Is Politics a Linguistic Battlefield?

Has our political rhetoric deteriorated to soundbites of anger shouted across an ever-widening chasm? That's the viewpoint of About.com guide to globalization in his opinion piece about Time magazine and Ann Coulter: "[T]he public discussion pool is poisoned. And getting worse." His concerns are echoed in The End of Argument, by US News columnist John Leo:

Political rhetoric, left and right, seems steadily worse.... We have reached the point where much political debate consists of insults and name-calling, every attack is likely to be called a "lynching," and tired expressions such as "institutional terrorism," "institutional racism," and "intellectual McCarthyism" are supposed to be taken as real arguments. Political polarization is an obvious cause. But so is the democratization of the media, particularly the arrival of the Internet and big-time talk radio, which allow all of us to say whatever we like, no matter how crude. Mail to columnists is much more abusive than it was a few years ago... So political discussion more and more consists of angry feelings instead of rational argument.

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