The fall of post invasion Iraq

[DeistPaladin]

They actually inherited substantial issues from the Democrats. Both sides fuel the discord.

BOTH SIDES!
BOTH SIDES!
BOTH SIDES!

That's the conventional wisdom repeated like a mantra by our corporate media. On the surface, it sounds both reasonable and impartial. There are usually two sides to every story and blaming one side only can sounds like having a bias.

Even John Stewart indulged in this ideology for a long time, from his appearence on cross fire...





...to his rally to restore sanity...





The problem is when it becomes a mantra, or even an ideology which it apparently has, it let's liars and wrongdoers off the hook. Accountability and fact-checking completely break down. After all, you can't call out a Republican for lying because that would seem like being partial to the Democrat. If the Republican is lying than the Democrat must be lying too. And if you can't say how the Democrat is lying, then you can't call out the Republican because that would be acting in a partial fashion. All you can do is shrug your shoulders and say "Gee whiz, who can say what really is true. Reality is up for grabs. All we can do is bring 'both sides' on an 'report the controversy' and let our audience decide what they want to believe."

And that's precisely what our corporate media has done.

There is no accountability for our national leaders, no consequences for screwing everything up and fact-checking is delegated to the "bloggers" that few pay any attention to.

I believe historians will call this era, "The Age of Solipsism".

Because of the "both sides" ideology, also known as the logical fallacy of "Argument to Moderation" our media has completely abdicated is responsibility to be a watch dog for the general public and hold our national leaders to account.

When our media is forced to deal with Republican abuse, lies or corruption, they have to find some way to work back to "both sides". This usually means:

1. Finding some relatively minor offense and exaggerate its significance to make a false parallel (i.e. "OK, Glenn Beck is insane but look how petulant Keith Olberman can sometimes be so BOTH SIDES")

2. Find some relatively obscure liberal to compare (i.e. "OK, Rush Limbaugh just said something really offensive again but some-liberal-with-a-blog said something really offensive so BOTH SIDES")

3. If nothing else, just claim both sides do it and quickly move on before anyone notices the slight-of-hand (i.e. "Well, the Republicans are filibustering every bill including the ones they later vote for just to shut down the functionality of Congress. What a shame we have such partisan divides on BOTH SIDES. Anyway, moving on to the next story...")

And so there's no accountability.

And that's why both our government and our political discourse are so dysfunctional.

If we're to ever deal with the profound problems that we in America and all of humanity face, we must break that habit. Instead of vapidly insisting on BOTH SIDES and clinging to that ideology, our media and all of us need to realize that fairness and impartiality do not mean inaction and indecisiveness.