Tribal Campaign

It’s interesting how writers can inadvertently reveal themselves. David Atkins has a piece at Hulaballoo today having to do with an outfit which purports to fact check campaign ads, and to do so on a sufficiently timely basis to be effective within the campaign. (Good luck with that, by the way.)

David says that, "When I want to see what latest lies are coming out of the conservative media establishment" he knows where to look and follows that with, "When I want to see what latest conservative attacks are coming down the pike" he also knows where to look, and he stops there.

I don't see him expressing any interest in "what latest lies are coming out of the liberal media establishment" or "what latest liberal attacks are coming." Is that because he believes that liberals don't lie and/or attack, or because he merely doesn't want to catch them doing it? If it’s the former I have news for him, and it’s the latter I have to ask why not.

Glenn Greewald has an interesting piece about how liberals were almost unanimous in their hatred of everything that Guantanamo stood for and wanted it closed forthwith, until it became apparent that Obama is not going to close it, and now a majority of liberals are either indifferent to its presence or favor leaving it open.

That single issue is not the point, so much as that each side today believes that everything the other side says is a lie and everything that their own side says is the truth, and any amount of “fact checking” is not going to change that. This political campaign is not about facts, as David’s expression of interest points out; this campaign is about tribalism.