The Dead Hand turned five months old the day after election day. As an institution, we're barely out of the delivery room, as I think all three of our regular readers would agree. Even so, we have established some patterns.
Robert posts a lot of full-length articles, mostly regarding terrorism and public policy... particularly military policy. TDH is really a side-line for him: mainly Robert writes for DefenseWatch, and cross-posts here. He has also been transferring some of his (gigantic) archive onto TDH. On the average, Robert gets the most traffic of the three of us.
Corey is a sleeping giant. He doesn't post often, but when he does, he gets more traffic than any of us. Why? Because he offers deeply insightful analysis that cuts an often breathtaking swath across economic and political convention. His stuff is worth the wait.
I'm all over the map. I've logged more posts than Robert and Corey combined. Some of them—my favorites—present thoughtful numerical analysis that I think adds something to the national debate. I like to talk about the good guys out there: sailors and Marines who give... well, sometimes they give us all they have. They're my heros.
Many of my posts, though—notably my battles with Torgerson—are deeply confrontational. I'd like to think that exposing deliberate misdirection serves a useful purpose—in Torgerson's case, I'm sure it does—but in general I question whether picking fights is really an efficient or productive use of my time.
My ongoing conversation at The Crooked Timber has really galvanized me in this regard. We as a nation have just endured what will quite possibly be remembered as the most bitterly divisive election season of the 21st Century. I have contributed to that bitterness... and, in retrospect, I regret it. I'm glad America re-elected President Bush, but—if I could trade that victory for the sense of union we all felt in the aftermath of 9/11—I'd do it in a minute.
Anyway, that's water under the bridge. Today we are a divided nation: lots of smug Conservatives on one side, lots of bitter Liberals on the other, and a few—I'd like to think more than a few—people like me in the middle, wondering just what the hell we can do about it.
The problem, as I see it, is this: the essence of the democratic process is that we get our way by convincing other people that our way is better. You can’t do that if you only talk with people who already agree with you anyway. All that gets you is a broader divide... and that's silly, because even our fringes really have more in common than they realize. It's all a matter of perspective: from Tehran, the idealogical gap between America's Left and Right is laughably small.
So what am I—the official Dead Hand webmaster—going to do about it? Naturally, I am launching a new Dead Hand blog.
Its URL is http://thedeadhand.com/unity.
The Unity blog is completely open-source. Anybody may upload posts and articles... and anybody may alter or erase them. The nature of the .Text administrative interface is such that I can't grant partial priveleges, so I'm not even going to try. If you want, you can make a real mess in there... and there's really nothing I can do about it except go in and clean up after you.
But I think we're better than that.
What's the Unity blog for? It's for all of us. It's a place where we who often disagree so bitterly can come and talk. It's a place where you can punish deliberate falsehood and disrespect by the simple expedient of erasing it. The playing field is as level as it could possibly be. I hope that we can learn from one another.
I hope we're willing to try.
There will still be Google ads on the Unity blog. The proceeds won't be much—The Dead Hand as a whole has made a whopping $27.10 since its inception—but, whatever income the Unity blog generates, I promise to put it toward the maintenance and promotion of the site.
America has been described as the world's shining beacon of hope. Many have suggested that that beacon has been extinguished for good. Let's uncover that beacon—or rekindle it—together.