Lately I’ve been thinking about the ways that I (we) live inside of various bounded communities that can limit my(our) perspective. Here are just a few:

Democratic Bubble

A few weeks back, I was walking home in Berkeley when I was approached by two women who identified themselves as graduate students in the School of Journalism. Our exchange went something like this:
Them: Hello, we’re looking for people who intend to vote for George W. Bush in November. Are you one such person?
Me: No. Sorry.
Them: Damn.
Me: Have you found one yet?
Them: Nope.
Me: How many people have you asked?
Them: 9,220,313 (slightly exaggerated)

I think It’s dangerous to live in an environment where your ideas are never challenged, regardless of how convinced you are they’re right. It might be right to say that most Americans don’t talk about politics very often, but even those that do usually talk about it with people who they know support their point of view. It’s part of relationship and community maintenance. Disagreement or debate is too often seen as divisive. While I understand why it is, I think Democrats especially should strive to rise above it. I often get so wrapped up in my disgust at George W. and his ideology that I forget to consider the questions on their merits.

Blog Bubble

It’s a reality check to remember that blogs, for all their assets, are a new medium, and exhibit all the characteristics of one. The blogosphere still seems to lack that essential connection to the zeitgeist that can make more traditional media so integral to many people’s daily lives. Newspapers as a genre, for instance, can operate on two basic assumptions that don’t hold true yet in the blogosphere:
1. that important events will be covered, and
2. if something is reported we ought to consider it important.

Case in point: Jon Stewart on Crossfire. Here is an event that spread like wildfire through the blogosphere. I personally saw it linked and/or discussed on more than half of the blogs I read. But in an informal poll of friends of mine who don’t read or write blogs, few had heard about the event, and almost none knew anything significant about it.

I can already hear the bloggers arguing that this isn’t the purpose of a blog – that it doesn’t share enough qualities with traditional media such as newspapers and TV, so we can’t compare the them. And I take the point. But I don’t mean to argue that the two types are comparable, only that they are too often perceived to be comparable. I just have to remind myself not to live in the blogosphere, and not to confuse it with something it’s not.

American Bubble

I was outraged, recently, to read about some Americans’ responses to the Guardian’s letter writing campaign to voters in Clark County, Ohio. It’s not that I think the campaign is a good idea – that kind of direct action is a little extreme in my opinion. It’s more that I am disgusted by the number of people who said things along the lines of “We’re Americans. This is our election. Those Brits should stay out of it.” I think it’s indicative of the too popular misconception that America lives in a bubble of its own legitimacy and power. Our president is as guilty of this as anyone, constantly scoffing at Kerry’s suggestion that we should be able to pass a ‘global test.’ Admitting to ourselves that we are part of a global community, and that as the world’s lone superpower we have perhaps more of a duty than anyone else to act cooperatively and not unilaterally, does not mean that we have to give up the right to make decisions in our own interests.