Austin Bay Blog

Wretchard at the Belmont Club analyzes what he calls a shift in consciousness as expressed on web logs and in current commentary.

Key excerpt:

My own hunch is that in the last two or three months there’s been a change in the tone of the blogosphere. Nothing definite, simply a change in atmosphere in proportion to the degree of abstract tendencies of the blogger. Authors who trafficked in ideas and concepts have altered the most. Some have paused to take stock, pleading disgust or confusion; still others have returned to writing as seemingly different persons; others seem to be suffering a kind of nervous breakdown, obsessed with hatred for one or more public figures or inventing new words and finding conspiracies in everything they see. 

I think Wretchard’s right, as usual. Wretchard invokes psychologist Julian Jaynes, who offers a model for  a “logical process inaccessible to the waking mind” (Wretchard’s phrase). I haven’t read Jaynes, but I do know, from past experience, that people are subtly aware of significant but incremental changes over time, the kind of changes that 24/7 tv fails to register but historians looking back from the advantage of a decade or a century regard as obvious.  As we live them these incremental changes are often difficult to assess and articulate — not always, but often.

 If Wretchard is right, what might those “incremental events” be that have led to the change in tone?  Here’s my first guess, one I’m fairly certain is accurate: there’s a growing awareness that Al Qaeda is being defeated– it’s not dead but it’s on its way to defeat. Even Al Qaeda’s latest rants reflect an awareness that their great gambit has failed. Violent political Islamism isn’t defeated– but its Al Qaeda avatar is on the ropes. Let’s hope that leads to a “re-consideration of methods” by other violent political Islamists (like, drop the violent?). Here’s my second candidate: There is also a growing awareness that Iraq’s long slog may well result in the emergence of a new, more open political system in the Muslim Middle East. It’s still going to take a couple of years for this to be evident –and the worst defeatists and naysayers will either go to their graves denying it– but all of the indicators are there.  The bombs still explode in Baghdad (that is what makes the 24/7 news), but the Iraqis are slowly taking political and economic control. In historical terms this is astonishing news, but it is slow news, where the evidence builds brick by brick. (Don’t write me about Shias and Kurds shooting one another– it has happened before and will happen again– the big picture is the emergence of an open political system that will deal legally and politically with deadly disputes.) The Iraqis are emerging from their civil war (that’s the way I’ve described the insurgency, pegging the start of the civil war sometime in the summer of 2003). 

Here are some other”incremental” events that may be nudging “the collective intuition” as Wretchard sees it expressed on the Internet. Iran’s mullahs are demonstrating once again the limitations of UN multi-lateralism– sharp minds on the left and right recognize this. A lot of people staked their hopes for peace and a better future on UN multilateralism. The Iranian situation also illustrates the limits of US unilateralism — how many times can the world’s superpower go it alone? Lefty neo-interventionists are certainly seeing the limits of UN multilateralism vis a vis Darfur– and a few of them understand the hypocrisy of damning intervention in Iraq while calling for intervention in Sudan/Darfur. The so-called neo-cons –at leas those who lack military experience– have learned that war is never a cakewalk. (Folks with real mil experience and/or historical savvy tried to tell them it never is.) I think the hard slog has diminished their rhetorical ardor.

I offer these as a few best guesses.