Michele, that’s a pretty flaming rant. I wonder how much you want to keep something that inflammatory on the Internet.
I think the political and opinion-based media, including the Internet, and regardless of specific political leanings, is basically a disease of contemporary Western culture. I believe completely in freedom of expression, but I also believe in censure (that is, public denouncement) of people who think that opinions are, in and of themselves, worthy of expression.
People with uninformed opinions, for example, should not be encouraged. Unforunately, most people have uninformed opinions. And, not coincidentally, they are most likely to believe that their own opinions are sound. It’s always worse when the opinions are totally disconnected from practical matters, instead being all about cultural disagreements, like the merits of sexual abstinence vs. sexual freedom, religion A vs. religion B, or forgiveness vs. accountability (one of those false dichotomies which is so prevalent because no-one will admit what it’s really about).
For people who do (or try to) have informed opinions — or who at least try to balance their opinions with a sense that reaching an agreement is more important than being right — listening to the shrieking of everyone else is miserable and depressing. The only solution I know of is to ignore the partisan sheep and forge a new direction.
Partisan sheep are not leaders, by definition, so you are best to just ignore them. You have to communicate with the leadership, and participate in it. Otherwise, you might as well just ignore the whole thing. Speaking one’s mind has absolutely no impact on cultural debates.
The real error of discussing “the left” versus “the right” is the implicit attribution of reason to what are irrational blobs of emotion. I fear that a large number of people are basically incapable of rational thought. Whether they are in the majority, no one knows. Fortunately, their irrationality makes them incapable of taking leadership roles, or at least roles of any consequence. At best, they provide short-term channels for popular sentiment, and use fear and ignorance to prolong this. As Kevin points out, extreme examples are found on both the “left” and the “right”, but elsewhere, too. Those political distinctions are basically meaningless, anyway.