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Villager: Someone who knowingly engages in spreading logical fallacies in order to demonize those they disagree with. Villagers tend to use the middle ground fallacy, in combination with straw men, ad hominem and false analogies, as their main fallacies of choice. The combination of these fallacies are used in the effort to build the pretense that they, the villager, are in possession of the truth.

Well, sadly, Joe, I have to agree with you about much of the left blogosphere. The moral high-horseism on the left side is getting pretty unbearable, and uninteresting. You’ve nailed a couple of critical points, though; color me surprised. The marginalization over the Iraq War radicalized many of us former (and otherwise present-day) moderates, and you are correct in assessing that I believe that those people who used the Iraq War to stimulate their foreign policy manhood, both then and now, their opinions are not to be trusted. And why should they be? Please answer me that.

I wish you wouldn’t paint us all with such a broad brush, though. And you really gloss over the depths of corruption of your own colleagues.

It would be good, though, to have a true dialogue and not just you hurling your stone tablets down on us whenever we provoke your pique.

Cheers.
James

OK Joe, you have thrown down the gauntlet. I am one of those who criticise from the sideline. I have served, worked in govt and business and have, thankfully, not known want so far. But what I see (and I worked in Washington for 5 years) now is a Village which trumpets its insiderism. The rubbish that passes for “informed comment” is daily fare. There are always two points of view no matter what the issue. Or four on Matthews!

The Health care Debate became charged because much of it was on the “inside”, away from public scrutiny. I listened to Lawrence O’Donnell tell me time and again that only staffers knew what to do about health care (he was once one), and that the public simply did not know how its done. The sheer arrogance on repeated display was breathtaking.

You have come some way to acknowledging that some of us DFH can advance an argument, and I asknowledge that you have sought to meet us at some point. But until you can deal with the breathlessness of the all knowing folks on Morning Joe and their pre-occupation with minutiae and insiderism I am afraid us hippies will have to talk among ourselves.

If I don’t have a website, can I still be an extremist? I sure hope so.

The point is, NONE of us should be talking among ourselves.

Noted with thanks.

What an awful article! You have too much generalization, too much ranting, no specific examples, and a condescending tone. You paint the whole left blogosphere as a bunch of bunch of effete snobs (echos of Agnew). I failed to see any substance in your article about why the opponents of the Senate bill may be wrong. There are fierce arguments on the lefty blogs every day between opponents of the Senate bill and those who are willing to accept it. There are some personal attacks, and emotional rants, but there are also a lot of substantive arguments. Your article should have had some of the latter.

In the snarkier [delete "snarkier", insert "annoyingly clear-sighted"] precincts of the left-wing blogosphere, mainstream journalists like me are often called villagers [correct "journalists" to "lazy centrist stenographers of the School of Broder"]. The reference, so far as I can tell [delete, before someone brings up the infamous quote about your lack of time or legal expertise], has to do with isolation: we live in this little village on the Potomac — actually, I don’t, but no matter — constantly intermingling over hors d’oeuvres [correct to "cocktails"], deciding who is “serious” (a term of derision in the blogosphere) and who is not, regurgitating spin spoon-fed by our sources [correct to "Pete Hoekstra"] or conjuring a witless conventional wisdom that has nothing to do with reality as it is lived outside the village[Insert "and publishing muck-raking novels anonymously, while lying through their teeth about it.]. There is, of course, some[delete "some", insert "total"] truth to this. Washington is insular; certain local shamans [correct to "bunco artists] are celebrated beyond all logic[insert "by their fellow gossip-peddlers]; some of my columnar colleagues have lost touch with everything beyond their armchairs and egos. [ insert "Those making such claims are, I must confess, right."]

Joe, Nate Silver posed 20 questions about the objections to the bill and the link below includes a link to the questions and responses he received from some of the left bloggers. There is a lot more going on intellectually than just shouting.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/20-questions-20-responses.html

Feel better now, Joe? Now that you vomited out all your bile and ill-feeling against us hippies. Here’s a face towel. Now that’s over, you might think about investing in a tougher carapace. That tissue-thin skin of yours seems a little worse for wear, these days… what with all those on the “far left” who have gotten under it.

Anyway… Thank you, Joe. First you ignored us, then you laughed at us, now you’re fighting us.

I guess we all know what comes next.

…assimilation by the Borg?

One substantive thing I would like to see him do is list the things that make the Left’s opposition to the health bill exactly the same as the right’s opposition, in order to support his analogy. Analogies work better when the two things being compared share far more similarities than differences.
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I’m also trying to understand why the public option, supported by a majority of the country, including a rather large contingent of Republicans, has become exclusively associated with the Left among the “centrist” villagers.

deconstructiva: something like that; Joe’s blustering resistance to the new status-quo — where DFH’s actually have voices, the forums to use them to spread the word — is indeed futile.

To paraphrase the illustrious Barry Goldwater, extremism in the defense of health care is no vice…moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Commenters:

You know how the right attacks anybody they don’t like by pointing and yelling “liberal,” no matter if they’re Evan Bayh?
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You know how, after a while, “liberal” became a weirdly pejorative word, even though it’s completely credible as a political philosophy, had been for at least sixty years?
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Centrists try to do the same rhetorical trick, except they substitute the word “extreme” or “radical” for the right’s “liberal.” It works, because the pejorative Conventional Wisdom implications of “extreme” are “not politically possible,” “not worthy of discussion” and “not worthy of expensive media time.”
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The Addington-Yoo theory of Unitary Executive Authority is a relatively radical constitutional interpretation that allows, on its face, the Executive to break Congress’s laws without sanction. The policies that followed from that theory, e.g. the FISA warrant-less wiretapping of American citizens were radical as such. The Bush-Cheney “Preemptive Defense” theory, in which nations no longer had need to engage in aggression or pose an imminent threat in order to be destroyed, is one of the farthest things from the Founders’ intents possible, “extreme” incarnate, really.
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But centrists like Joe Klein could not call these policies “extreme” at the time, since they happened, and therefore were possible in political reality. Since, according to their self-serving doctrine, that which is “radical” is also “politically impossible,” they have been stuck in he intellectual mire about what to do with or say about the fact that those crazy things happened and that the President of the United States walked around saying “Freedom is on the march, you see…” in front of them for years. In their own way, centrists are just as out of touch with reality as the right.
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As it happens, liberals operating from outside the metaphorical Village Joe Klein inhabits vocally opposed the invasion of Iraq, and the illegal spying on Americans. Currently, some of them are opposing the current health care legislation on the policy grounds ( link to a good faith policy debate between Nate Silver and Marcy Wheeler ) that it will hurt American families, and entrench the interests that helped caused this reform process to collapse.
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Joe Klein’s centrism won’t allow him to address the fact that so many of the bill’s opponents on the left are arguing from reality-based policy positions, because that won’t allow him to label them “extreme,” and then they might be discussed intelligently –which might possibly cause his position to deteriorate.
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Here’s Nate Silver –one of Joe Klein’s newfound blogosphere heroes, now that he supports Joe’s favored position– on the extra-Village debate:

It goes without saying that I’ve started to clash with a couple of the writers at FireDogLake. But there are a couple of people I really like over there. One of them is Spencer Ackerman, whose terrific piece on Al Qaeda you should read. Another is Marcy Wheeler, a fellow Michigander, who has this piece placing into context the cost of health insurance under the Senate’s bill for a family of four making $66,000 (301% of poverty).
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I like Marcy’s analysis, among other reasons, because it’s data and fact-driven. Nevertheless, it’s painting an incomplete picture — and somewhat missing the forest for the trees.
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First of all, several of of Marcy’s cost estimates are on the high side. In particular:
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– Spending 30% of income on one’s rent/mortage as Marcy’s assumes — that’s $19,275 per year or $1,600 per month — is an aggressive assumption. The Department of Commerce estimates…

Whatever can be said of Nate Silver, he exists in the same blogosphere that FireDogLake and DailyKos do. What’s funny apropo Joe’s piece is that the ad hominem criticisms that have been leveled against Nate are mostly “You’re becoming a Villager.”
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Joe Klein does himself credit by at least acknowledging the existence of his metaphorical Village.
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But he does himself the usual discredit by refusing to accurately describe the reality that falls outside of his centrist political ideology: that “The Left’s Idiocy on Health Reform” is actually “The Left’s Superior Knowledge of the Issue of Health Reform Compared to Paid Political Pundits.”
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The left has good policy arguments that this legislation’s ameliorative effects are temporary at best, and that it will work, unfortunately, to harm a great many American families’ economic fortunes and health, while structurally embedding these terrible flaws, perhaps irrevocably. If you’re capable of seeing beyond the cheap gamesmanship and cliches of Joe’s piece, and really want to understand why some of us think that people are going to be worse off, start with Nate vs Marcy at my link (Marcy responds in another thread). You can then see with your own eyes that left blogosphere which laughs in disgust at Joe’s vapid Villagers.
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It’s unfortunate that Joe Klein can’t get far enough beyond his centrist ideology to actually participate in that real policy debate on the left. It does require public intellectual honesty about one’s positions to do that, I guess. Journolist’s audience is, after all, rather limited.
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Thanks so much for reading and considering this, commenters. I may not be able to respond, because of this awful infection thing I’ve got killing my lungs.
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Back to lying down and painfully coughing, now.

“…some of my columnar colleagues have lost touch with everything beyond their armchairs and egos.”
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But not you, right? Here’s a quick explanation of Villagers, since you seem to have lost touch with the google as well (in the early 21st Century we no longer have to guess or make up the meanings of published words):

In political terms, the term “Villagers” denotes a kind of small-minded refusal to think outside an “acceptable” center-right consensus, and a refusal to acknowledge it when a majority of the American people take a view on a particular issue that is not in line with that center-right consensus. Thus, the “Villagers” include, in part, Democratic elected officials and consultants who insist that their party can’t succeed unless they ally their party with that center-right consensus; think-tankers who churn out position papers designed to prop up this elite consensus view; and elite pundits who insist that mainstream liberal views are radically leftist and insist on “bipartisanship” for its own sake, damn the consequences.
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This elite consensus, in the view of the bloggers, represents this particular Village’s hidebound small-town values, which must be maintained at all costs to protect this elite’s status and interests.
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– Greg Sargent

I don’t think the smartest lefty writer I know of could have written a better parody to illustrate the dysfunction than your little ego-centrist screed (hint: “the left” isn’t “opposing health care reform”, they’ve been fighting for it for generations – you, not so much). Well done.

…are you feeling better?

Stuart: sorry to read that are you still unwell. Best wishes for a return to good health and all the best for the New Year.

I am, as always here on Swampland, blown away by the well-supported arguments of many of the commenters. It’s amazing how much better argued their positions are than even the vaunted and highly paid Joe Klein of TIME magazine!

It must be embarrassing for Joe to pen his little tirades, and then get shown up so effectively in the comments sections.

One wonders if his distaste for the “far left” and the “extremists” is really just a replacement for his envy of the powers of argument, logic and policy provided daily here by Stuart Zechman, Shepherd Wong and many (many) others here.

Joe Klein:
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Thanks so much for taking a moment away from Journolist email discussions to respond to commentary, it is greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your perseverance.

I love that we finally have a substantive debate on health care reform, between people like Nate Silver and people like Marcy Wheeler, and Joe Klein and the Centrists can’t wait to shut it down.
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Apparently debate is only permissible between the mainstream and the crazy, lying teabagging movement.

Wow Joe, I am impresed! You certainly pi$$ed off the liberals today! Good job!!

Let me lead off by saying that I enjoyed the column very much. I may quite disagree with your point of view, but I’ve always felt that communication is more effective when people don’t mince words. Far more despicable than the insiderism that seems to characterize what we call the Village is the notion that certain styles of argument are ‘beyond the pale’ or excessively impolite. (I find the phrase ‘fainting couch’ to be very useful at times.)

The insight that the current battle lines were drawn in 2003 is quite a valuable one though it’s easy to overgeneralize. The bottom line is that the run up to Iraq was a textbook example of mass insanity and those of us who didn’t bite have absolutely every reason to be PO’ed.

I hold myself up as a suitable exception to your generalization. I was proudly and vocally right about the lack of WMD’s, about the irrationality that was being bandied around as Conventional wisdom and don’t even get me started about the treatment of Natalie Maines. At the same time, I share your impatience with those who’s views on the HCR debate are dictated by the eqation Insurance Executive=Satan.
The world is more complex than that.

“One wonders if his distaste for the “far left” and the “extremists” is really just a replacement for his envy of the powers of argument, logic and policy provided daily here…”
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Like the “Villager” thing, Joe tries to put a fig leaf over it with this little bone:
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”It has its roots in an issue the left got right and almost everyone else got wrong: the war in Iraq.”
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As if liberals weren’t also right about George Bush and Dick Cheney, John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales, the lying smears of John Kerry, the abandonment of Afghanistan, the Plame Affair, deregulation of Wall Street, the partisan political corruption of the federal bureaucracy, torture, domestic spying, etc., etc., etc., while the Village courtiers were consistently and very publicly, wrong. Yes, I’m quite sure that’s the main reason liberals are despised by Villagers.

Joe: “NONE of us should be talking among ourselves.”
That is what the villagers do everyday. I stopped watching the Sunday talk shows because it is the same people, echoing the same rhetoric every week.
It is amazing that the participating pundits are experts on every subject:
Environment
Health Care
Economy
Foreign Policy
Education
Religion
Physics
Etc…
I used to watch The Mclaughlin Report when Jack Germond was on it. There were times when he would say I have no opinion about that topic because I know nothing about it. How brave. He eventually quit because he got tired of the braying journalists on the show.
Joe and other pundits are so afraid of the internet and being called out on their ignorance they have to try to bring down blogging influence. They also demean the American public by insinuating it is all too difficult for them to understand. We require that the great, all knowing, never to be questioned press. Joe and David Broder are the Wizards of Oz.

Joe Klein – not a Villager, but a Potemkin Villager.

The first paragraph of the column made me think of David Broder, especially this sentence:

“Washington is insular; certain local shamans are celebrated beyond all logic;”

I disagree with sentence:

“Indeed, it resembles nothing so much as that other, more populous hamlet, the right-wing Fox News and Limbaugh slum.”

For the simple reason that the left-wing blogosphere is not disinterested in facts.

Edit: I disagree with this sentence:

Your problem, Joe, is your arrogance, where you think that you, by virtue of being a columnist, are qualified to hold forth on any number of issues of which you know nothing. Further, your arrogance prevents you from understanding that people who read Swampland might know something more about a given issue than you do. For example, I am an epidemiologist and my field of expertise is health insurance program research and evaluation. Your lack of knowledge in this field is glaringly evident to me, as it is to others in my field. You literally don’t know what you are talking about on health insurance issues. Talking to politicians does nothing to inform your thinking. In fact, it degrades your ability to understand the complex issues surrounding health insurance reform. Because of your arrogance and ignorance you are nothing more than a parrot of the worst elements of the national political scene. You know that, too, in your heart of hearts, don’t you Joe?
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Nevertheless, you are on point when you observe that the left blogosphere is becoming an insulated echo chamber and the liberal counterpart of Free Republic. Since the inception of Swampland, you and your colleagues have gone from bad to worse, and I see no hope whatever of any improvement. You journos at Time Mag, all of you, are completely indifferent to facts and accuracy or any of the purported “standards” of journalism. And the liberal side has shown little interest in understanding what drives the corruption of the Village and our toxic political discourse. So there is no progress there, and none in the foreseeable future. I guess the best we can hope is that you and your colleagues eventually end up where you should be, in the unemployment line. My hope is that the era of highly-paid mediocrity in journalism, as typified by Time Magazine and the Washington Post, comes to an ignominious end. And soon.

Frankly, I think Joe is dead on. I’ve been commenting on this phenomenon for months now. This didn’t start with the health care debate, despite it being most luminous in the rejection of the health care reform legislation devoid of the public option. My very first comment on this site, before Obama even won the election, was an accusation that many on the left were acting just as rigidly as those on the right. When I called out Jane Hamsher for demanding that any real progressive walk in lock step and pass certain litmus tests or otherwise be shunned on the grounds that they are unworthy centrists — I was roundly attacked for stating the obvious. Perhaps some of you can dismiss this message coming from Joe Klein simply because he is the messenger, but since some of you claim the difference between you and the right is your acceptance of facts then you should check them before you deny that you’ve been well described in this article.

“…since some of you claim the difference between you and the right is your acceptance of facts then you should check them before you deny that you’ve been well described in this article.”
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I’m not sure who “you” is but how ’bout you pull out a descriptive quote and we take your thesis for a little fact-based spin?
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Furthermore, on which positions do you believe that “the left” is behaving too “rigidly”? A US health care system (and US Congress) not owned and controlled, lock stock and barrel, by the insurance industry? That gay people and women and minorities deserve the same rights as straight, white men? That the government shouldn’t engage in massive secret spying programs against the citizens of this country in violation of the US Constitution? That the Obama administration shouldn’t help to cover-up war crimes? Do tell.

Has anyone noticed that Jane Hamsher and Arianna Huffington seem to be taking their direction from rightwing extremists Grover Norquist and Bill Kristol in the healthcare debates? Why is that?

The fact is it is the so-called centrists who refuse to compromise on the public option. They are the ones Klein should be accusing of extremism, not liberals.

It isn’t and they aren’t. It’s another lie started by “centrists” like Joe Klein (aided by something stupid Hamsher said) to try to marginalize the left. Apparently, the country hasn’t suffered enough from the embargo of liberal thinking and progressive public policy.
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Anyway, “oh nos, a government takeover of healthcare that’s going to set up death panels to pull the plug on granny and bankrupt the country”, isn’t quite the same thing as “mandating that everyone buy private, for-profit insurance without adequate checks against rising costs and insurance company abuses, is insufficient reform,” now is it? Too bad people like you and Klein can’t tell (or be honest about) the difference.

So you’re saying Hamsher is stupid? I wonder whether . she is merely stupid or is she corrupt? Because Ralph Nader is also in bed with Grover Norquist and takes money from him. Stupid or corrupt?

“So you’re saying Hamsher is stupid?”
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No, I said she said something stupid, presumably because she was spitting mad. Hampsher is obviously a brilliant woman who would immediately understand that I was actually saying that it is you who is stupid (or lying). Sorry you missed it.

I am starting to wonder how long Hamsher has been a right wing operative. She’s been trying to defund Planned Parent and NARAL for years, you know.

Dee: Lumping all liberal blogs and their posters and readers as one entity is lacking the nuance you will find on those sites. If you were to read the Daily Kos, many there disagree with Jane Hampsher. I do. Never make common efforts with the devil. Grover Norquist is worse then his buddy Abramhoff. He was the money transit for the Abramhoff indian casino scam. He is buddies with Tom Delay who supports slave labor, prostitution, and forced abortion in the Marianas.
I have had varied opinions about HCR. After years of work in the health insurance industry, I have studied as much as I could about the progress of HCR. During that time, I have flucuated in support. Being a liberal, I wanted single payer but will settle for what is possible right now.
Nuance is hard for Joe Klein to understand or maybe he just prefers to minimize and demean a fair share of the Democratic party.

I gave money to Jane Hamsher, which she probably used for her facelift, and I want it back.

I think Hamsher means well, but just isn’t very savvy when it comes to tactics. Teaming up with Norquist is such a spectacular blunder that it almost passes belief. Likewise the demand to kill the healthcare bill. As for Ariana Huffington, I see her doing whatever she thinks is necessary to get ratings. I try and avoid her site for this reason. I also dislike the way she gives aid and comfort to the vaccination cranks.

That was pretty funny.

Let me see if I understand-The Left has a track record of being correct but they are wrong now because some Democrats are willing to go along with the Senate version of HCR?

And they hurt Joe’s feelings to the point he has to pretend he really doesn’t know what “serious” or “Villager” means.

His way of saying “I don’t pay attention to The Left” which he shows by writing a column on The Left.

Broder, who Joe doesn’t have the courage to name, would be proud.

If Hamsher is so smart, why would she make such a spectacular blunder as teaming up with Grover Norquist to start a wide-ranging investigation on this White House? Or call for the left to join up with the teabaggers?

To this ex-follower of hers, it does not compute. I’d like to see who is funding her (in addition to me) and what she is doing with those funds. I mean, really, she is the only one on the left who has advocated joining up with the teabaggers! And the truth is, that there is big money for teabagger organizers and other right-wing operatives. That’s a fact.

Dalybean, when angry, desperate, or passionate enough, people do foolish things. I don’t see much point in imagining conspiracies when human error provides a sufficient explanation.

“Teaming up with Norquist is such a spectacular blunder that it almost passes belief. Likewise the demand to kill the healthcare bill.”
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Yes, well, nobody’s perfect. Based upon my reading, passing the Senate bill (as we understand it) is possibly better than nothing from a policy standpoint if it actually winds up giving better access to the poor and putting real teeth into regulating industry practices (why am I skeptical here) but also with serious ethical and political dangers thrown in. YMMV.
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Like everyone else I guess, I prefer to read people with whom I mostly agree. And I usually try to target my fire toward those who are doing the most egregious damage to the country as a whole, which is why it’s mostly corporatist conservatives, as well as the Beltway corporatist “centrists” without whose eager assistance they could not succeed.

Junius–
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Lots and lots of Hamsher’s ex-followers are wondering the same things as I am. In any event, the heat of passion argument as an attempted excuse for Hamsher’s colossal blunder does not hold water. She did not make an errant statement to a reporter on a day when she was angry. In fact, she telegraphed her intentions to align with the right wing to Ben Smith at Politico on December 2 and then pullled the trigger 3 weeks later with a press conference announcing that she and Grover Norquist were teaming up to call for an investigation on the White House.

In addition, she has not apologized or even acknowledged that she made a colossal blunder. In fact, she has doubled down on destroying the White House.

These are just a few of the things that cause so much suspicion and distrust around Jane Hamsher. She is, in fact, finished in Democratic politics. If she survives at all, it will be as a circus sideshow.

LOL
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The real Jane Hamsher doesn’t have “followers.”

True. She’s down to about 150 hard core ditto heads and flying monkeys.

Further, Hamsher was warned that she was jumping off the cliff and she did it anyway.

If you have any more hit job talking points, you should probably get them all out now, before the thread dies.

LOL at queen of the hit job Jane Hamsher and her minions complaining about a hit job. Suggest her followers get off the bus now before the evidence of the financial shenanigans comes out.

The truth is that the left-blogosphere is a bunch of individual actors and discrete communities who have many different opinions about the Democratic Party, President Obama and the current state of progressive politics. We also mostly agree that the right wing is a collection of hypocritical corporate sponsored wealth protectors and resentful, reactionary stooges. But the one thing we all pretty much agree on is that Villagers will be Villagers — and forming false equivalences between the left and right is a defining characteristic.

What Digby said.

Digby’s lament about false equivalencies between the extreme right and the extreme left rings false at this time in view of the fact that her BFF Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake (FDL) explicitly formed an alliance with the “tea party activists” and Grover Norquist. Her unwillingness to address this rot on the left calls into question her own credibility. It also allows people like Joe Klein to sound perfectly reasonable in describing these people as extremists.

Hamsher has set back progressive causes and done incalculable damage to the progressive blogosphere with her alliance with the right wing. In addition, she has set back the nascent funding mechanisms which showed great promise before she attempted to wrest control and trash the whole effort. It’s a shame. In my view, she needs to be marginalized for the continued and escalating harm she causes to the left.

Joe – this one was a great article and an honorable attempt to call the ‘bluff’ of our Lefty Friends. I doubt anything is going to sink there.

But here is the thing – our Lefty friends took the lesson from Conservatives about how to keep on trying to set your side of the story, your meme, in circulation so that in the end it starts getting traction. As many have said, till Obama election; these Progressive Lefty Netroots were ‘under dogs’. Now no more. They rule the waves today.

This means those who are on the receiving end of wrath of these folks need to keep on trying to put the story right and in perspective. Your post is that attempt and there is no other way than to keep on sustaining these attempts ‘to call the bluff’ of Netroots when they too diverge from the road.

The core lesson of American Politics is – no one gets permanent victory. Earnings from one right ‘Iraq call’ cannot sustain Netroots for ever to pontificate on American affairs the way they please. Each and every policy debate has to be engaged in right way and political victories have to be ‘earned’ there. Calling names to opponents – it only takes you that much.

I was with Netroots in opposing Bush’s Iraq War and still I am with Netroots for many of their policy approaches. But I do not oppose Health Care Reforms for their reasons and would even grudgingly support it so long as we Americans are aware of unfinished business of ‘cost controls’ which need to be completed soon.

So thanks for bringing all this in the ‘mainstream’. We need all these things read and discussed.