When liberty comes with hands dabbed in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.

                                 -- Oscar Wilde

But I say to you -- love your enemies, bless those cursing you, do good to those hating you, and pray for those accusing you falsely, and persecuting you.

                                -- Jesus (Matthew 5:44)

A couple years ago, I posted a piece called "All the Rage." I posited some reasons why rage seems to have become the leitmotif of American political discourse. I threw out some thoughts on Rush Limbaugh and Jon Stewart (yes, there is a lot of liberal rage out there too, lefties), but I really didn't get at some of the most important topics. Well, now that I'm so much older and wiser (and wider), I'll take another go at it.

Of course, standard boilerplate entrance to the subject: the crazed, evil murders in Tucson from January 8th, when Jared Loughner opened fire on a crowd of people in front of a grocery store, killing 6 and injuring 13 more.

I actually don't have too much to say on this particular subject. I generally agree with the conservative trope, because the shooter was clearly insane. He just as easily could have opened fire on a bunch of nuns or a boy scout troop, had the psychological trigger been slightly different. There's no need to lay the actions of a lunatic at the feet of Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck. However, I also agree with a couple of the standard liberal takes on the situation: background checks for gun purchasers should be more vigorous; large, semi-automatic clips should be heavily regulated; and the total abandonment of funding for public mental health will inevitably result in more of these catastrophes.

But of course, the real political haymaker coming out of Tucson is the whole issue of "civil public discourse." Even though we can't blame Loughner's actions on watching too many episodes of the O'Reilly Factor, it is certainly fair game to take stock of the lack of compassion and cooperation in our mainstream media and among most of our national leaders. Is all of the name-calling and overblown outrage a major driver of the public's anger? Or is it merely a reflection of the dominant mood of the masses themselves?

In my view, the source of the public's rage is not manufactured. It is real, and is a symptom of other underlying conditions. Rage is a byproduct. It is churned forth from even deeper emotional stirrings: feelings like anxiety, jealousy, impotence, inadequacy, ignorance, etc. In its current public incarnation, I believe that most of the rage comes from one basic fact: while the US economy has roughly doubled since 1980, wages and household income have been virtually flat for the vast majority of our workers. People are working longer and harder, and playing by the rules, and they just keep falling behind. The bubble economy is toast, and people see nothing stretched out in front of them but years of debt servicing, rising prices, and dwindling options for their children.

Into this swamp of discontent wade our two main political parties. Theoretically, it would be great if our leaders could show strength and courage in helping their electors through hard times. You know, Churchill, Roosevelt -- nothing to fear but fear itself -- that kind of stuff. Give us some type of realistic national goal toward which we can aim. Tell us the truth, whether it's comfortable or not, and treat us like adults. 

Unfortunately, in the age of $200 million campaigns, 50-to-1 lobbyist-to-Congressperson ratios, and post-Citizens United fundraising rules, it is impossible to deny any longer that the GOP and the Democrats have become unsalvageable water-carriers for big business. There is only one acceptable sociopolitical worldview left in Washington, albeit with two different hues. There may be different proposed ways to get there, but both parties envision a return to robust economic growth, pro-business trade policies, pro-wealth tax structures, maximum consumption, etc. 

Sure, the parties portray themselves as ideologically opposed. Republicans have recently taken up the Ayn Rand-Grover Nordquist banner, vowing to bring fiscal restraint and spending freezes to the federal government. Sure. And Democrats are painting themselves as the technocratic, adult saviors of the economy, pulling society back from the brink of depression, a situation that was caused by GOP recklessness. 

In reality, reality itself is driving the bus now. The brutal equations of the American Algorithm are tightening their grip on our unsustainable way of life, and the Dems and GOP are surviving by telling just-so stories to fulfill their only remaining functions; which are......raising cash for campaigns, winning elections with those funds, and delivering legislative largesse for the largest donors (see my Midterm Post-Mortem for more details). 

In this electioneering context, we can see that the two major parties have taken a dangerous gamble by harnessing free-floating public anxiety over the economy, and turning it into campaign rage. Instead of looking at the big picture of our myriad predicaments, and making some stab at an overarching plan to put America on a truly sustainable path, both the GOP and the Dems are content with demonizing the opposition and blaming them for obstructing the true path of righteous recovery. The key here is that neither policy program can really work. The John Galt, starve-the-beast dream and the glittering, green progresso-topia are both impossible to fulfill, given the ratios of labor to technology to ecological collapse. 

Sure, we'll likely get smaller government and a greener economy -- but this will happen on the planet's terms, by default, and not by some super-heroic ideological wunder-platform. But for fundraising and publicity purposes, this is not a good story for our political machines to admit. Instead, the non-functionality of their policies needs to be explained via obstruction and sabotage from the other side. 'If only those d-bags would stop blocking everything, we'd already have XYZ by now.' In this respect, I would imagine that both Obama and the GOP are actually relieved to have a split Congress. Now, as conditions for ordinary Americans continue to deteriorate, even amidst the thriving of the plutocracy, each side can throw up their hands at the intractability of partisan politics and obstruction. This is indeed a dangerous game to play, and public rage will just continue to build.

As infuriating as the above scenario is, it's hard to really blame our major parties for the quagmire. Sure, each side is playing us for fools; but there are long trends at work here. The Dems and GOP are really only fulfilling the destiny laid down by American political evolution. If we really want our major parties to function differently, then we would need to make huge changes in electoral structure (proportional representation), electoral machinery (instant runoff voting), campaign finance reform (full public funding of elections), and legal definitions of corporations (limiting Bill of Rights protections to natural persons). If changes like that are not made, then the parties will continue to function as they do.

The final piece of the puzzle in our discussion of public rage is the punditocracy. We're talking here about the Rush Limbaughs, the Keith Olbermanns, the Sean Hannitys, and even the Jon Stewarts. Of course, there is a broad spectrum of tactics and outlook here, from long hours of redundant talk radio time to tightly-crafted sketch comedy. But the key common denominator is the fusion of entertainment, politics, and education. 'Now wait a minute,' you might say. 'I get the entertainment and the politics, but what's the deal with education?' 

The educational component is really key to unlocking the rage-increasing potential of punditry. We all know the discouraging calculus of the entertainification of politics: shorter and shorter sound-bites, the rise of confrontational styles to boost ratings, the blind spots when it comes to critiquing advertisers, the general business-friendly avoidance of pro-union or anti-consumerism material, the horse-race mentality of election coverage with its perennial jerking off of the swing voter. The list goes on.

But in the world of pundits specifically, there has been this fascinating turn to teaching and education, a portrayal of opponents as ignorant, and of oneself as enlightened and 'in the know.' Think of Glenn Beck's blackboards; or Sarah Palin's smirking superiority over the wisdom of the common man; or Keith Olbermann's bloviating attempts at reincarnating the weight of Edward R. Murrow; or Rachel Maddow's highly-cultivated wonkishness. Not content to simply be news readers and entertainers, our pundits are now our digital professors, conducting seminars on the Constitution, or health care legislation, or the true mind of John and Jane Q Public. And the books -- god, they turn out a lot of books.

So what gives? Why are pundits not satisfied with calling the other side a bunch of big fat idiots any more? Why the turn to chalkboards and pie charts? There's a couple things going on here. First is the desensitization of the viewing public to conflict and spectacle. Sure, berating the bozos on the other side of the aisle is fun at first. But eventually, it gets old. After all, talk radio and cable news are not as inherently-entertaining as other cultural artifacts. People who like conflict and confrontation can find a lot more inspiring stuff in sports, daytime drama, American Idol, blockbuster movies, Survivor, and the like. You can only call Obama a socialist so many times before the listener says, 'OK, I get it -- now what? What else you got for me?' 

The second, and more important, phenomenon is that pundits suffer from the same ideological impotence as our two major parties, as described above. Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann suffer from the same  kind of narrative defect, largely because they are themselves part of that same electioneering-industrial complex that exists only to fuel the horserace. In this sense, the pundits turn to education is both a mirror image of, and a direct conduit into, the political partisan strategy of blaming the other side for obstruction. In Washington, there is too much professional decorum to actually accuse your opponents of being stupid, but that same restriction does not apply in the punditocracy.

Because the audience for punditry has no official legislative responsibilities themselves, beyond voting, the educational project also serves as a kind of secular calling. People who think that their opponents are not just wrong, but also ignorant, can take up the cross of righteous pedagogy. This is especially evident in the Tea Party, a wide-ranging movement of cranks, patriots, and Medicare-dependent boomers, united perhaps only by the belief that they have the most direct intellectual link to the founding fathers, and are thus responsible for educating the ignorant liberal classes about the true meaning of America.

In a very real sense, this faux-educational harnessing of American free-floating rage is perhaps the most dangerous development of all, with regards to the possibility of civil public discourse. Why? First, because it completely destroys the real importance of intellectual training. Sure, people may get information from Bill O'Reilly or Rachel Maddow. They may get a lot of it. But what is the overall context for that information? True education is a grueling endeavor, a lifelong project. Beyond just childhood schooling and college, which themselves must be of high quality (and mostly aren't), real intellectual development in adulthood requires some very specific commitments. People need to approach learning with a totally open mind, especially when it comes to physical and social sciences. Contradictory material and results cannot just be swept under the rug. Diverse data need to be incorporated into malleable models of reality. One has to be forever willing to change one's viewpoint, based on new experiences or information. True education requires setting aside large blocs of time, to ingest a significant volume of stuff, like books and journals and lectures. And perhaps most of all, a proper education spawns, (gasp), a more tolerant view of diversity. As one learns more, the intellectual tent gets bigger.

None of these facets of education are fed by the fake teaching-stylings of the pundits. And in fact, the opposite things usually happen: interaction becomes more course, minds become narrowed, time for understanding opposing parties dwindles to nil. Smugness is augmented to ridiculous proportions, as intellectual wannabes pretend that their 10-minute chalkboard seminar on the religious leanings of James Madison has transformed them into a virtual 10th Justice of the Supreme Court. The frustrations over having a shitty job, an underwater mortgage, and a halved 401K are salved by feelings of moral superiority over those poindexters from Cambridge. As Quint said to Hooper, "Well, it proves one thing, Mr. Hooper. It proves that you wealthy college boys don't have the education enough to admit when you're wrong."

If we really want some type of education on the problems we're facing in this country, we had better not look to our corporate politicians, or to their remora-like appendages, the suddenly-professorial pundits. We're going to need a lot more intellectual heft and boldness in our policy prescriptions than this cohort can deliver.