"In short, YOU represent what is wrong with American politics. This is one big game to you. One fun-filled game where your team wants very badly to beat the other team. This isn't a game. The GOP isn't the Gators and the Dems aren't the Currs. This is our country."

Of course, it's not just our good pal SwampGas who is guilty of this. And I suspect that most of even the worst offenders have no idea that's what they're doing.

As I see it, the arguments we make can be broken into two categories:

Causal arguments - these are the real reasons why we adopted our position and/or continue to hold that position. I'm a Vol because I went to grad school there. It has nothing to do with who is the coach, how many receivers we have who run sub 4.4 forties, what GPA's the players have or even their felony propensities (or lack thereof in the case of Tennessee).

Justification arguments - these are reasons that we use when defending positions we would have regardless of the existence or even reversal of these arguments. If a player is accused of a serious offense should we rush to judgement? The first question is what team he plays for. If it's the Gators then the guy is obviously a thug and should be suspended pending proof that he is innocent(especially if it is mid September). That was my causal argument but that's not what I'll use. Instead I'll talk about the need for high standards, say things like where there's smoke there's fire and that a drunken witness in the dead of night from a hundred yards away is proof positive. Those are my justification arguments.

If my causal arguments went the other way, you can bet the justification arguments would follow. Sports boards are absolutely filled with justification arguments. And they have to be. If we really debated based on our real reasons, there really wouldn't be much to say.

The problem is that too many people tend to use the same reasoning and debating style on topics that really matter as well. This is especially true when political debate turns to politician debate. Should a Senator be condemned and chased from the Senate for using a prostitution service? The debate is never whether he is a Democrat or a Republican, but the debaters always line up accordingly and then make arguments that have nothing to do with why they hold their positions. They're just rooting for their team.

Interestingly, in his second book Obama wrote quite a bit about how distractions (what I call justification arguments) are used to keep people from focusing on the real issues. He basically predicted what is happening right now. And by the way, he was very clear that he doesn't see this problem as a right or left thing, but as a real problem for American politics.

One that clearly most people (at least here) have little interest in solving despite all their complaints about politicians and what they do.

Pogo was right.