Voices
tion is enhanced by the isolating
force of modern media. Americans
can spend most of their waking
hours enveloped in one journalistic gestalt or another, staring at
one cable show/website version of
reality or the other. It makes political differences harder to bridge.
6. CONGRESSIONAL IGNORANCE
For a host of reasons — the collapse of Congress’ committee system, the frantic pace of media coverage, the increasing complexity
of legislation, the rise of massive,
catch-all “continuing resolutions,”
the time spent on raising campaign
cash — for all of those reasons and
others, a shocking number of lawmakers have no idea what they are
debating, denouncing or voting on.
“An amazing percentage of people
here are intellectually lazy or distracted or ignorant or all three,”
one senator told me, anonymously.
7. GARGANTUAN MONEY
As Democratic strate