But this phrase really caught my eye:
"But there's one last important point: if I can speak for Atrios and most progressive bloggers, their perspective is not that they're refusing to 'advance the debate.' Rather, their point is that as far as US foreign policy goes, there is no debate. We can screw around on blogs for the rest of our lives, we could be proven correct about 100 more wars, and no one with our perspective would ever be allowed on TV. Likewise, Kenneth Pollack could be catastrophically wrong about 100 more wars, and he would still be on Nightline every week. That's because being right has absolutely nothing to do with 'the debate.' That's the way it is, and unless it changes, all the time I spent writing this was absolutely pointless."
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001669.html
Time for more anti-depressants!
-B.
Doug Henwood wrote:
"You make it sound like the reason the left doesn't set the agenda is because we don't say the proper things. But the reason the right sets the agenda is that they're the ruling class - they own the means of communication and do a lot to determine the terms of discourse. (As the old public opinion maxim goes, we can't tell people what to think but we can tell them what to think about.)"