In moments of percieved crisis, fear prevents us from acting for the future. It's also easy to forget in troubled times the plight of others, especially when they are out of view.
Eradicating global poverty has been an ideal of the Left since Humphery. The means of employing globalization has only recently been at our disposal. Outsourcing as a home front issue has led to senseless abandon of a larger war according to Charles Krauthammer.
Public opinion has trouble seeing past both tomorrow and our shores. Hard decisions with postitive outcomes have negative short-term effects. Outsourcing is no exception. As the leading force in globalization, the US is permanently embedded in an interdependent world (despite the Administration's attempts to the contrary). The press plays a significant role in furthering the disconnect between Americans and their future neighborhood, through episodic framing and the economics of broadcast to depict idealized shared identity. Markets feed off news in a shortening outlook. Polling, initatives and individualized pluralism prevent politics from acting as an institution.
There is one fortunate indicator of when the gap between short and long-term thinking broadens. Defections. Disconnects create contradictions that lead to defections, such as Krauthammer's opinion, Robin Cook and John Brady Kiesling's resignations, Paul O'Neill's whistleblowing or Richard Clarke's testimony. Defections are given greater weight because they not only reveal disconnects, but are disconnects themselves. Ripe fodder for the media to play the tipping game.
If it wasn't for links, blogging would be the most episodic and short-term focused media of all in form. In practice, blogging's diversity includes great long-term opinions that are not constrained by editorial filters. We thrive off controversy, sustaining disconnects and are as snarky as New Yorkers. Blogging may effect short-term thinking by increasing participation in media simply by getting more people to think, together.
But a greater promise may lie in extending understanding beyond our shores. Social capital without borders is more than the death of distance. It provides a social context for events in our future neighborhood. We just need more social events that form the basis for future context.
And if blogging doesn't help broaden time and space, I'm sure we will hear from defecting voices. Celebrate them.
