re: #81 Last Mohican

I’m not exactly sure when this started happening. I could swear that, back in my childhood, the general sense in America was that the more highly valued political views were the ones that sounded sensible, rational, considered, intelligent, balanced, and untainted by extremism. Now, participating in American politics is like being a fan at a college basketball game. The more you paint your face and bare chest in your side’s colors, put on a crazy wig, jump up and down, and scream unintelligible stuff as loud as you can, the more respected you are.

I wonder if it’s not an inevitable by-product of the increasing complexity of life, fuede by the revolutionary access to information we have. Acces to information is good, but the ability to digest it is finite and thus perhaps people become susceptible to the loudest, most obnoxious voice in the room, as well as to the simplest distillation of those voices as represented by the left’s penchant for style over substance and bumper sticker sized slogans……..