, and specific issue oriented data. In short, conservative blogs are far more opinion/emotion-based and usually short on facts and references to original sources. They fail in exactly the ways they accuse liberals of failing, and do so far more often.
Conservative blogs tend to be vehement about not wanting their taxes raised and not wanting Democrats to decide how they will spend their tax money. This list of posts is a typical example of that. In an ironic lack of self-awareness, there is no mention of the fact that Republican officials just proposed spending $7BILLION of taxpayers’ money on a bailout that by all accounts favors the very same people at the root of the financial crisis, that the original Republican proposal left no room for oversight of any kind, and that the whole bailout is very unlikely to solve the crisis even if it does pass. Not to mention that economists of both political stripes point to deregulation as a prime cause of the mess. Deregulation = absence of government oversight. Has less government worked out better for the average American in the case of industry oversight? Clearly not for the taxpayers who paid for the S&L bailout (see McCain + Keating 5), not for the taxpayers who would have to fund the Lords of Finance if the bailout passes, and not for the deregulated energy workers that lost everything when Enron crashed and burned. I’d list some bad liberal examples here to balance this out, but there aren’t really any that are even close.
Conservative blogs are most definitely heavy on accusing Democrats of wanting to “socialize” America, that more government is bad for everyone, that liberals are all must be “sucking at the big government teat” and again conservative blogs seem to be unaware that the government led by Republicans over the past several administrations has increased spending and deficits by gigantic proportions, in essence doing exactly what conservatives claim to despise. This makes no sense no matter how you parse it. Socialism is used as a fear trigger word all the time. Here’s a challenge for you: look up the definitions for both socialism and fascism, and post your thoughts about which seems closer to current reality in this country.
Strangely, both conservative and liberal blogs accuse MSM as being the tool of the other side. The logical arguments, however, follow the money. Which individuals and corporations own (control) most of the Main Stream Media? Certainly not liberals. Bias is there, but it goes both ways and really MSM isn’t totally the tool of any one ideology, at least not quite yet.
Liberal blogs are definitely snooty and elitist when compared to Conservative blogs. Liberals use well-reasoned logic to explain why Conservatives are idiots, whereas Conservatives use less-reasoned but more gut-feeling to explain why Liberals are idiots. Neither approach is helpful to moving this country forward.
Liberals ignore the dangers of Islamic extremist thought and practice. Conservatives ignore the dangers of Christian extremist thought and practice. Both are hypocritical.
In closing, liberals/Democrats seem to be the lesser of two evils. But hey, “when you choose the lesser of two evils, you’re still choosing evil.” Both sides need to snap out of it and realize there is no one of these 2 parties/ideologies that is the “correct” one. We need a lot more than either to stay safe, relevant, respectable and dignified in these times and in the future.
