Occupation of Independence

  If I had known that I would someday be interested in a bird named phainopepla , I never would have gotten into this birding racket. (The usual disclaimer: unlike my opinions on sex, politics, and religion, my bird IDs are prone to occasional error.) Still, you gotta love that crest and red eyes. Finally we are getting some migratory birds, but it hasn't been a blockbuster season like last autumn.

Every now and then the Internet is given credit for having an effect on the elections by way of fundraising and organization. But what about the quality of public discourse? Remember how narrow opinions were just a few years ago before the internet. What a disgrace it was that a country like ours was satisfied to sit before the newspaper, radio, or boob toob, and passively consume the drivel of a small number of corporate opinion providers. The opportunity is indeed huge compared to what has happened in the past. How was public discourse improved by the Hearst newspaper chain when it became nationwide? All we got was a disgusting little war, the Spanish-American War, and the "Teddy" cult. We turned our back on our proud tradition of non-interference in other countries and embraced imperialism, all because it made good copy for Hearst. A couple decades later, the high-tech miracle of the day was radio, which had a huge effect on the politics of the 1930's: it amplified