I’ve been keeping an eye on elections, watching the PBS NewsHour on SBS (Australia’s culturally and linguistically diverse, and largely publically funded, tv channel), and reading the newspaper. I thought this article by an academic was interesting, http://www.usyd.edu.au/news/84.html?newscategoryid=4&newsstoryid=5927
His politics is conservative, but he isn’t painting the mid-term election likely Republican win as a triumph for the Republicans.

I thought the message Stewart was trying to send was that it’s important to have strong beliefs and we don’t have to compromise on those beliefs, but both sides owe it to each other (and to everyone who does not have those same strong opinions)to work on the things that fall in the middle and not make every decision a test of ideological purity or nothing will ever get done. And in that, I would argue that the left is not currently as bad as the right, but it feels like we are heading in that direction.

We would like our representatives and the people we interact with to be perfect, but if we hold everyone to a standard of perfection then everyone will eventually fail. We have to let people make mistakes, and show their ass occasionally, and live, and grow, and learn stuff.

Our ability to know things about people has now completely outstripped our ability to let each other be human. I’m sure that it will catch up, because these things always do, but in the meantime I feel like we should work on going easy on each other. But that is, of course, just my opinion.

That doesn’t mean that the moderate conservatives weren’t listening. And maybe those moderate conservatives will be more willing to shun the head-stomping, muslim-hating conservatives and vote with people who’d like to respectfully disagree. Maybe I’m being naive, but I feel like moderate conservatives would be more willing to see through the fear-mongering bullshit if us liberals would stop generalizing as idiots who cling to their guns and religion. Just sayin’.

I don’t think “we” should be as shitty as the far right, but I do think Democrats need to develop some guts and stop being so concerned with how they are perceived by knuckledraggers who wouldn’t vote for them if you paid them.

It’s comforting to know you’re wittier than your opponents and solidarity IS the reason I went to the rally, but laughs don’t win elections and they don’t pass legislation.

Honestly if you come here from a country outside of America all the news outlets on both left and right come across as insane, ranting and hysterical. And Olbermann often presents spun stories as accurate ‘fact’ without mentioning that they’re being spun a certain way – it’s not as bad as Fox by any means but it’s not credible journalism. I actually do not watch US television news because it has no balance at all.

And I find it astonishing that nobody seems capable of presenting a straight-forward, unbiased, unspun news report on any cable channel because as a journalist, that’s really what it should be about.

Also I disagree strongly with the ‘they’re shits, so we should be shits too’ argument. While Republicans are frequently batshit insane and incapable of compromise and while I do agree that this administration has failed to push things through regardless when they had the advantage (which lets be honest is what a republican house would do) one of the things that has most turned me off politics since living here is the partisanship on both sides.

In that sense I agree with Stewart, I find American politics incredibly depressing because it’s all about people ranting without fact and yes I do find that on both sides, regardless of the fact that I agree with much of the shouting on the left. Honestly though it just makes me feel tired.

Then again I don’t believe journalists should be allowed to be members of political parties so my view is probably a bit off on this site anyway.