~sigh~ Here's for that lurking conservative, a thoughtful note I

[Snow]

wrote before the thread was locked - and when I pressed send, found the thread had been locked. Anyway, so I'm not going to waste my effort, I shall post it here. With a curse for quick-fingered mods.

This is a good beginning, Grasshopper

And like Skinner says, probably the best of DU posts are those you see on the DU front page, whereas here in the jungle you'll see tons of differing opinions, viewpoints and truths.

The first thing to realize is that indeed there can be number of truths, even contradictory truths. It's an oversimplification to say it's the three blind men and the elephant story, but that's certainly a part of it.

The second offering I have for you is to realize that your talk radio information is distorted and biased, but so is DU information. You arrive at some understanding by pulling all those together. Even more important, there're grave limitations to what any US internal source reports, from right-wing fundie to wild leftists, there's an inherent limitation simply by having the US perspective - and most often, we don't even realize that lens is there. So what you need to do to overcome that is check out foreign reporting sources - start with the BBC and such, but look at blogs, say of Raed or Salam Pax in Irag.

And for deciding what's really going on, or what you think truth is - I'd encourage you away from the extremes of cynicism, and towards finding a truth that acknowledges flaws and venality but celebrates positive qualities and acts. For instance, a trivial event by some standards - the North Korean and South Korean Olympic teams marched in together at the Sydney Olympics, receiving a standing ovation, and I actually wept watching it (half my family is Korean). Things may have deteriorated - and recovered - since, and Kim Jongil by most accounts is an evil tyrant, but that bit holds a hopeful truth for me still. Do you see?