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Like many other readers, I have found no convincing argument why it should be the Internet that is making us stupid. Cass describes a phenomenon known to most students of social psychology at a time when there was no Internet around. Still, I found the Boulder/Colorado Springs experiments and his observations on judges quite interesting variations to the plethora of empirical evidence already gathered. And the statistical analyses on bloggers certainly are a new aspect. Yet, there is little in this interview that would even bolster a Plan B of the thesis, i.e. that the internet in some way would aggravate the tendency for polarizing that I really think is going on.
Forty years ago, I used to get a kick out of listening to a telephone program called "Let Freedom Ring" because it seemed so nutty. Meanwhile, freedom rings all around on the airwaves in the US and in the cyberspace.
Forty years ago, you could truly find liberal Republicans in Congress, and Republicans would support equal pay for women against the opposition of liberals! For us Europeans, the insistence on bi-partisanship in the US always seemed somewhat strange, blurring the lines of political argumentation - and if you have seen how British MP George Galloway took up Senator Norm Coleman a couple of years ago you know what I mean. Polarizations then in the US were far more common within parties: just remember the 1964 Goldwaterite reception of Nelson Rockefeller at the San Francisco Republican Convention or the infamous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Yeah, I know, that’s when the Internet got started ....
Cass mentions Kennedy’s comment on the Bay of Pigs but your president learnt his lesson: During the Cuba crisis he had people fighting out opposing views. I do suspect that Clinton’s taking in of David Gergen into the White House had amongst others the reason to hear out opposing views. After all, Slick Willie was (and still is) the Master of Triangulation, the exact opposite of polarization! Pity the incumbent wants nothing of that.
I am still getting a kick out of reading NewsMax, National Review and so on, but is a somewhat scary kick. I confess, when I had the opportunity to see and hear, I could not bear a certain Fair and Balanced View. Not because people there hold an opposing view but because there is so little rational argument to be found. Thus, instead of making me think about my position they only enhance it. I very much like to listen to people like McCain or Huckabee who at least from time to time use some thoughtful arguments - not to speak of people like the late Milton Friedman or other conservative thinkers who at least think they have to use reason in an argument. And while civility certainly is lacking – and that is a pity in itself! – the lack of argument is even more frightening. Yes, there is an Attack on Reason going on, unfortunately not only in your country. Scary enough that the not so long ago dominant position in US politics wants to roll back every aspect of the Great Society, New Frontier, Fair Deal, and New Deal: they now want to even revert the very basis of the American Democracy, Enlightenment. And that all is the Internet’s fault?
Augo Knoke
Hamburg, Germany
