Are Elites De-Skilling Us in the Skills Needed for Democratic Deliberation?
Yesterday, in the Akron Beacon Journal, there was a point-counterpoint pairing of commentaries reprinted from the LA Times.  A conservative claimed it was impossible to talk to a liberal and then a liberal returned the favor.  Most may read this as entertaining, mud-wrestling circus clowns performing over morning coffee, and yet I wonder if it does not point to an achilles heel in American--or modernist--politics.  Has modernity finally succeeded in undermining the already delicate preconditions for meaningful democratic deliberation and decision making?  Worth considering seriously, as a cancer without partisan face, though today it does seem that the far right is taking the lead in driving us toward this particular cliff. 

Two other recent commentaries help us puzzle through this.  First, Ruth Marcus reported on data demonstrating (again...though she, wrongly in my view, focuses on this being only a democratic party problem) that there is a big difference between the blood sport hatred driving elite activists in both parties to seek out the distraction of divisive culture wars and the fundamentally pragmatic, moderate, and tolerant attitudes shared by most ordinary Americans in both parties (and those not affiliated with either party...see Morris Fiorina's brilliant analysis in Culture War?).  Second, a Rolling Stone commentary identifies the deeply paranoid and anti-intellectual style of politics manifest here (see Hofstadter).  While the analysis in the Rolling Stone suggests it is a partisan phenomena, and that may be true if we were to only examine a snap shot view of the world we live in today, the Rolling Stone's own effort to place this in larger historical context suggests otherwise.