Paging Diogenes

Unfogged reads my mind:

On the one hand, god bless Kos and Atrios for the work they are doing--they're among the few who are pushing back. On the other hand, it doesn't feel like my game anymore. I realize that what I want to do, what I like to think of myself as engaged in, is explaining, or changing minds, or laying out reasons. Bare political advocacy requires a certain faith in one's own rightness; a tight enough grasp on the end to think it justifies the means--and maybe I just don't have that. If I throw too much spin on something, I begin to doubt myself, and doubt my cause. That makes me suited for some things, but a crappy political advocate.

Damn, do I understand this post. On the one hand, it can be enormously frustrating to find that even those with whom one sympathizes politically are mere advocates, and forego well-formed arguments in favor of demagoguery. On the other hand, it provides a lot more grist for the mill when all sides push weak arguments. Either way, though, it can be profoundly dispiriting to see such....well, lack of doubt in one's own rightness (which is probably why I've been sticking to immanent-discourse blogs lately [read: continental theory blogs and religion blogs]).