To be fair to my ideological soul-mates, I will offer up part of his critique that I find to be ten pounds of offal in a two-pound bag.
In the snarkier precincts of the left-wing blogosphere, mainstream journalists like me are often called villagers. The reference, so far as I can tell, has to do with isolation: we live in this little village on the Potomac — actually, I don't, but no matter — constantly intermingling over hors d'oeuvres, deciding who is "serious" (a term of derision in the blogosphere) and who is not, regurgitating spin spoon-fed by our sources or conjuring a witless conventional wisdom that has nothing to do with reality as it is lived outside the village.
While not a huge fan of the invocation of "the Village", of the epithet "serious" used ironically, to denote not just a lack of seriousness, but a lack of any insight or moral depth (most of the time, at least when atrios uses it, the reference is to someone like John Bolton, who is as dumb as a canned ham), as Klein describes its use, the short-hand critique of the elitism of some parts of the press corps is spot on. It is insular. It is parochial to the point of self-parody at times. It ignores substantive debate, ideological diversity, and even the pretense of openness to a kind of People magazine etiquette of who's in, who's out, who's up, who's down, and policy is for nerds and Al Gore (who seems to be their natural leader). Klein is the archetype of this kind of thing; ignorant of any serious understanding of policy, even to the point of revealing that a criticism he authored of a bill was done without even having read the bill even as he accused an interlocutor of ignorance, Klein is a bit of a joke (thus the shortened version of his online nom de guerre, "Joke Line").
Yet, there is something correct about the next paragraph (the author shudders):
But there is a great irony here: villagery is a trope more applicable to those making the accusation than to those being snarked upon. The left-wing blogosphere, at its worst, is a claustrophobic hamlet of the well educated, less interested in meaningful debate than the "village" it mocks. (At its best, it is a source of clever and well-informed anti-Establishment commentary.) Indeed, it resembles nothing so much as that other, more populous hamlet, the right-wing Fox News and Limbaugh slum. Hilariously, as we stagger from one awful decade into the next, there has been a coagulation of these extremes — a united front against the turgid ceremonies of legislative democracy, like compromise, and disdain for the politician most responsible for nudging our snarled checks and balances toward action, Barack Obama. The issue that has brought them together is opposition to the Senate's health care–reform bill, which makes some sense on the right, but none at all on the left.
This is a criticism I have been leveling for a while now - the left, in the end, wants to set aside democracy in order to be no different than the Republican majority as its hubristic height, steam-rolling opponents, shutting down debate and discussion, refusing to listen or consider alternatives. This last is particularly galling, as there is no appreciation for the reality that opponents might be moved to think and act in different ways not out of evil intent or spite or ignorance, but rather because they are different. One of the things I used to like about liberals was an appreciation for difference, an acceptance of others as inhabiting a different space, yet with rights and privileges we all share. Instead, the left can be as small-minded, bigoted, ignorant, and insistent on its prerogatives as the right. The pretense to being "reality-based" disappears like water in a volcano when one confronts, day after day, some of the truly ignorant, small-minded, thoughtless nonsense on the left.
I hate to begin 2010 with a criticism of the left; yet, it seems to me that this continues to be our biggest weakness. We have no idea the power we yield, should we choose to use it positively. Instead, we gripe and mutter and complain and desire nothing more or less than the rest of the world recognize, instantly, how wise and insightful and even comprehensive is our intelligence, our politics, and even our humor. I guess I always considered humility to be a liberal virtue, yet one sees almost none of that on the left. Rather, it is an almost constant chorus of how much the entire system is in hock to the real power-brokers, the Party rejected in two straight national elections - the Republicans. One tires of such repeated bullshit after a while, to be honest.
And it is just that - bullshit. The biggest thing the Democratic Party has going for it right now is the support of the American people; while it is true that the American people are frustrated, even occasionally angry, we are in the midst of a severe recession/depression (depending on where you live). A bit of ennui is to be expected. The American people, for all they occasionally go off the rails (two terms for George W. Bush was a bit much), have not only smartened up, they have wisened up. For all that there are legitimate criticisms to be leveled at the Obama Administration (and I have made some), one can hardly argue that we are no better off now than we were, say four years ago, politically speaking.
We have the opportunity to make serious, sweeping changes. What we need is patience, wisdom, and a certain canny ruthlessness to bring it about. Rather than bitch that the game is fixed, demanding therefore a change in the rules (which isn't going to happen) - beat 'em at their own game. Man up, grow a pair, play the game the way it's played and by doing so, show the opposition they really don't run the show. Instead it's more of the same, tired nonsense about corporate control and corporate money and the idiocy of the traditional media. Last time I checked, all that corporate money and influence didn't stop a whole bunch of liberals from being elected to Congress and even the White House. All the same, if you don't like corporate access, then deny them access not through changed laws, but through better access for yourself and those like you.
One hopes that 2010 will bring about some serious changes in the American political landscape, not the least of them being a bit more of an adult attitude among those on the left.
