The "liberal, progressive" blogosphere and the constitutional crisis

doomsy at the liberal doomsayer offered this comment in response to my oft-stated lament about the on-going u.s. constitutional crisis being so poorly covered among the 2008 presidential candidates, the traditional media, and, most dishearteningly of all, the so-called "liberal, progressive" blogosphere...

[C]oncerning our blogging brethren, can someone please explain to me why the WGA strike is more important to them than preserving what's left of our constitution?

interestingly enough, i have been back and forth over the past week with the proprietor of a major "a" list liberal blog, attempting to convince him to take up the baton on the constitutional crisis, sadly, without much success... when i say "back and forth," i'm only referring to a couple of email exchanges, because i simply have no interest in engaging in a long, drawn-out email argument, nor do i want to spend much of my precious energy reserves preaching to a rock... i also don't want to be a nuisance... however, today, i sent him a long piece that was, i thought, a fairly well-documented laundry list of constitutional stretches (if not outright crimes) contained within an equally long list of power abuses by the bush administration [see the piece here]... this is what i got back... (note: i am deliberately leaving this person unidentified...)

The problem I have with sources like that, sources I don't even know

and thus I have no clue if they're credible, is that not only do I

not know if this person is twisting the truth with his "facts," but

his facts are based on other Web sites I've never even heard of.

Sorry, but I'm not going to go on a wild goose chase, checking out

500 sources and then their sources too, to see if this guy has any

credibility. Get me an article from a real publication that has a

track record of truth and accuracy.

after reading that, i thought to myself, ok, so much for that... then i thought, wait, i need to respond, but in such a way that i am honestly and sincerely, without rancor, calling his bluff... here's what i wrote in response...

that's precisely the not at all subtle, dismissive response i anticipated... of course, you MUST satisfy yourself about source credibility... no one, myself included, would have any respect for you if you didn't do that, consistently and exhaustively... i do my own due diligence, to be sure, and don't expect you to rely on my say-so... i will accept your challenge to provide "real" sources, but only if you're willing to not shoot me out of the saddle with dismissive comments like "wild goose chase..." the constitutional crisis, imho, is quite real and sitting there like a ticking time bomb... my key professional skill, among others, is pattern recognition... it's what i do... i see pieces and assemble them in my mind until a picture starts to emerge... i imagine that's what you do as well... i can and will offer you pieces - credible pieces from "real" sources (altho' these days, i'm not entirely sure what qualifies as a "real" source, so i will say "established" sources instead) - but you must be the one to put them together...

i am a very small fish in the blogosphere, [name redacted]... i've never aspired to be more... you are a big fish, one i respect... i have and continue to be frustrated over why the "big fish" of the liberal and progressive blogosphere, the ones i read many times a day, can continue to put things like the wga strike [h/t doomsy] higher on the list than the constitutional crisis, when it is precisely the destruction of the separate-but-equal, balance of powers constitutional structure that has led our country to its present sorry state... if i didn't feel so passionately about that issue, [name redacted], i wouldn't be bothering you or attempting to send you off on a "wild goose chase..." i think you've got enough smarts to see what i and an increasing number of others are seeing... don't prove me wrong...

i'll be backatcha, but probably not tomorrow... otoh, if you'd prefer that i just shut the hell up, say so and i won't clutter up your inbox... i'm not up for either an argument or "dueling sources..." my energy would be better spent elsewhere...

now you, constant reader, can tell me whether i succeeded at all in my honest, sincere, sans rancor response, but i still submit this exchange as exhibit "a" in where the "liberal, progressive" blogosphere is coming from...

his response to my response so far...?

< crickets >

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