The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » The ESPN Effect:
I call it the ESPN Effect – mistaking filtered reality for reality. We do it a lot. All I hear from my left-leaning friends these days is how crazy people on the right are becoming, and all all I hear from my right-leaning friends is how crazy people on the left are becoming, and everyone, on both sides, seems very eager to provide evidence of the utter lunacy of those on the other side. “Look how crazy they’re becoming over there, on the other side!” is becoming something of a dominant trope, on left and right. It is true that we’re seeing more crazy people doing crazy things on the other side (whichever side that may be, for you) coming across our eyeballs these days.
Actually, for this to have any usefulness beyond blog rambling, somebody needs to define craziness in some way that makes sense.
For instance: Television shows an American citizen exercising his right to keep and bear arms in a perfectly legal manner somewhere in the vicinity of the President. “Craziness” shrieks the left. “Right wing nuttery.”
Television then shows some union goons beating the hell out of a black conservative exercising his First Amendment guaranteed rights in a perfectly legal manner. “Craziness” yells the right. “Left wing nuttery.”
Is the notion worth considering that only one of the charges of craziness is, in fact, accurate?
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The problem is that extreme Leftism has now become mainstream Leftism, moderate Leftism has become mainstream Conservatism, and moderate Conservatism is considered Reactionary.
Starting with the Greatest, we’re going from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.