The View From Your Illusion

[Update: Andrew Sullivan has walked back some of the things I'm responding to below. I don't think that alters my point of view on the matter terribly, but it does remind me that Sullivan is willing to change strongly-held opinions - an admirable quality that he acquired at some cost.]

Like most people who read blogs regularly, I read new posts in reverse chronological order. That means that often I see a blogger's second- or third-stage reaction to the latest news before I see their initial reaction. It can be a fun game to predict the train of thought from its final destination. Earlier today, for example, I saw Andrew Sullivan quote this comment from a reader:

You're right on just about everything you say about Journo-List, with one glaring, rather obnoxious (to me) misstep. You say, "This is your liberal media, ladies and gentlemen: totally partisan, interested in the truth only if it advances their agenda, and devoid of any balls whatsoever." While I can't disagree that the media is partisan and lacks any substantive cojones, it's silly to me to call them "liberals."

Which prompted me to say to myself, "Wow! I know Sullivan never liked Journo-List, but this is a new level of hatred!" For comparison, the same man last week:

I'm glad Journo-list is over. It should never have been begun. I know many of its members are good and decent and fair-minded writers. But socialized groupthink is not the answer to what's wrong with the media. It's what's already wrong with the media.

Quite a transition from "good and decent and fair-minded writers" to "totally partisan, interested in the truth only if it advances their agenda, and devoid of any balls whatsoever." So, what do you imagine the original post was about? What could have prompted the shift in gear? "I bet it's Trig," I said to myself. "Somehow or other, this is about Trig." The reader Andrew quotes does not mention Trig at all in the email (not even a single member of the Palin family). Yet had I a friend next to me, I would have bet real money then and there.

Ladies and gentlemen, "The Partisan Tools at Journo-List and Trig:"

If you want to know why the allegedly liberal media didn't touch - and still won't touch - this story, look no further. It has nothing to do with the facts, and everything to do with their politics. Notice the core modus operandi of the political operative, not the journalist. When dealing with a story: first ask yourself not if it is true but whether the outcome benefits your side. Second, write things in defense of this that you cannot possibly know. Palin a "wonderful mother"? How on earth did Klein know that?

Before we go further, I would like to associate myself with Brad DeLong's opinion on this subject, as well as that of his commenter Anton Sirius. The latter says:

It's kind of hard to avoid noticing that the JournoList kerfuffle didn't generate more than mild harrumphs from Andrew until the subject turned to the Story That Dare Not Speak Its Name... then, suddenly, Ezra Klein is responsible for the death of objective journalism in America, or something.

This is what it means to be a conspiracy theorist, or a fanatic of any sort. The cause takes over not just your opinions on the one issue at hand, but your opinions on completely separate issues, because other people disagree with you on the Main Question.

It is at this point that Sullivan, were he to take note of a flyspeck such as myself, would restate his argument for a closer investigation of Trig's birth. Look at the facts, he would implore. Let me be clear that I have been so uninterested in this story, from the get-go, that I have no idea what his argument or anybody else's is except that it involves airplanes. The facts, here, are not the point: neither for me nor for Sullivan. I am reminded of nothing so much as Sigmund Freud's concept of illusion, as set out in his essay, "The Future of An Illusion:"

Illusions need not necessarily be false - that is to say, unrealizable or in contradiction to reality. For instance, a middle-class girl may have the illusion that a prince will come and marry her. This is possible; and a few such cases have occurred...Thus we call a belief an illusion when a wish-fulfilment is a prominent factor in its motivation, and in doing so we disregard its relations to reality, just as the illusion itself sets no store by verification.

The point of believing an illusion is not to be right or wrong, but to feel a certain way, to confirm a certain worldview, to maintain a habit of living. In Sullivan's case, the Trig illusion allows him to feel rage at the "Christianist" right, to confirm his view that "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle," and to maintain a strong contrarianism that has fueled not only his career but, I imagine, his spirit.

I have no problems with any of those things in themselves. But in latching onto the Trig Truther story, Sullivan has led himself down a rabbit-hole in which Ezra Klein can be the puppetmaster of hundreds of liberal writers, two steps short of a Machiavellian hack - because he expressed skepticism about the worthiness of a story that everyone has generally passed by anyway. He seizes on the littlest of details ("Palin a 'wonderful mother?' How on earth did Klein know that?") to besmirch the good name of a well-respected writer over a point that is tangential not just to the Journo-List story, but the Trig issue in the first place. How on earth did Klein know that? Why in hell should we care?

I don't like to speculate on the motivations of my interlocutors. But I feel confident in saying that Sullivan would not have blown up about Journo-List if Klein had never mentioned Trig. Time and again, Sullivan has demonstrated his single-minded fanaticism on the Trig issue, and it is increasingly affecting the quality of his writing on other subjects - which I, unlike DeLong, find enjoyable and stimulating. Not only that, but it has caused him to severely overstep the bounds of good conduct - by which I mean not disagreement, not heterodoxy, not even a bit of snark; but a wild shift in mood and tenor and a full-blown assault on another writer's character. That is an untenable way of writing, and an untenable way of thinking.