New dramas and sensations supersede the old one, and in time people will not quite remember what a chad was. The columnist Michael Kelly has pointed out that a Democratic ideological jihad might have the same result as the Republicans' disastrous overinterpretation of their mandate in 1994. But there are reasons to expect the second scenario. For one thing, the two chief channels of our discourse as a people, television and the Internet, encourage emotionalism and abhor compromise. Some Japanese have worried that their country's politicians rely too much on haragei, and have suggested that Japanese should westernize themselves toward more rational, systematic debate.
Television detests an open mind.
An open mind is bad theater. Television's idea of good civics is people screaming at each other from opposite sides of an issue for the entertainment of a nation of groundlings. It's raining indignation, contempt and vicious stupidity across much of America. 2001 Time Inc. All rights reserved.