The notion that political punditry ought to, or even can, be constrained by intellectual honesty is deeply alien to the netroots. They have absorbed essentially the same critique of the intelligentsia that the right has been making for decades. In the conservative imagination, journalists, academics, and technocrats are liberal ideologues masquerading as dispassionate professionals. Those who claim to be detached from the political struggle are unaware of their biases, or hiding them.
(…)
The prevailing sentiment here, however, is not a distrust of pointy heads. Rather, it's a belief that political discourse ought to be judged solely by its real-world effects. The netroots consider the notion of pursuing truth for its own sake nonsensical. Their interest in ideas, and facts, is purely instrumental.
….To [Salon's Joan] Walsh and other journalists, the relevant metric is true versus untrue. To an activist, the relevant metric is politically helpful versus politically unhelpful.
There is a term for this sort of political discourse: propaganda. The word has a bad odor, but it is not necessarily a bad thing. Propaganda is often true, and it can be deployed on behalf of a worthy cause (say, the fight against Nazism in World War II). Still, propaganda should not be confused with intellectual inquiry. Propagandists do not follow their logic wherever it may lead them; they are not interested in originality. Propaganda is an attempt to marshal arguments in order to create a specific real-world result–to win a political war.
There are so many things wrong with this particular bit from an article chock full of errors of fact, definition, and judgment, one wonders how it ever got published in a reputable periodical. Oh, wait, it was published in TNR, whose reputation is kind of on a slide isn't it . . .
Be that as it may, it reveals a failure to understand the way liberal bloggers operate. I have learned from the best out there, and so I not very humbly at all count myself among those to whom Chait ascribes such nefarious intellectual dishonesty. We care about ideas and real-world results not out of political expediency but because we recognize that politics is not a game, but a serious matter that should be dealt with seriously. Ideas are important because they shape action. Actions are important because they impact the real lives of real people. While many of those to whom I link and that I read are pretty explicitly liberal, progressive, whatever term of art one might to ascribe, what surprises me again and again is the attention to real-world detail - something Chait seems not to understand. We want to get it right, and we do this by linking (the internet equivalent of footnoting), and citing the real world to set the broader context for our observations. The real world is messy, of course, and as impervious to liberal and left-wing ideology as it is to right-wing ideology. The important point is, however, how steady the left-wing blogs are consistently correct not just on analysis but facts, and how consistently wrong is the right-wing of the blogosphere. Not just on analysis. They are wrong on the facts. Again and again and again and again.
Along with the incorrect assertion that somehow our chest-pounding is intellectually dishonest because we just want the Democrats to win elections, there is Chait's failure to note that the best of the best on the left of the internet are correct, again and again. This is a not unimportant point. To accuse the left of intellectual dishonesty, without noting the consistent intellectual dishonesty of the right-wing blogs, and right-wing journalists and politicians in general is itself dishonest. We aren't about ideology for its own sake. I can only ever speak for myself, so I will note for the record that my own concern is less with who gets elected as an end in itself, than with what those who are elected do to solve the multiple problems created by years of mismanagement, criminal behavior, and delusional rhetoric from Republican politicians. We in what atrios calls "left blogistan" see politics as a means to a public end - what it really is. Those on the right see politics as an end in itself, a big game, in which whoever wins can do whatever he or she wants because he or she is a winner. This kind of moral depravity results in the rape of our public life that has occurred roughly since the election of Ronald Reagan. We are slowly returning to the idea that (a) the public actually knows a thing or two our self-appointed elite minders don't; and (b) the public is actually ahead of our politicians on a variety of issues, so they need to be "followers" more than "leaders".
Chait's failure to understand that we liberal bloggers are serious about what we do, because we care about this country and the people who live here is just one more symptom of the kind of elite disdain for the polloi I wrote about in the post below. Chait, Klein, Broder, Friedman - the whole lot of those who sniff disapprovingly at those of us who are righteously and rightfully enraged by our current empty-headed public discourse - don't get it because at some basic level, they don't believe that politics is about anything else than winning an election or an argument. In this, they resemble Karl Rove, whose emblematic political insight is a "50% plus one" approach to politics. Winners are winners and losers can go suck eggs, essentially, which is why Broder and Lieberman (to name two) want Democrats and liberals to shut up about the war; you see, Bush and Lieberman himself both won, so we all need to be quiet until the next election, which is the only real opportunity (in their little pea-sized intellects) for people to express their political opinions.
For me, I'm just going to plug along here. Sorry, Jonathan Chait, but in the words of Owny Madden in Francis Ford Coppola's failed masterpiece The Cotton Club, "That bastard's time is just about up."
For more smackdown of Chait, click here to read atrios' take on Chait.
