Katrina and the Blogosphere -- A Marginal Perspective

A. M. Mora y Leon over at the American Thinker surveys the response of the bloggy masses to Katrina. Left-wing bloggers have used the occasion to launch ever more vitriolic attacks against the President, while right-wing bloggers have been raising money for relief. He sees this as the difference between talk [on the left] and action [on the right].

He attributes this to differing underlying perceptions of the role of government. He writes:

The left has little faith in anything except Big Government to take care of all needs..., [a] firm belief that the federal government and only the federal government can do anything to alleviate the catastrophe.

Charities don't register on their mental thermometer, only government does.

On the right there is a belief that individuals in the private sector are not just handout receptacles from Big Government, but empowered citizens who can act on their own and make a difference. So we see a fierce effort to get involved and make a positive difference....

Read it here.

He may well be right in his analysis, but I would suggest yet a third perspective -- that of marginality. All the yawping from the left in the MSM and bloggerdom combined has apparently had little effect on public opinion. A decided majority of the public does not fault President Bush for the disaster. This gives the lie to the oft-expressed hope on the left that proper framing of the message will move them from the margins to the mainstream of American political culture. Cynicism and political manipulation have done little more than to make the political left an object of derision. At the same time, the efforts of the bloggy masses to contribute to the relief effort, while certainly worthy and admirable, remain marginal. It is clear that the kinds of contributions that can meaningfully affect the situation in the Gulf region, can only come from governments and that the Tocquevillian faith in the efficacy of voluntary associations is an inadequate response to a cataclysm on such a scale.

What this suggests is that neither the left nor the right has fully come to terms with the reality of the situation. Locked into rigid ideological perspectives neither is able to articulate a pragmatic and responsible position with regard to the challenge facing us. The left is correct to say that in this situation government action or inaction is the crucial determinant of how effective the response will be; while the right is correct to point out that constant carping and efforts to politicize the situation are irresponsible and can only impede an effective response. But in either case the whole debate is little more than a tempest in a teapot. The blogosphere, and for that matter the MSM, for all their pretensions, still inhabit territories on the margins of American society and culture and for that, considering their performance, we can all be thankful.