The blogosphere just got stupider

Sensible Mom, who wrote so well, so forthrightly, so politely and well…so sensibly, and who used her gifts to deconstruct dubious constructs so definitively, is hanging up her keyboard and moseying off into sunset. She writes:

I’ve turned to blogging less and less. Maybe it’s because I’ve realized that the news never really changes. It’s just the same cycle over and over and it’s too much like swimming against the tide.

I know I’m just part of an echo chamber. My reactions are the same as so many others who remain dedicated to writing and who have a much larger following. It doesn’t seem worthwhile to me to post half-heartedly or only once every few weeks.

Plus, I’ve been extremely busy with other aspects of my life, and I don’t see them slowing down.

Oh, woman, I hear you! I’ve pretty much observed the same thing about there being nothing new in the news.

It certainly does feel like everything that can be said has been said and that the blogosphere is simply riding around a mobius strip of closed minds and toxic partisanship that is bringing us nowhere, fast.

As I wrote in 2006:

There is no way to debate because – no matter which side tries to get serious – a well-thought-out discourse is immediately shot down by the other side with a one-line-sneer, usually a specious one, that distorts or misdirects and never allows a thought to go forward. The disrespect between “sides” is staggering, and completely unproductive. But non-productivity seems to be what people like. It’s “safe.” If you don’t do anything, you can’t get blamed, right? More kicking things down the road.

This is not to say there is no civility on blogs. My blogfather, Ed Morrissey remains the personification of intelligent discourse, tendered with civility toward all and malice toward none. Glenn Reynolds, too, is noticably balanced. My blog-sister Jeanette is also wonderfully kind and civil on the rare occasions where she does get a little “caught up” in things, she always comes back with something sincere, humble and edifying with again, “malice toward none.” I can name you a few dozen more such blogs – even a couple from the left! – but in a world where blogs multiply by the bazillions each week, that’s small comfort.

Although he writes from the far left – the far, far left – our friend Joseph has noted the same thing, writing, “Until a major change comes, there is really no more to say about politics.” Although we could not disagree more thoroughly on matters political, here Joseph and I agree. He has begun a new blog The Empty Sky, in which he tries to ignore politics. Check it out.

Elsewhere I have lamented my own participation in the sort of “sneering-at-each-other while-peddling-to-nowhere” game that defines so much of the blogosphere. I am not proud of my excesses and have repeatedly tried to tamp ’em down or leave them behind. I wish my natural instincts were simply more kind and mature, but there you go. Like Joseph and Sensible Mom, I’ve been posting less frequently, and leaning toward less-politics, more other-stuff. I am not yet ready to stop blogging completely – I just made the site so pretty! – but to be honest, it’s time-consuming, doesn’t really pay much, and my “real” life deserves a better portion of my “real” attention, if I am striving for balance, which (believe it or not) I am.

Actually, “Striving for Balance” is not a bad name for a blog. If I ever close this one down, I have dibs!

Meanwhile, best of luck to Sensible Mom.