Willow's a Demon?

I've gone days without a Buffy reference. Shut up.

Celebrating or observing, take your pick, five years of level-headedness and sensibility, Rebecca Blood writes of echo chambers, online and off:

And what about those neighborhoods? It seems they have become ideologically more homogeonous, less diverse than they were even in the 50's. And as the Austin American Stateman puts it, this is the unexamined backstage story of the nation's increasingly rancorous politics.

[. . .] As you know, I've linked and written and talked about this before. And while the Internet exacerbates the problem, but it would appear that this is a general trend--one that we need to pay attention to if we care about the survival of our democracy.

Which dovetails nicely with the ongoing discussion of, phrasing it incredibly poorly, what progressives/the Left should do with the religious folk in our midst.

Problem is, well, although instead of babbling in my half-informed about the new Iraqi flag, I can easily link to/quote from, say, River Bend:

I also heard today that the Puppets are changing the flag. It looks nothing like the old one and at first I was angry and upset, but then I realized that it wouldn't make a difference. The Puppets are illegitimate, hence their constitution is null and void and their flag is theirs alone. It is as representative of Iraq as they are- it might as well have "Made in America" stitched along the inside seam. It can be their flag and every time we see it, we'll see Chalabi et al. against its pale white background.

But I'm possibly choosing her, of the many Iraqi bloggers, because I feel a sense of ideological affinity. Plus, she's writing in English, another limitation on which of them I could choose from.

Dunno, really. On the one hand, diversity of opinion and talking across ideological lines is clearly a Good Thing, but on the other, the key word there is "talking." As opposed to sneering, or playing "Gotcha!" or name-calling, all of which I'd prefer to avoid around here, if it's all the same.

Well, I can still do the name-calling, but it's my site, dammit.