Into the Time Machine

The next big hubbub was over Jimmy/Jeff Guckert. Kossacks were a huge part of getting to the bottom of the male prostitute in the White House scandal, and yet certain front-pagers were relentlessly dismissive of their efforts.

But the Guckert saga demonstrated the power of open source investigations. It showed what might have been accomplished if the same effort had been employed over voter fraud.

Not long after the Guckert story died down, the pie war occurred. It seemed like a deliberate effort to cull the herd by intentionally offending a sizeable portion of the community.

Next came the London bombings. Despite the many interesting questions raised about the bombings, all speculation was discouraged, a purge ensued and, despite some reinstatements, the message was sent. Once again, it appeared that the image of the site was being protected against attempts to marginalize it as whacky.

And now the people that went to Washington have been dismissed as ‘useless’, their efforts ‘mean nothing’. Hippies are “touchy-feely” and people who “visualize peace” are laughed at.

Here is my problem with this. I understand the desire to keep the site from being overrun by conspiracy theorists or being identified with the left fringe. I understand wanting to build a party that is acceptable to the grand middle.

But:

1) The idea of a big tent is being put forward by this blog. The theory is that the number one goal is to win majorities in Congress and that that will do more to protect progressive issues than running ideologically pure lost-cause candidates. In other words, if the most viable candidate is anti-abortion, pro-NRA, anti-labor, who cares? They will still vote for a Democratic speaker or majority leader. I don’t dismiss this theory out of hand. It probably applies in a few races here and there. But is it a good idea to simultaneously ask progressives to hold their nose while you insult and dismiss them as ‘women-studies types’ and hippies? A big tent is supposed to be tolerant of a lot of people you largely disagree with, not dismissive of people you largely agree with.

2) Many of the best articles and diaries written here, and certainly the most interesting ones, are about crimes, conspiracies, scandals, and things that should considered be crimes, conspiracies, scandals but the media is not covering. Or they are undercovering them. Blogs take the news and refocus it, emphasizing aspects of stories, deempasizing other aspects of stories. Community blogs (and blogs working in parallel) actually break their own news. They get the media to cover stories they have been ignoring. They nudge the mainstream media to cover things and to cover them in a different way. From Rathergate, to Guckert, to the Downing Street Minutes, we have seen conspiracies turned into common wisdom through the efforts of bloggers. If we are going to shut down conspiracy theorists we might as well go home and turn off the laptops.

3) there is an emphasis in the Kos grand strategy on effecting the media. People obsess over what other people see on their televisions and what they hear on their radios, and on what they read in their newspapers. People obsess on how to ‘frame’ arguments so that they make a better impression on the average Joe.

That is important. But there is not enough emphasis on building a community of people that embodies the values we share. I’m going to link to four diaries written by Kossack/Tribbers who went to Washington. You tell me whether their experiences meant nothing. You tell me whether this is accurate:

Supersoling
Boston Joe
Military Tracy
Damnit Janet

A ‘movement’, as Kos puts it, needs nourishment. It needs to move in real life, not only through electrons. Everyone reading this has already, by default, discovered the comraderie of progressive blogging. We know how this empowers us. We remember our feelings of isolation, powerlessness, and despair before we found Daily Kos. Well, Washington introduced thousands of new people to Daily Kos, Booman Tribune, My Left Wing, and several other progressive blogging communities. It connected people from these communities to each other, creating life long friendships and connections. Try doing that through C-SPAN.

And it isn’t only bloggers. Many people discovered and joined up with the various activist groups that were represented. They showed up an isolated person and they went home with new tools to work with in their communities.

If you can read Supersoling or BostonJoe’s diaries and come away thinking that the protest in Washington was useless, or counterproductive, then you just don’t get it.

We need to build a bigger party, a majority party. We can do it through smoke, mirrors, careful framing, effective spin, and a deceptively moderate agenda, or…

we can do it through creating a movement. And a movement must embody its ideals. If we try to hide our crazies in the attic we’ll never be a movement. If we focus so much on what gets seen on C-SPAN that might persuade an undecided voter that we alienate our true believers, we will never be a movement at all. We’ll just be a cynical political strategem that cares more about tricking moderates than caring about the people we started out trying to help and support.

In my opinion, this site is losing the characteristics that made it great. When no one would oppose the war and the lies, Kos stood up and opposed them. This site became a home for people that couldn’t believe what they were seeing on their televisions and reading in the New York Times. It became a community of like-minded people that supported each other in a whirlwind of insanity.

Now it is turning people away, running people down, dismissing single-issue voters, worried about what the other side might say, or the media might think. That’s a total fucking inversion of what made Daily Kos great.

With Bush polling like shit, DeLay indicted, Frist under investigation, and Rove and Libby under suspicion, is now the time to run to the middle? Is now the time to fragment our base with dismissive infighting? I don’t think so.