Dale,
For someone on the verge of leaving SI completely, your thread offers hope. I hope it's ok to make an observation.
It would be wonderful to see knowledgeable and reasonable people leave behind the recriminations and accusations and start looking for solutions and common ground. I do think that it's important to avoid too many Evil War, Evil Bush stories. Even though I did, and still do, believe we made a huge mistake when we started this war, we are there now, and the constant bombardment of how many are dying, and what a mess it is, grates on me. I don't see it as helpful. Too often, it smacks of Told You So. Everyone here reads enough to know basic facts, and depending on their partisan leaning when they read negative articles, they are either further enraged by the perceived manipulations of our leaders or they become defensive because they still want to support and have faith in their country, or maybe they just get irritated as I do, that we can't get beyond it. It does very little actual persuading. In order to keep a centrist audience from getting discouraged, it might be wise to avoid too many accusatory type articles. I may believe that Bush is a walking disaster, but something in me gets upset at reading too much of that.
(Not that anything I've read here has caused that reaction yet)
Good luck with the thread. There is no way to go but up, given the tenor of the political threads around here. |
