This battle between Fox News MSNBC. Limbaugh, Glen Beck etc. is driven by profit motive. Look at the money these guys make. Buy my book or tune me in and I will tell you all the crap you want to hear. They want people polarized so they can make money. They say when party X says that, what they really mean is this, as if you are to dumb to figure it out yourself and you need them to interpret for you.
Fox and MSNBC is out of my Satellite package now and I listen to rock Boomer music on the radio. CCR Stones etc. and boy do I feel better. For news I watch MHZ networks on Digital broadcast TV that carries 10 news channels in one including Aljazeera TV which is so amazingly unbiased. Even Hillary says it is real news.
You just have to read all the sides on a particular issue and determine the truth yourself. You just can't blindly follow what one side says or believe that one leader cannot possibly do anything wrong and another can't do anything right. That logic is flawed right on the face of it. It's a false dichotomy like when GW Bush said "You are either with us or with the terrorists"
Dang, you can be willing to help out without turning into Rambo. And you can be against what he wants to do without being chained to an oil thank in Baghdad.
Everybody has flaws and makes mistakes. But yet tribal politics dictate that your tribe must support everything your "Leader" does and never mention any flaws or mistakes. Likewise the tribe must also put down anything the leader of the other tribe does and says whether they believe it is right or wrong.
I think it is a manifestation of a feeling of insecurity.
Damn I am glad I am not caught up that mind set. I believe there are a lot of people who don't want to be committed to one party or the other so they can decide things for themselves. They can think independently.
Same way with religion. I am not religious but I am also not anti-religious. I can get along with either.
The tribes can't. For them, someone is all bad or all good. Life is a whole lot simpler when you lose the need for allegiance to a certain tribe.
NPR's Problem Is Personal, Not Political: So says George Will.
We learned this week redundantly that NPR is run by people who don't like people like me. Which is fine.
If you listen to the video, you will hear the others chuckling at Will's line. They don't rush to deny what he said, that the people at NPR do not like conservatives. Which is just as well, because what he said is true. (Significantly, they tend to dislike conservatives who happen to be women or blacks even more than they dislike white male conservatives like George Will.)
And that explains much of what is wrong with NPR, and our politics generally. Too often we are making decisions, not on what is best for the nation or the world, but on who we like and, even more, who we dislike.
This tribal politics is natural, about as natural as politics can be. But it is also, quite often, destructive. We line up on one side or another, because of who we dislike, without even bothering to study an issue.
Tribal politics often leads us to absurd positions. For example, the Seattle Times editorial board has been arguing for a "reset" in our state, by which they mean but do not say following the prudent budget policies our state's Republicans have been pushing for years. But the Times often endorses the very Democrats who have caused the problems because, for cultural reasons (especially abortion), the editorial board just doesn't like many Republicans.
(Please note that I did not say and do not believe that this tribal politics is found only on one side. But I do think that it is more of a problem on the left, because so many of our journalists are infected by it.)