Things Fall Apart (Updated below)
I've been chewing on a bit of the conversation Cuznate and I were having below, the gist of which is this.
I think a fair amount of the impulse behind the emergence of NetRoots as a force on the left side of the political spectrum has been the sense that the Democratic Party couldn't get out of its own way. In the face Karl Rove and his goon squad, the Dem's couldn't muster and deliver a message that was in any way compelling to masses of voters who really wanted an alternative to the Bush gang. People were frustrated by the Dem's inability to counter Rove & Co's ability to set the agenda, command the playing field. They got pissed and said, okay, we'll have to do it ourselves, try to change this party from the inside.
The NetRoots movement and the Dem's have been aided by the sheer quantity and intensity of the Bush Administration's failures: failure to capture bin Laden; failure to secure peace in Afghanistan; failure to respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina. There is an equally long and illustrious list not of failures but of outright acts of malfeasance which I won't go into.
I ramble, but here's my point: the NetRoots on the left are attempting to change the Democratic Party from within. Next Tuesday, we will find out if they are succeeding. If they are not, might they decide to leave the party?
At the same time, I expect a similar chain of events to occur on the right. And there is evidence that it is already under way. Here Kos links to a disillusioned conservative blogger.
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Update: The always entertaining Charles Pierce weighs in on the topic:
"BUYER'S REMORSE. This gloriously frank piece is getting a decent amount of blogo-buzz this morning, and it's got me to thinking that the current buyer's remorse among "principled" conservatives makes me want to vomit.
Hey, John. Michael Dukakis was a decent man. Al Gore was a decent man, and so was John Kerry. Max Cleland and Tom Daschle were decent men. Newt Gingrich, a supremely indecent man, made his career attacking decent men. Going back further, because I'm old enough to remember that vicious closet-case Terry Dolan and his NCPAC campaigns, Frank Church and George McGovern were decent men. It's not enough to decide that the tactics that empowered your political philosophy are suddenly odious because they've empowered a feckless incompetent. Repentance before redemption, boys. Rise from the fainting couches and pick up the flagellum. As the nuns used to say, I don't think you've sufficiently examined your consciences."
I think a fair amount of the impulse behind the emergence of NetRoots as a force on the left side of the political spectrum has been the sense that the Democratic Party couldn't get out of its own way. In the face Karl Rove and his goon squad, the Dem's couldn't muster and deliver a message that was in any way compelling to masses of voters who really wanted an alternative to the Bush gang. People were frustrated by the Dem's inability to counter Rove & Co's ability to set the agenda, command the playing field. They got pissed and said, okay, we'll have to do it ourselves, try to change this party from the inside.
The NetRoots movement and the Dem's have been aided by the sheer quantity and intensity of the Bush Administration's failures: failure to capture bin Laden; failure to secure peace in Afghanistan; failure to respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina. There is an equally long and illustrious list not of failures but of outright acts of malfeasance which I won't go into.
I ramble, but here's my point: the NetRoots on the left are attempting to change the Democratic Party from within. Next Tuesday, we will find out if they are succeeding. If they are not, might they decide to leave the party?
At the same time, I expect a similar chain of events to occur on the right. And there is evidence that it is already under way. Here Kos links to a disillusioned conservative blogger.
This is what some conservatives may be saying in increasing numbers starting on November 8. If conservatives begin to wake up and realize they've been "sold a bill of goods," I'm all for that. Who knows how widespread it might be, or what might emerge from this reckoning (if it comes to pass). But it could have an interesting impact on 2008.I still think of myself as a Republican- but I think the whole party has been hijacked by frauds and religionists and crooks and liars and corporate shills, and it frustrates me to no end to see my former friends enabling them, and I wonder 'Why can't they see what I see?"
***
Bush has been a terrible President. The past Congresses have been horrible.... Why can't they just admit they were sold a bill of goods and start over? Why do they want to remain in power, but without any principles? Are tax cuts that important? What is gained by keeping troops in harms way with no clear plan for victory? With no desire to change course? With our guys dying every day in what looks to be for no real good reason? Why?
***
Update: The always entertaining Charles Pierce weighs in on the topic:
"BUYER'S REMORSE. This gloriously frank piece is getting a decent amount of blogo-buzz this morning, and it's got me to thinking that the current buyer's remorse among "principled" conservatives makes me want to vomit.
I am not really having any fun attacking my old friends -- but I don’t know how else to respond when people call decent men like Jim Webb a pervert for no other reason than to win an election. I don’t know how to deal with people who think savaging a man with Parkinson’s for electoral gain is appropriate election-year discourse."
Hey, John. Michael Dukakis was a decent man. Al Gore was a decent man, and so was John Kerry. Max Cleland and Tom Daschle were decent men. Newt Gingrich, a supremely indecent man, made his career attacking decent men. Going back further, because I'm old enough to remember that vicious closet-case Terry Dolan and his NCPAC campaigns, Frank Church and George McGovern were decent men. It's not enough to decide that the tactics that empowered your political philosophy are suddenly odious because they've empowered a feckless incompetent. Repentance before redemption, boys. Rise from the fainting couches and pick up the flagellum. As the nuns used to say, I don't think you've sufficiently examined your consciences."
posted by Ish at 9:07 AM
1 Comments:
i agree, ish. as has been consistantly noted in all kinds of specific instances from ebay to etrade, from meetup to moveon, from napster to itunes, the ability of the internet to allow people to share ideas, form communities and "do stuff" has disintermediated traditional commerce and power structures that rely on the fact that they are the only ones that can connect people and money to other people, goods and/or services they want.
that was a doozy of a run-on sentence.
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