Blogs, conservatives, and first-rate intelligences

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Henry Farrell reports on his interesting co-authored study of how blog readers use blogs to access points of view--their own or others'.

The results include:

[B]log readers seem to exhibit strong homophily. That is to say, they overwhelmingly choose blogs that are written by people who are roughly in accordance with their political views. Left wingers read left wing blogs, right wingers read right wing blogs, and very few people read both left wing and right wing blogs.

No huge surprise there--blog fans as well as blog detractors would generally agree on that. But this follows immediately:

Those few people who read both left wing and right wing blogs are considerably more likely to be left wing themselves; interpret this as you like.

Okay, I will.

It's a characteristic of the right-wing mind set that it is extraordinarily uncomfortable with holding two opposed ideas at the same time. It generally handles this discomfort simply by refusing to admit opposing ideas.

Note that I don't refer here to contradictory "facts," something more limited, along the lines of:

a. Gordon Smith says he's a moderate who values bipartisanship.

b. Gordon Smith has voted with George Bush 90% of the time.

or

a. John McCain says he's a straight-talking political maverick.

b. John McCain has publicly changed positions on a long list of political issues to ingratiate himself with the Republican base.

No, it doesn't take a first-rate intelligence to reconcile those; any self-respecting conservative can rationalize away six impossible contradictions like that before breakfast.

And, in fairness, many of their counterparts on the left are no less talented in this regard.

I'm more interested in the problem at the world-view level: The conservative mind set simply has a very difficult time looking at the world from the other's point of view--in fact, it regards the attempt to do so as a sign of weakness--and so it simply doesn't try.

The liberal mind set, on the other hand, is not only more comfortable imagining the point of view of the other, it considers doing so a moral good (often described in the language of footwear, as in "walking a mile in the other fellow's shoes").

As I've written (including here, here, and here), one of the places where this difference shows itself with painful clarity is in satire, irony, and humor generally. To function--and not be anything other than name-calling--satire has to be able to imagine itself in the other's position, or to recognize aspects of the other's position in its own. Even at its most ruthless, satire has to have some trace of charity and humility--Jon Stewart's bashing of John McCain come to mind--or else it becomes, as Molly Ivins famously said, merely vulgar.

Satire from the left has a reasonable chance of being funny; satire from the right will only make you squirm in embarrassment for them.

Conservative attempts at satire will never, ever, be first-rate--at least not the conservativism that's the dominant form in our country at the moment.

I think this same principle--the ability/inability to imagine the world from the other's point of view--also goes a long way in explaining why Congressional Democrats' attempts to find common legislative ground with conservative Republicans (and they're the only kind left in Congress) are doomed. And why the right-wing base has found its preferred medium in talk-radio rather than the blogosphere. But those are topics for another time.

Feingold to fellow Senators: "We can celebrate the Constitution on July 4th and maybe when we come back you'll decide not to tear it up."

The Progressive Patriots Fund has this video up today:

Sunday morning toons: Special "Almost Monday" Edition

Sorry I'm late getting this posted. Without further dilly-dallying, let's kick things off with Daryl Cagle's round-up of political toons for the week. It's full of oil shock, dead satirists, suffering oil executives, and--oddly enough--battery contests.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Lane, Jerry Holbert, Scott Stantis, John Branch, Thomas Boldt, and John Cole.

Tributes to George Carlin: Mike Keefe, Mike Lester (yes, Carlin really did say that), Bob Englehart, and Steve Breen.

Ann Telnaes draws a comparison. Boing!

Opus shares grief for a vanishing way of life.

Vintage Popeye cartoons were violent and misogynist, sure, but only a select few celebrated out-and-out sado-masochism like this 1934 piece:

The relationship between Popeye and Olive was, to put it delicately, a complicated one.

p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer salutes the Olympic try-outs in Eugene. (Click to enlarge.)

NBC running SNL Season 1 Ep 1, hosted by George Carlin, tonight

Set your TiVos accordingly.

Sad to think they didn't do this for Pryor (did they?), but I salute them for taking a break from 20 years of being the movie-deal pipeline for every player, regardless of talent, to pay tribute to a legend.

The p3 award for best two-sentence blog post goes to:

AmericaBlog.

It's funniest if you don't think about it too much. The more you analyze it the less sense it makes. So let it make its first impression and then move happily on.

How is the Bush Administration email system like a hitchhiker's towel?

From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

A towel […] is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can […] wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous).

From yesterday's New York Times:

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

The document […] ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status[…]

The Bush Administration's approach to federal regulation (even from tame agencies) that it doesn't want to comply with: If you can't see it, it can't see you.

By the way, it's working.

John McCain: The Dr. Phil of energy policy

Because when it comes to the price of oil, McCain knows it's all in you feel about it, not what it means to your household budget, the viability of your suburban community, the national economy, or our national security.

John McCain, June 2008:

Yesterday, McCain admitted that his offshore drilling proposal would probably have mostly "psychological" benefits, NBC/NJ’s Adam Aigner-Treworgy reports. At a town hall in Fresno that primarily focused on energy issues, McCain was asked a question about the price of gas and the viability of various short-term solutions.

John McCain, April 2008

"I'm very concerned about [the price of oil and gas]…. And obviously the way it's been going up is just terrible," claimed the Arizona senator.

"But I think psychologically - and a lot of our problems today, as you know, are psychological - the confidence, trust, the uncertainty about our economic future, ability to keep our own home," he added.

McCain explained that his proposal to eliminate the federal gas tax for three months would provide Americans the necessary 'psychological boost' to deal with their economic problems.

Remember that: When it comes to the problem of record oil and gas prices, John McCain thinks it's all in your head.

Shorter David Brooks: George Bush is "incredibly foolish" and a "disaster" only some of the time

And that, says this partisan hack trapped in the uncomfortable position of dutifully defending something even he seems now to secretly suspect is indefensible, makes Bush a pretty good president.

The argument, basically, is this:

Bush is a stubborn man. Well, without that stubbornness, that unwillingness to accept defeat on his watch, he never would have bucked the opposition to the surge.

Bush is an outrageously self-confident man. Well, without that self-confidence he never would have overruled his generals.[...]

The whole episode is a reminder that history is a complicated thing. The traits that lead to disaster in certain circumstances are the very ones that come in handy in others. The people who seem so smart at some moments seem incredibly foolish in others.

Of course, without his arrogance and outrageous self-confidence, Bush wouldn't have lied our way into Iraq in the first place, without reason, without plan, without exit strategy. But that's not the point here.

Here's the point, says Brooks. It's not just that history is complicated:

Life is complicated. The reason we have democracy is that no one side is right all the time.

Well, no one ever accused Bush of that. Certainly not Brooks:

[B]efore long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right.

Wow. That's his thesis: That supposed dolt actually got one right. And this is from one of Bush's supporters. Just . . . wow.

(Memo to self: If Brooks ever offers to defend me in print, politely decline.)

Of course, the only real criterion by which the Bush administration's "surge" has succeeded is that it's tied us down in Iraq until after Bush leaves office, making the predictably-difficult exit the next president's problem, but once again, that's not the point here. Please try to stay focused:

• Even a broken clock is right twice a day.


• Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then.


• And even a doltish president eventually gets one thing right.

And thus is Bush's War considered vindicated among the Right.

Gordon Smith continues to attach himself to Dems at every opportunity

Last week it was Elizabeth Furse and Avel Gordley--not the hottest tickets in town, but everyone understood that he has to take what he can get.

Even so, that didn't work too well.

Today he's angling to get his name on the same page as Obama.

(Note: For some reason this ad has refused to run beyond the first two seconds, regardless of what site I go to. I've double-checked all my Flash settings and have arrived at the conclusion that no vessel of discourse, including my notebook computer, can contain the crap in this ad. Anyway, be warned.)

Who says Gordon Smith helped lead the fight for better gas mileage and a cleaner environment? Barack Obama! He joined with Gordon and broke through a 20-year deadlock to pass new laws which increase gas mileage for automobiles.

Obama's campaign issued this statement in short order:

"Barack Obama has a long record of bipartisan accomplishment and we appreciate that it is respected by his Democratic and Republican colleagues in the Senate. But in this race, Oregonians should know that Barack Obama supports Jeff Merkley for Senate. Merkley will help Obama bring about the fundamental change we need in Washington," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

Merkley's office issued a statement of its own that led with this pithy remark:

Obama never said "Smith helped lead the fight" on anything.

Which pretty well sums it up.

Poor Smith: desperately trying to step into the frame in the yearbook picture with any Democrats he can find, all the while hoping he can thread the needle of distancing himself as far as possible from Bush, the Republicans and his own voting record without motivating his base to stay home in November.

(Cross-posted at Loaded Orygun.)