nutpicking
Kevin Drum and his readers at The Washington Monthly have added a new term to the blogger lexicon: "nutpicking"
I find this actually to be a fairly cogent observation on human behavior. I am often on the defensive against nutpickers who for example interpret Islam through the narrow lens of the violent fringe, and Jews, Catholics, Italians, and pretty every other identity group has had to deal with much the same phenomenon. Drum's Law as stated above is focused more on politics becuse it's a naturally binarized arena in which demonization of the Other is the currency of the realm - one needn't look far to see examples. It seems like it should be easier to see what the decent majority has in common rather than focus on the differences at the extremes, but in truth the short-term advantage to be gained by nutpicking is just too irrestible. Purple politics is about making the effort.
Last night I held a contest to create a name for the moronic practice of trawling through open comment threads in order to find a few wackjobs who can be held up as evidence that liberals are nuts. It's both lazy and self-refuting, since if the best evidence of wackjobism you can find is a few anonymous nutballs commenting on a blog, then the particular brand of wackjobism you're complaining about must not be very widespread after all.
I find this actually to be a fairly cogent observation on human behavior. I am often on the defensive against nutpickers who for example interpret Islam through the narrow lens of the violent fringe, and Jews, Catholics, Italians, and pretty every other identity group has had to deal with much the same phenomenon. Drum's Law as stated above is focused more on politics becuse it's a naturally binarized arena in which demonization of the Other is the currency of the realm - one needn't look far to see examples. It seems like it should be easier to see what the decent majority has in common rather than focus on the differences at the extremes, but in truth the short-term advantage to be gained by nutpicking is just too irrestible. Purple politics is about making the effort.
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