In purely political terms, we owe the right nothing, since they're opposing policies that we want to enact. I've witnessed attacks on Democrats which are unfair and dishonest, and yes, it makes me very angry.
I also think part of the problem is deliberate hate-mongering - which sweeps up people who are only receiving the most inflammatory information. So I there's a larger picture, where this episode might be a starting point for getting better information flowing to both the right and the left.
For example, I read the interview with Dan Wolfe on Saturday -- and I started to believe him. And then I started to feel sorry for him.
He's just a guy who reads blogs -- just like me. He seems like he leads a real unhappy life -- his ex-wife is suing him, and he has tax problems with the IRS. He caught a Congressman doing something wrong, and he (rightfully) publicized it. And then private e-mails about his divorce ended up on The Smoking Gun.
I'd assumed everything was crooked because Breitbart was involved, but apparently Wolfe just went to Breitbart because he knew the name from Breitbart's past take-downs. To be fair, it was kind of hard to follow the whole chain of events, and at what point Breitbart had gotten involved. But yes, I admit it: Brietbart got this one right. If we're going to be reality-based, we have to admit that that's true.
For what it's worth, The Smoking Gun already has evidence that Wolfe's handler (Mike Stack) had contact info for Republican Daryl Isaa. I think Republicans do look harder for scandals -- but Weiner's still the one that gave them something to find.
The thing I'm most disturbed about is that Weiner admits he'd had contact with other women -- and I wonder if that was the original story that Mike Stack had been working on all along. So it wasn't just a case of Wolfe being right about this Twitter tweet -- but that some of the additional concerns they had about Weiner might also be true.
Anyways, it'd be nice if there were some way the left could reach out to the right and say "We admit it: you were right about this. We acknowledge facts." I've been asking myself how this absolute polarization between left and right can ever come to an end. Maybe we can be the ones that make the first move: "Okay, we agree with you on this. We're not all crazy; on some issues we can actually reach a consensus.
"Maybe we could try reaching a consensus again sometime?"