> To blame the listeners is one step short of accepting things as they are.

I disagree:

- If the talkers are the problem, then the solution is... less speech? Muzzling/censorship? I'll pass, thanks. Better to have the frenzied finger-pointers grow hoarse blathering to a crowd that's ignoring them, than to give them the very attention that they crave and that drives their fortunes.

- I didn't mention solutions to the problem because my post was already long enough.

Solutions would involve (at least):

- Persuading people to take their media viewership and loyalty away from the worst offenders (MSNBC, Fox News, etc.). Hit them where it hurts, in the pocketbook. Do this by pointing out the emperor's nakedness. - Persuading people to give their media viewership to sources and outlets that don't pander to them (not quite the opposite of the first point). This gives influence (money) to media voices who, eventually, can credibly call our leaders to task for their race-to-the-bottom mentality. - Improved critical thinking curricula in formal education at all levels.

The above improvements would have gradual second-order effects on civic life, e.g. you might eventually end up with real town hall meetings instead of staged, scripted tripe. It really wouldn't take much overt change to see results -- you don't have to boil the ocean.

No one is talking about Soviet-style suppression of free speech. To see my direction, compare media-enabled witch-hunts and mob politics to an immune reaction of an organism. A small, appropriate dose of it is good for the body. A disproportionate immune reaction (like what we're seeing here), is an inflammation, and should probably call for administration of cortisone (while a Soviet-style reaction would be cutting out the whole inflamed tissue and harming everything in the process). It gets worse. If left unchecked, we can have an auto-immune disease. Someone has to be watching the watchers.