Now, my question is: What exactly about, say, Atrios or Daily Kos (the leftleaning equivalent of Glen Reynolds [I guess??]) is filled with hate? The key is, that it's filled with more hate than Reynolds? I know, I know, it's ideology. Whatever. I can't believe halfway smart people are that ignorant --that incapable of self-reflection or the capacity to see the big ol' plank in their own eye.
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In my experience, when the subject of left-leaning blogs and "hate" comes up, the subtext of the conversation is that vaguest of emnities, hatred of America.
One of my friends -- whenever the topic of US foreign policy or history is on the table -- describes everything I'd call a crime a "mistake". He means that even the most horrible things were done because people "didn't know better at the time" -- including slavery which was apparently the result of a failure of otherwise well meaning whites to more closely study the humanity of blacks...'if only we knew more, we never would have ass whupped you'.
This is a necessary illusion, preserving as it does the ever-present idea that the US is the world's shining city on a hill, a light unto the nations. Anyone who drifts from this story by speaking bluntly (by calling Frau Rice a war criminal for example) is stamped as being 'full of hate', off the ranch and not worth paying attention to.
Note, for example, the reaction many people have to Chomsky.
Even among certain segments of what I've now come to call the waving-the-flag-just-not-quite-as-hard section of the left (aka the 'soft left') he's reviled for having the balls to clearly state that every American action abroad -- even from the nation's founding -- wasn't/isn't motivated by a desire to save orphans from laughing villains, bring democracy to oppressed people and other cinematic, hero scenarios but for reasons an ancient Roman bastard like Augustus would have fully understood.
For this -- a simple detailing of US power plays around the globe, the sorts of things great powers have been doing since there've been great powers to do it -- he's dismissed as being 'full of hate' or, more to the point, 'hating America'.
I think much of this is an unconscious reaction to any challenges to core American myths.
But then again, perhaps my hate filled mind is clouded.
.d.