Op-Ed
Party Poopers
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Infomaniacs Anonymous
.jpg "Infomaniacs Anonymous")
From time to time, I visit Amazon.com and peruse the top 100 bestselling books on politics and current events — just to take an intellectual pulse of the American electorate.
So what are politically inclined Americans reading these days? Let’s take a look, shall we?
Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning; Right is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe; The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don’t Want You to Know About Because They Helped Cause Them; Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Myths of Republican Politics; Party of Defeat: How Democrats and Radicals Undermined America’s War on Terror Before and After 9/11; Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches; Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies: Issue by Issue Responses to the Most Common Claims of the Left from A to Z; Heads in the Sand: How Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats; If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans; Trainwreck: The End of the Conservative Revolution (And Not a Moment Too Soon); The Terrible Truth About Liberals; Conservatives Without Conscience; The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party; The Brotherhood of the Disappearing Pants: A Field Guide to Conservative Sex Scandals; Bamboozled: How Americans Are Being Exploited by the Lies of the Liberal Agenda; The GOP-Hater’s Handbook: 378 Reasons Never to Vote for the Party of Reagan, Nixon, and Bush Again
Dizzy?
It’s hard for me to see so much masturbatory partisan tripe and not
conclude that something in America has gone terribly wrong. I’m too young to know whether our political dialogue has ever been this polarized and immature, but I suspect that something about today’s political and media environment has exacerbated the problem. Our parties have become more ideologically homogenous in recent decades, for one. And the sheer multiplicity of media options has created self-reinforcing ideological ghettoes — Fox News and talk radio for conservatives, MSDNC and the left-wing blogosphere for liberals.
Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t want to live in a country where everybody agreed on every issue. There’s a place for political parties and philosophical disagreements — about small vs. big government, for example. But surely there comes a point where our partisan instincts turn us into tribal beasts — where debates become foodfights, complete with the intellectual maturity and civility of an elementary-school cafeteria.
We live today in an America where too many pledge allegiance to party before country. They filter reality through a partisan lens such that when a member of their team is caught with a hooker or with $400,000 in a freezer, molesting teenage pages or procuring fellatio in an airport men’s bathroom, they see it as an isolated instance. When it’s a member of the other side, however, it’s part of a pattern of misdeeds. If one side takes up a cause — no-matter how worthy — the other side feels compelled to fight against it.
It’s why one third of this country is still convinced that global warming is a liberal hoax. And it’s why another third believes that Islamic terrorism is little more than a bogeyman that George Bush uses to scare up votes. It’s why I can’t stand Republicans who use the word "liberal" as an epithet or Democrats who talk about the "Republican smear machine" as if nothing comparable existed on their side.
I write about this topic with some experience — and, hopefully, some perspective — because I know what it’s like to be a partisan Democrat (I was a Gore whore in 2000) and a partisan Republican (I’m still trying to put behind me the period in which I made myself a press secretary for the Bush Administration)
With this weekly column, I’ve sought (not always successfully, I admit) to rise above the ideological warfare and partisan grudge match. I’ve tried to be original, to take on inherently controversial topics, and to challenge readers to test the boundaries of their intellectual comfort zones. And I’ve always tried to do it with a sense of humor and, more importantly, intellectual honesty. On occasion, that’s meant admitting (at least to myself) when I’d committed hypocrisy. I recall, for instance, how writing my twin columns on the James Watson crucifixtion — both of which I stand by 110 percent, incidentally — made me realize that I’d joined a similar lynch mob against Walt & Mearsheimer in my column critiquing their book on the Israel lobby. There are myriad other examples, but I’ll spare you the self-flagellation. I guess it’s part of developing as a writer and a thinker. The moment I’m no longer slightly embarrassed by work I did a while ago, I will have ceased to improve.
I want to thank my loyal readers — both of you — and those who have written to give me both positive and negative feedback. I am forever indebted to my distinguished editors — Carlos, Olivia, and David — for putting up with me. I’m grateful to Sunnies Andy Guess ’05 and Michael Morisy ’07 for their friendship. And, lastly, I’d like to acknowledge fellow politicos Mark Coombs, Ethan Felder, Mitch Fagen, et al. for helping to sharpen my mind. I don’t quite know how to leave you — I’ve never been very good at endings — but why start now?
Ben Birnbaum is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at bbirnbaum@cornellsun.com. Infomaniacs Anonymous appeared Tuesdays this semester.