Angry Bear, that most excellent economist, sums up a bloggish debate that apparently broke out while I wasn’t looking. Seems that there’s otherwise sensible people out there who argue that there’s little if any point in bloggish wonkery at this moment in US history because no one in power cares about facts anyway.
A better argument for the “no facts please, we’re American” point of view might have commented on the need to break through the right-wing financial and ideological dominance of mass media (and I don’t just mean Fox, I mean a New York Times that thinks it is 1944 and FDR is President).
But even the strongest form of that argument is wrong. Angry Bear goes to the trouble of working up wordy justifications for, well, justifications, and does the usual nice job. But I’m afraid my view on this is quite simple, some may even say simplistic:
The truth may not always set you free, but there is no real freedom without truth.
Academics, wonky bloggers, muckrakers, we all play our small parts in the Experiment that is democracy.
So, how’s the experiment going this year?
