DailyKos is "the" netroots? Oh really ...
What the fuck is the problem with Chris Bowers, Matt Stoller and all boys in the DailyKos club? I am out here allegedly trying to enjoy my time, am checking one of my aggregators and read stupidity like this :
The Progressive Netroots Are Mainstream
Yesterday, in a longer post about class and progressive activists, I hoped that the anger in the netroots over Paul Hackett demonstrated to the established news media are more partisan than ideological, and certainly are not hard left [sic]. Later yesterday, I wrote a post arguing that what the progressive netroots wants in Democratic candidates is also what the general public wants. Now, I would like to point out that the topics and issues the netroots focuses on are the same issues on which the general public and / or the Democratic Party is focused.
To demonstrate this point, just check out the most popular subject tags at Dailykos:
I have been following the Paul Hackett phenomenon from afar yet interest. Then news came that Hackett was muscled out of the senatorial candidacy in favor for a Washington insider (and congressman) Sherrod Brown.
I can completely understand how people in the various netroots sites, especially DailyKos, are frustrated. From my reading of numerous comments about the man and the race, many saw him as the poster child for a whole crop of DNC messiahs, the so called "reform democrats". And I am calling them so-called because, as a work on a few pieces about the subject, rhetorically they may sound like it but in practice, I am finding they're not.
We can start by the continued grand-standing pronouncements of what the netroots are supposed to be by people like Chris Bowers, Matt Stoller and the rhetorical dictator himself, Markos Moulitzas-Zuniga.
There is a difference between saying "the netroots" and "the netroots at DailyKos and MyDD". There is a difference between
"I wrote a post arguing that what the progressive netroots wants in Democratic candidates is also what the general public wants"
and
"I wrote a post arguing that what the progressive netroots at DailyKos and MyDD wants in Democratic candidates is also what the general public wants"
There is a difference between position yourself as part of a coalition versus selling yourself to Washington insiders as the leader of a constituency that does not exist.
There is no "progressive netroots" as Bowers, Stoller and Moulitzas insist in selling to the DNC party flack. There is no progressive netroots because there are as many netroots as bloggers and community blogs out there. There is no institutional structure to define these people and certainly not one social or technology backbone to connect them cohesively.
Which is why in the last two Supreme Court initiatives that involved blogs failed and failed miserably. This whole idea that only a couple of blogs and bloggers are going to represent the voice of "the people" is bogus, counterproductive and in the end, stupid. It served only the people who get to be front and center and not the myriad of voices and opinions that shared the common goal of stopping the confirmation of John Roberts and Samuel Alito.
These blog initiatives failed because they were politics and business as usual. They had nothing to do with the actual potential and desestabilizing force a network of citizen and personal media could bring to the status quo.
And I am going one step further :
In their eagerness to be accepted by the Washington establishment and moderates and mainstreams the fraternity at DailyKos and MyDD (with the help of the few sorority gals they want in their club) are becoming the very thing they seek to defeat : An ideologically rigid interest group focused on winning the favors of the party elite.
They don't get that effecting change is radical. If they want to change the Democratic Party, they have to give up this whole charade they are "normal", "moderate" and "mainstream". You want to subvert the status? Then own your revolutionary beret, man; own your fucking revolutionary beret.
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Re: Hackett and Brown
Submitted by Michael Bouldin on 19 February 2006 - 7:05pm.
On Hackett and Brown, I'll confess to some ambivalence. I raised $$$ for Hackett last year, and promoted him in NYC as heavily as I could. But I still wasn't impressed too much with his senatorial run, and I don't buy the 'the DSCC was calling my donors!' story. The DSCC doesn't pull crap like that, in my experience. And I've heard stories from the Hackett campaign about nefarious powers-that-be backstabbing before that did not pan out.
It might also be added that Brown is better on the issues than Hackett is. From a pragmatic and policy point of view, this is not necessarily a bad outcome.
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DailyKos is "the" netroots?
change is not radical; change is normal. change is the business-as-usual of the natural world. the only time change stops is when the environment is static, and how often does that happen? oh, and when a critter is big enough, strong enough, clever enough or adequate that change is not necessary. thinks like sharks and cockroaches. other than that, change is non-stop.
that's why those who want to hold on to the status quo have to fight so hard. why tyrants, who never want change, must clamp down so vicisiously, literally removing the life from their lands. human beings, left to themselves, would forever be changing. we don't have to be radical to change. we have to be live, awake, aware, present. you probably know the zen take on this quite well, and it's a simple truth.
as political beings, our fight is not to affect change but to wake up those around us who would sleep their lives away. you and i may understand perfectly well how to fix the world (i know i do, but not many people seems to want to make me Supreme Emperor), but you and i inhabit private little realms that we create and where truth ends at the border. it's wonderful when we find another like-minded being with whom we can cooperate. but to fix this big, broken world, we need more and more people to turn off American Idol and have an intelligent conversation about how Bush is stealing our children's lives.
change goes on forever. those of us who accept and cherish the flux of life are, i think, happier and healthier. it's easy to live a life of change. the only thing radical about it is that too many people resist the natural -- and they suffer as a result. releasing our deathgrip on Truth is a good place to start. after that, it's fairly easy to be a part of the galaxy's flow. ok, it's not that easy because of all the brainwashing and the fear and death, but really, it's easy once you let go and the more you let go.
and as you may have guessed, i'm talking to myself....
take it easy on them Kos boys. they ain't perfect, but their hearts are in the right place. none of us gots our heads in the right place all the time.