Are you in an echo chamber?

Too many people are, and here is more evidence. Daniel Drenzer links to a prose stylist who has gone over the Marxist academic cliff. Chun the Unavoidable has mixed feelings about his anthropological discovery of a rare specimen (or so it is supposed), an alleged supporter of, "the President without having an obvious financial interest at stake." As the specimen, Sissy Willis, responds, "We were reminded, of course, of Pauline Kael's reaction to Richard Nixon's landslide presidential victory over George McGovern in 1972: 'How can that be?' she supposedly said. 'No one I know voted for Nixon.'"

Chun the Unavoidable has seemed to avoid a large segment of the population, given the number of people who voted for W. And I wouldn't be surprised if they were avoiding him too. As Virginia Postrel pointed out some time ago, people like it that way. People are congregating more and more with the like-minded. She notes, "The danger, of course, is that people will believe the stereotypes of their political opposites, because they don't actually know anyone on the opposite side of the red-blue divide."

The most interesting people to talk to and to read are those who are dealing with engagement (not neccesarily agreement) across their own boundaries. If you don't talk to and read what other people have to say, people with different assumptions, values, and goals, you are wearing a set of blinders.