From the CSM today: “So long as sensational programming drives TV news ratings, outlandish figures will stick around. You vote with your remote – for either real solutions to complicated issues or snarky comments and snappy sound bites.”

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/1019/Christine-O-Donnell-and-the-rise-of-cable-TV-politics-Why-we-re-responsible

Watching the character and civility of American political discourse deteriorate at the increasing rate of late is numbing us for the certain failure of some of our most essential institutions.  To the extent that we have given up on government ever doing anything right we listen to the zaniness, hyperbole, and outright lies from all sides, trying to believe that all this is just a game to be played out.  Somehow we suspect that all will be well and good, but what right have we to that expectation when we regularly throw the fuel of attention and belief on the flames?  Sometime within this century the failure of our democratic institutions and our republic will be written as history.  The only question today, if we do nothing to reverse these collective behaviors, is at what point in the path to the nadir are we?  How many years yet to go in the arc? Five? Fifteen? Maybe twenty?