Luke Mitchell’s rambling response to the DC

I hasten to add that the overdetermined conflict between “left” and “right” is itself often inimical to the true interests of most Americans, in that it serves to disguise deeper material conflicts in the structure of American society. But even if for the sake of shorthand we accept the basic notion of an ongoing left-right policy battle in the United States, this question about loathsomeness will still require a bit more unpacking.

First, is there something inherently loathsome about the coordination itself? Or is the real problem the loathsome nature of the people doing the organization? If the latter, then people of good will should not hesitate to work together to promote (say) a change in U.S. torture policy. But if the coordination is itself corrupting, then perhaps left partisans are best off continuing as they have, alone and anarchic.

It may not be possible to know which is the case, alas. Certainly we all have opinions about who is and who is not loathsome. But can we ever say for certain what caused loathsome people to be that way?

There is another, perhaps more practical question: Even if coordination is not loathsome, could some large section of the public nonetheless be made to perceive it as loathsome, thereby undercutting the very project (say the reform of U.S. torture policy) the coordination was meant to serve?

In this regard, at least, the answer is knowable. Thanks to your own work, readers of the Daily Caller have come to believe that left partisans are indeed coordinating coverage, and – judging both from the violence a few of your readers have threatened and the traffic all of them continue to generate – it is clear they find such coordination to be not just loathsome, but awesomely loathsome. Torture policy, meanwhile, remains largely unexamined.

Even so, the larger question is likely unanswerable. After thinking about it for a couple of years, I have come to the more basic conclusion that the real problem (at least from a news coordination perspective) is not who is and who is not loathsome, but rather that a discussion of U.S. torture policy simply doesn’t generate enough clicks.

I hope this helps clarify matters, and I do hope you will at some point respond to my own queries in kind.