thought for the day for my fellow bloggers

Paul Krugman (bless his little heart) has a nice op-ed today. He's talking to reporters, but I think what he says applies to us amateurs following the elections as well. This is serious business. Will bloggers, in our ever-increasing chatter, merely add to the cacophony of the traditional media to which we are supposed to be an alternative? Shall the blogverse become the talk radio of the internet set, as candidates' supporters troll one another's blogs, game Google for cheap amusement ('miserable failure'), shout each other down, and in general contribute to the decline of reason in politics?

I quote here Krugman's last line:


"But history will not forgive us if we allow laziness and personal pettiness to shape this crucial election."



Our blogverse, at its best, shows that ordinary citizens with busy lives do not have to leave politics to the experts: the politicians and the pundits. Ordinary citizens can argue thoughtfully about what we want for our country and how best to make that happen. The more our pundits, journalists, and politicians abandon reasoned argument based on efforts to understand the facts, the more we must counter their unreason with actual discussion.

I cannot make Ted Koppel see that asking candidates to spend their debate time talking about whether they think Howard Dean can win the general election is detrimental to the practice of democracy. But I can refuse to follow his descent into vapidity. I can instead talk honestly about what I see and understand to be happening in the world and respond thoughtfully to those who disagree. We bloggers must believe that words still have content.

Let us try not to pollute the internet with the garbage of thoughtless language and pointless pseudo-debate. Let us be generous to one another. Let us fill the blogverse with the kind of dissent that does protect democracy, not the kind that erodes it. Let us reclaim our right to think. No one else will do it for us.