The political role of netroots is first to enforce MSM domination of news and second to spike political activism. An accelerating right wing attack on Elizabeth Warren and financial regulation and the manipulated hysteria over TSA security measures provide a wonderful illustration of how this works. First, netroots enthusiastically poutrage about TSA searches – in a nation where stop-and-frisk of minority residents, not to mention Jack Bauer’s torture of swarthy suspects is routinely celebrated on television every night. Efforts to point out the role of the far right in pushing this fake outrage are met with hysterical attacks -notably by Libertarian Political Correctness Commissar Glenn Greenwald. But the concurrent Republican attack on financial regulation is met with passivity and indifference modulated by a masochistic anticipation of a defeat – which will provide occasion to express disappointment at the weakness of the Obama administration. For both of these, the fundamental hapless consumer outlook championed by netroots is presented as the only morally acceptable view and curiosity about the actual workings of power is condemned. The right wing blogs are full of triumphant howling about the TSA director, who is regarded as a traitor for preventing the FBI from participating in Bush’s torture state – and it’s deeply revealing that this fact is entirely absent from netroots discussion.
Consider this coverage of financial reform at poutrage central DailyKos – a site that recently drove off the one remaining generally positive prominent defender of President Obama.
Let’s also pay close attention to the Obama Administration. Is Obama going to go to bat for Elizabeth Warren and use the power of the office of the president to defend her from these jackals, or is he going to leave her out there on her own.
This is squarely opposed to any idea that what “progressives” do might influence outcomes. The idea that publicizing the Republican service to Wall Street might win people over to oppose the rule of financial capital is totally foreign to this viewpoint. The organizing effort of 30s radicals or civil rights activists is anathema to netroots. Reading down the comment threads on that post is to fall into depression: the Eeyore radicalism of the netroots blossoms into a garden of misinformation, sullen despair, confused gibes, and the ever present disappointment at the quality of political product available in the mall.
Here’s David Dayen explaining that wall-to-wall netroots dismalism doesn’t really do anything
And so we come to believe that a blog post criticizing the President will do as much harm to progressive politics as a 9.5 percent unemployment rate; that catastrophic climate change is as consequential as a comment thread about Rahm Emanuel; and that a guy with a sign at an anti-war rally is as worthy of attention as the health-care crisis.
You see, it’s not our fault – we can advocate despair 24/7 and fill the internet with counter-factual arguments in favor of passive disappointment but every defeat remains the responsibility of the Obama administration. And every demurral from that attitude is mindless loyalism:
Some progressives, appalled by internecine warfare, believe that for the left to succeed, its members must band together and support the current Democratic President and Democratic Congress through all their compromises and concessions
Or as Greenwald put it on twitter
if you say mean things about the Leader, you help the GOP win
The Nation dared to note the influence of the Koch machine in the TSA outrage-fest and predictably would-be libertarian commissar Glenn Greenwald pitched a fit. Because as Tom Pynchon observed, if they get to determine what questions can be asked, they don’t have to worry about the answers.