OK, Marlboroman, I won't completely give up. If I see you and Fengzi and Jamstigator, Psycho4Bud, and Gray-Matter around, I'll definitely talk back when time allows. I see interesting and worthy intellects in you guys that I don't always see in others. I don't just say that because many of us are politically sympathetic. I say that because your abilities to articulate your views are a cut above the rest.

There are a lot of curious paradoxes in politics, aren't there? Did you by any chance see that special "20/20" show on ABC last week that George Stephanoloulos did? He talked about the increasing polarization of our two main political parties--and explained why the divide is growing deeper. It was really sad, because of course anyone who knows how things work knows we DO have to come together and meet halfway. I believe we ARE indeed working for the same goals, but of course we have very different ideas about how to get to those goals.

In that "20/20" episode, George Stephanopoulos pointed out how a lot of what the experts have termed "shout TV"--the loud, ranting, opinionated, insult-filled partisan talking heads we see a lot of on Fox and MSNBC contribute greatly to the problem by not fully covering the topics they address. Yet they send very emotional and provocative editorial messages, revving up the not-very-perceptive or well-read folks who use those as their only source of news. People who don't ever read or listen to differing opinions are particularaly vulnerable, the media analysts explained. Interestingly, in tests they did of people who watched those shows--and I'm betting that some of these Web sites like prisonplanet and infowars would fall into this same "shout" category if anyone ever took them seriously enough to evaluate them (which they don't)--a huge percentage of the watchers/listeners blatantly misunderstood what points were even being made because they couldn't hear through the ranting and shouting. It was an interesting show. And also a sad one because it made me believe that the polarization will only get worse.

This has been one of the baffling things I've seen in the musings of Pissy and GS and others. I find the themes in their posts confusing and contradictory, often contradicting one point they make early in a post a few lines further down in the same text. Ultimately I get the feeling that instead of really wanting to make a salient point, they just want to hear themselves rant and fill space. They often fill space with someone else's information entirely, and so no original thought or interpretation is even displayed. (One of our most frequent posters on these boards suffers from the same problem. He posts thousands upon thousands of posts, but they're always someone else's info. I've never yet seen an iota of original thought come out of his brain, and I've come to the conclusion that he isn't capable of such thought. So I simply ignore him.) Anyway, the more I think about it, the more I believe Pissy and his ilk are probably victims of the same "shout TV" problem of actually misunderstanding the info they're hearing and reading. That's all a long way of explaining why I'm now bypassing those long, rambling, nonsensical posts when I see them.
birdgirl73 Reviewed by birdgirl73 on . ESSAY- Police state: Has common sense taken leave? i know someone here can justify what was done to the 90 year old blind woman and all the rest...what is wrong with us? look what's happened to the country and the mindset...it's really disturbing. when did it go from protect and serve to beat upside the head and mace someone? oh that's right, we all could be criminals. ESSAY- Police state: Has common sense taken leave? JOHN W. WHITEHEAD | July 7 2006 A culture of meanness has come to characterize many aspects of the nation's Rating: 5