For several months now, I’ve been spending a good deal of time in what I call Blogoslavia. The citizens like to refer to it as the blogosphere, but from where I sit the Balkans analogy is much more appropriate. I’ve jumped and rolled from one blog to another, from Andrew Sullivan to Instapundit to Mickey Kaus to Tapped to Media Whores Online to the Drudge Report to Eric Alterman to the New Republic to the Nation to the National Review and to lots of little blogstops--and doorstops--in between. And what did I get for my efforts? Besides eyestrain, a sore back, and borderline carpal tunnel, I now have what might be referred to as “rhetoric induced nausea.” What I didn’t get, and this is what I went looking for, is fresh information, fresh ideas, or a fresh grasp of the issue at hand.

That issue, of course, is Iraq, and what, if anything, the United States is going to do about it. We all have opinions on this, though not all of us, yours truly included, have come to any definite conclusions. It’s easy, in fact, to argue any or all sides on the matter, largely because there is so little real information involved. I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t agree that Saddam Hussein is a threat, to his own people if to no one else. And everyone agrees that he should be deposed as quickly as possible. What no one agrees on is the methods that should be employed to make that happen, who should do it, what the risks are, and what the possible outcomes may be.

It is, of course, impossible to predict the ultimate results of any action, especially in a situation as volatile as this, and especially when so little real information is available. We don’t really know how many weapons, of whatever kind, Hussein has, or what his capabilities are in terms of delivery. And we don’t know what weapons the terrorists have, or even how many terrorists there are or where they’re most likely to strike. If the government does have this information, it is, perhaps wisely, keeping it a secret.

None of this lack of information, or at least revealed information, makes any difference in Blogoslavia, however. Blogoslavia is the land of the educated guess presented as undeniable truth. It is the land where egregious errors in fact, and the outlandish speculations that they create, are to be forgiven and forgotten, because, unlike those whores, right and left, in the established media, the bloggers print corrections right there, for everyone to see, in the same impossible to read type in which the original error was printed. (Bloggers take great pride in pointing out the major paper’s mistakes—they consider it one of their most important duties--and even like to claim that corrections were published because bloggers, or their blog in particular, pointed out the error.)

The bloggers, as they madly link and cross-reference, like to think that they’re clarifying the issues, when all they do is add more of the same old white noise. Liberals, conservatives, libertarians, radicals, reactionaries, even a few moderates here and there; it’s the great circle kneejerk.

Sullivan says that he loves Blogoslavia because everyone is willing to shoot from the hip, ideas and opinions jump out at lightening speed, and it’s so easy to correct yourself if you say something outlandishly stupid; it’s another wonderful democratic tool. But isn’t what everyone complains about in modern media exactly what Sullivan seems to value in blogging? You want to shoot from the hip, go on Crossfire. You want tiny little bites of information, watch the evening news. You want tons of uninformed opinion, read most daily newspapers’ op-ed pages, or listen to talk radio, or visit your local bar or coffee shop. And if you want all those things at once, go to Blogoslavia.

It’s not that there aren’t intelligent and well-informed people running blogs. Sullivan certainly is, as is Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit), and Mickey Kaus, and any number of others. But there are intelligent people on Crossfire, too, and on the evening news, and in the newspapers, and in most bars and coffee shops, and even on talk radio. The problem isn’t the intelligence of the people involved, it’s what they’re trying to do, which is to present the revealed truth when they don’t even have all, or half, of the facts. I’m not using the phrase “revealed truth” lightly, either. There’s a kind of religious ardor to the way many people write their blogs, an evangelical, messianic tone that is only too American.

Perhaps the image of conversation in a bar, or around a restaurant table, may be the best analogy for blogging. A bunch of guys and gals gather round a table and throw out their opinions, testing ideas out on their friends, and their friends correct them, and throw out ideas of their own, and present their own little shards of evidence, most of it anecdotal, and everyone goes home much entertained, and maybe a little more informed, but probably no closer to the truth than they were before.

There are two things, however, that throw that analogy out of whack. One is that messianic ardor. Bloggers aren’t just casting out ideas, they’re trying to change things, they intend to have an effect. They’re the person in the bar whose passion and intensity throws the whole conversation out of kilter. They’re the ones who get a little too drunk, a little too angry, who turn ugly and convert simple disagreements into lifetime rifts and rows.

The other is that bloggers conduct their bull sessions in public, for an audience perhaps not in the millions as of yet, but probably in the hundred of thousands. It’s an audience that may be even less sensitive to the journalistic niceties of truth and corroboration than the bloggers themselves, people who may well take what the bloggers say at face value, and who may not notice reverses of opinion and corrections of fact.

This is a problem, of course, with the dissemination of any piece of information—misunderstanding is an unavoidable, and at times even beneficial, side effect of any effort at human communication. But I think the atmosphere of Blogoslavia only increases the level, and speed, of that misunderstanding. Unless you sit in front of your computer 24 hours a day, it's almost impossible to get all the conflicting pieces of a rapidly breaking story straight, and some, of course, you may never get at all. And as the story is distorted by time and repetition—both benign and malicious--soon what you have is no longer news or history, but legend and myth. And legend and myth are exactly what, if I read them correctly, the bloggers are trying to refute.

I’m not suggesting that blogging should stop--the idea is definitely here to stay, and the number of practitioners is growing rapidly. But I do wish the Blogoslavians would think at least a little more before they shoot, point a few more of their links toward primary sources instead of newspaper summaries and other pundits, and, if they know of such sources, also point to places that give more detailed, considered and thought out information about the issues; not just online, but in books, magazines, journals, wherever it might be found. Because I, for one, would really like to know what’s going on, and not just be stuffed with rhetorical peanuts.