HAS AMERICAN POLITICS TAKEN A HOLIDAY FROM ILLOGICAL DISCOURSE?

The blog continues to be open for business and I am on the watch for lapses in the logic of public discourse in the campaign for U. S. President. However, the last several weeks have not offered much of importance in such lapses. No doubt I could find some by moving farther afield than I have been doing, and watching the Fox network or Rush Limbaugh. I would rather not do that. For one thing, they do not have the audiences that I want to reach – audiences ready to correct lapses. In what I do watch, there have been continued distractions from talking about the great issues before the country: Jesse Jackson’s unbuttoned opinion of Obama; Phil Gramm’s condemnation as "whiners" of people who have not prospered as much as he. There is perhaps the beginning of the sort of lapse topic that I am looking for in Obama’s ill-directed charge that critics from the left "have not been listening to what I’ve been saying." In the vote for renewing FISA, it was what Obama did in voting for it that was the target; and even if he defended his vote (a defense that has not come my way), supporters could listen and still condemn. But I do not have information complete enough to survey the protests and Obama’s responses. I’ll keep watching for lapses in discourse. Meanwhile, I’d welcome suggestions from readers.