<$BlogRSDUrl$>

Friday, June 17, 2005

Boot Up Your Toaster and Butter a Floppy
The best metaphor I have yet seen for the political divide in this country, the way people look at the same events and draw diametrically opposite conclusions, is that we're like Windows and Mac. You can't make one of them work with the other's stuff. But even though the metaphor is just a week or two old, it may be outdated already.

Take the case of the recent speech by Dick Durbin of Illinois, about which Billmon wrote so effectively yesterday. Liberals see Durbin's description of interrogation atrocities at Guantanamo as the reporting of information Americans need to hear; conservatives (and some liberal groups, such as the Anti-Defamation League) denounce the speech as perfidious America-hate. And each side is equally flabbergasted at the other's response.

Take the case of the Terri Schiavo autopsy. Liberals take news that the poor woman's brain was shriveled like a peach pit as evidence that the save-Terri people were hysterical; conservatives take news that the poor woman's brain was shriveled like a peach pit to proclaim that it was possible she could still think and feel. (After all, it isn't like her brain was totally gone.)

Take the case of Iraq. Liberals see the ongoing insurgency as evidence of the need for an exit strategy. Conservatives see the ongoing insurgency as evidence of the need to keep from formulating an exit strategy.

These are not simple cases of Windows/Mac-style incompatability. No, it's like one side has Windows and the other has a toaster or something. Nothing you can use with one is much good with the other, and it's probably a waste of time trying to make one do the job of the other. And to risk another kitchen metaphor, you gotta wonder how much further the pressure cooker can be cranked up before the lid blows off.

Recommended Reading:
Lots of it.
--Orcinus listens to the rhetoric on the right that seems to call for those who disagree with the Republican meme on Guantanamo to be eliminated.

--TGirsch at Lean Left talks about code words, both Republican and Democratic--although, as usual when it comes to rhetorical dishonesty, Republicans do it better.

--The Rude Pundit speculates that if we're getting to a tipping point where the public starts to believe that Bush is a liar and his supporters are fanatics, cable news executives eager to please their audiences might decide it's good business to actually report that Bush is a liar and his supporters are fanatics.

--Daily Kos and its readers bat around the Wisconsin Assembly's vote yesterday that would make us the first state in the nation to ban the morning-after birth control drug RU-486, used for emergency contraception. During the week of Fighting Bob LaFollette's 150th birthday, our wingnuts prove yet again just how far over the edge they'd like to take us.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?