So I’ve been wrestling with my own stuff this week…moody, frustrated at the outer world’s ambiguity and my own lassitude…trying to get back to a mindset where I can see some clarity in my life and in the world of ideas outside.
And everything seems kind of…off. Voices I’m reading are less thoughtful and interesting, and I’m wondering if it’s just my mood and what I’ll have to do to shake it off (land one of these consulting projects, for starters!).
And then I read something, and the world becomes clear.
I’m randomly clicking links as I tend to do when I’m not really paying attention (and which in my darker moments is what I imagine my 200 readers do to find me…), and read this:

None of these things were true of Sullivan when he edited The New Republic a decade ago. You could disagree with him but often his pieces showed a relaxed respect for his adversaries and the joys of an inquisitive, independent mind at work. If that Sullivan could have seen what he’d let himself get reduced to … maybe he’d just have let the HIV take its course.
— from SullyWatch

And my eyes snapped wide open. I put it into context with some quotes from Hesiod about Den Beste’s series:

It’s time for an intervention. Take a day or two away from your blog.
Then go back and read your manifesto again. This time substitute the words “Jew” and “Jews” for the words “Arab” and “Muslim.”
If it doesn’t send a chill up and down your spine, check yourself into a mental hospital, or seek professional counseling.
And I’m not being sarcastic about this.
You accuse the Arabs of living in the 14th century. Arguably, your “solution” comes right out of the 20th. Roughly from the years between 1932 and 1945 to be precise.
It’s not to late to wake up and re-think things.
— from Hesiod’s email toDen Beste

It’s the overall dismissive and contemptuous tone that I’m seeing in Hesiod’s (and some other) liberal sites.
I don’t know if they’re hoping to get tryouts on cable talk shows, or if their rhetoric has just been infected by it. It’s the evolved state of the Newt Gingrich “no-more Mr. Nice Guy” politics, and what we’ve done as liberals is to adopt the worst features of that politics: harsh and divisive rhetoric, which we think makes us clever; an unwillingness to engage political opponents on any meaningful dialog, because playing attack-dog until you or your opponent backs down seems like a better way of reaching compromise than simply sitting down and compromising (not to mention an attachment to seats in SkyBoxes and the largesse that well-heeled donors can provide). I think this kind of politics sucks, and not just because I’m too polite to call people names or wish for their slow death by AIDS.
I talked about it before:

And we’re at a point in our political history that’s been made by single-issue warriors…for and against development, for and against abortion, for and against parks for dogs…and damn those on the other side of the issue.
I had the unique opportunity to have dinner once with then-State Senator John Schmitz. He was a genuine John Birch society member, elected from Orange County, who lost his office when it was discovered that his mistress had sexually abused their sons. (His daughter is also Mary Kay Le Tourneau, so I’ll take as a given that the family had…issues…). He was still in the Senate, and made a comment that I’ve always remembered:
When Moscone ran the Senate, he and I used to fight hammer and tongs all day, then go out and have drinks over dinner and laugh about it. We differed on where we wanted the boat to go, but we recognized that we were in the same boat. These new guys would gladly sink the boat rather then compromise.
And that’s why I think the [Pledge] decision was stupid, and why the forces behind it…the Church of My Wounded Feelings…and their soldiers, the Warrior Cult of the Single Issue…are incredibly destructive. And right now, we don’t have the time for it.

Look, whether you are in agreement with Den Beste’s arguments or not; whether you agree with Sullivan or not, the fact is that there are important issues that can no longer be treated as theoretical about how we deal with the rest of the world; hard discussions need to take place. And when I see the folks I would logically side with talking like adolescents with a bad need to Be Bad, it doesn’t fill me with warm fuzzies that I’m gonna see one.
And in case Hesiod and whoever does Sullywatch don’t care if I have warm fuzzies, I’ll remind them that preaching to the choir is pretty satisfying, but it doesn’t make the church grow, if you know what I mean…