So I’m news-surfing on a Swedish newspaper site ( http://www.dn.se/ ) and I’m reading some of their Op-Eds. I notice that to the right, they have links called “Blogged About This Article.” They’re auto-generated by some spider that searches blogs for links to this particle Op-Ed. Fair enough. I had noticed this feature but hadn’t checked it out yet. I decided to look at it, being something of a blogger myself.

Dear lord.

The thing that makes me sick to my stomach is how the political blogs (and those that reference Op-Eds tend to be, I guess) appear to read an article, quickly file it into either “stuff I agree with” or “stuff I don’t agree with” and then vigorously and vehemently argue either for or against it. Why’s there no middle ground? What happened to having open eyes and at least acknowledge that some of the things being said are good points?

If you’ve frequented message boards - I have - you’ll know who the self-righteous flamers are. They’re usually above-average intelligence type people (and they know they are, although they probably vastly overestimate how much above the average that number really is) and they have decent arguing skills. Decent, not great. They seem to enjoy “owning” people in debate by completely overrunning them with some super-powerful slam that leaves their virtual opponent devastated. Why? Because they have an audience and they see debate as a fight that is to be “won” or “lost,” not as an exchange of ideas.

It’s a real shame. Because they are intelligent, they actually do have some good points to make but those points drown in the noise of all the feces being thrown.

Sigh.