tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3340831264933167750.post5655821051875099876..comments2022-05-02T09:13:40.331-06:00Comments on the lithium press: Trending towards HomogeneityUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3340831264933167750.post-82013161415759447222009-03-26T23:24:00.000-06:002009-03-26T23:24:00.000-06:00I work for a Mormon apologetics organization, but ...I work for a Mormon apologetics organization, but our goal is not to vanquish our critics. It's to confirm the faith of our friends. Our critics in fact enable us to do that. Culture wars are not analogous to political wars, really. Victory would be a bad thing for cultural warriors. The unity of opposition and the strength gained thereby is pretty much the point of the battle. (Sorry, too sleepy to make sense. I'll post on this another time. Maybe after Knife Month [April].)carl ghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14291193391743469159noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3340831264933167750.post-43326995801061806162009-03-26T15:15:00.000-06:002009-03-26T15:15:00.000-06:00I'm fairly confident the culture war has already b...I'm fairly confident the culture war has already been lost -- by both sides. The left couches its loss under the veil of tolerance and diversity, meaning, of course, tolerance for what they already believe in and diversity (of thought as well as the traditional liberal sense of the word) as long as it toes the lines they already adhere to. The right couches its loss under the veil of patriotism, which basically translates into tolerance for what they already believe in and diversity they already hold to.Mister Fweemhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10339287419996343926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3340831264933167750.post-5723665551175749622009-03-20T17:19:00.000-06:002009-03-20T17:19:00.000-06:00Appreciate your comments, esp. since you would act...Appreciate your comments, esp. since you would actually know something about this. If we are truly seeing more partisanship and escalating self-righteousness (I'm not entirely sure of the relationship of volume to dimensions), then I would not be the first to lay some of the blame at the feet of Rove and other politicos who have raised the politics of division to a whole new level. And did so shamelessly on the back of post-9/11 hysteria. It will be interesting to see how much Obama can really deescalate the Bush-era culture wars. He may be sincere, but politically, he's almost alone.carl ghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14291193391743469159noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3340831264933167750.post-74814929518503599652009-03-20T15:41:00.000-06:002009-03-20T15:41:00.000-06:00I'm sure there were plenty of "Daily Me" practitio...I'm sure there were plenty of "Daily Me" practitioners in the days before mass media -- probably as many or as more as there might be now, even with the ease in which we may obtain views that are not our own. In 19th century America, for example, even up through the 1920s and 1930s, heyday of the newspaper, you had your small towns (like those Sinclair Lewis wrote about, and he deplored then the Daily Me he saw all around him) to the bigger cities, where like-minded people tended to congregate in their own neighborhoods, their own clubs, et cetera, certainly mixing a bit when it came to the middle and upper classes, but the proles tended to stay in their own neighborhoods, then divided ethnically (Swedes here, Germans there). With many newspapers, newsletters, pamphleteers and such circulating their thought back then, people were able to self-select what they wanted to read, and typically self-selected what they already agreed with. I don't think much has changed except the medium -- we now have a lot of thought delivered to our homes via the Internet, rather than coming in dead tree form. I think it's a human trait, not a trait of the media or medium, that makes the Daily Me a part of humanity.Mister Fweemhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10339287419996343926noreply@blogger.com