posted by danny at
3:47 PM
2.21.2003
2.07.2003
Why I'm Blogging
(part one)
I’m writing on what seems likely to be one of the last days of peace. Snow has fallen on Washington. Snow balances on the power lines. On the narrow side street where I live, on the sidewalks of U Street, on the grounds of the Capitol: deep snow. The city looks very peaceful or very dead.
Yesterday, according to the AP and NPR, Democratic Senators “heaped praise” on Colin Powell for his performance Tuesday at the U.N. Four Washington Post writers also heaped praise, including Mary McGrory, in a column titled “I’m Persuaded.” My father, a Democrat, was persuaded. My housemate, a Democrat, was persuaded. In the afternoon, Bush stood with Powell behind him. “The game is over,” Bush said, with the clipped bravado of an action hero.
I am launching this Blog because I have found on the internet a sort of inoculation against moments like these. Inoculation against the persuasive force of political theater in the age of Murdock and Rove. Inoculation also against the fatalism or complacency I find among many who oppose this administration in principle but not in political action.
A new kind of liberalism is in its birth phase. It thrives on the internet and, through champions like Paul Krugman and Paul Begala, announces itself in the mainstream media. This new way of talking and thinking is more aggressive and more witty than the liberal commentary that helped lose the White House in 2000 and the Senate in 2002. The new discourse is clear about its values and its opponents without being doctrinaire about public policy. It is deeply alarmed without being politically radical. It circulates through the internet facts and opinions that do not surface on the Sunday news shows or in the pages of the major weeklies.
The purest and most extreme practitioners of this new liberalism are the anonymous polemicists at Media Whores Online. Other favorites are Joe Conason, Josh Marshall, Eric Alterman and Bob Somersby. Alongside these polished writers has sprung an impressive community of citizen bloggers and e-activists. Go skim the postings at Daily Kos, for instance, or the reader commentaries at Buzzflash! You will find outraged people trailblazing a new politics in a new medium.
So I am launching this site to add my note to the chorus. I will limit myself to two major themes of the new liberalism. One is the increasing bias of the major news media: to the right politically, down the tubes intellectually, and straight to hell morally. In answer to the once plausible claims of liberal bias in the news, a serious and coherent critique has emerged. The case, laid out by Gore himself late last year and elaborated daily on MWO, Daily Howler, and Altercation, is simple. Media organs like Fox News and the Washington Times, in close coordination with the Republican Party, push GOP spin into mainstream news discourse. The tactic works because mainstream pundits and reporters, while perhaps liberally inclined on social issues, are increasingly wealthy, complacent, sensationalist, and dumb. (Ok, not increasingly dumb; just plain dumb.) They are also increasingly beholden to corporate masters for their jobs and to the ruthless Bush machine for access. There are not enough websites on the internet to track the distortions, lies, distractions, and fallacies that flow constantly from the mouths of reasonable sounding and nicely dressed pundits. Count my site in the lists of the watchers.
The other theme, trailblazed in the mainstream by Krugman with some help here and there, has not fully taken root in the websites I follow: the theme of Plutocracy. Everyone knows that Dubya’s tax cuts skew towards millionaires. But Krugman (both in his columns and in a long New York Times Magazine article I will try to find and link) puts this phenomenon in a disturbing and revealing context. Krugman notes that income inequality now approaches levels last seen in the age of the Robber Barrons. Social attitudes towards wealth and its responsibilities are changing. The middle class that flourished after World War II is under stress. The egalitarian values that reigned in the post-war period are under attack from the tax cutters, fear mongers, social security bleeders, and bashers of the poor who have been licking their wounds since FDR.
In this analysis, not all businessmen or rich folk are Plutocrats. The technology entrepreneurs who drove economic growth in the 90’s are great. The problem is their evil cousins, the crony capitalists or (as Josh Marshall and others call them) the access capitalists: business titans (primarily in “old economy” sectors) who count on favorable government treatment to grow their businesses, often at the expense of consumers, the environment, and the working poor. Plutocracy is a dusty and faintly ridiculous term. But the connection between this style of capitalism and government policy justifies its rehabilitation. It helps to understand Bush’s governing style, his disdain for consensus and democracy, and (as I will try to point out) his gusto for unpopular war.
These are the themes that interest me. My humble private purpose in launching this Blog is to mull these themes daily with an eye towards writing some essays. Tomorrow, I will unfurl my vain but noble public purpose.
I’m writing on what seems likely to be one of the last days of peace. Snow has fallen on Washington. Snow balances on the power lines. On the narrow side street where I live, on the sidewalks of U Street, on the grounds of the Capitol: deep snow. The city looks very peaceful or very dead.
Yesterday, according to the AP and NPR, Democratic Senators “heaped praise” on Colin Powell for his performance Tuesday at the U.N. Four Washington Post writers also heaped praise, including Mary McGrory, in a column titled “I’m Persuaded.” My father, a Democrat, was persuaded. My housemate, a Democrat, was persuaded. In the afternoon, Bush stood with Powell behind him. “The game is over,” Bush said, with the clipped bravado of an action hero.
I am launching this Blog because I have found on the internet a sort of inoculation against moments like these. Inoculation against the persuasive force of political theater in the age of Murdock and Rove. Inoculation also against the fatalism or complacency I find among many who oppose this administration in principle but not in political action.
A new kind of liberalism is in its birth phase. It thrives on the internet and, through champions like Paul Krugman and Paul Begala, announces itself in the mainstream media. This new way of talking and thinking is more aggressive and more witty than the liberal commentary that helped lose the White House in 2000 and the Senate in 2002. The new discourse is clear about its values and its opponents without being doctrinaire about public policy. It is deeply alarmed without being politically radical. It circulates through the internet facts and opinions that do not surface on the Sunday news shows or in the pages of the major weeklies.
The purest and most extreme practitioners of this new liberalism are the anonymous polemicists at Media Whores Online. Other favorites are Joe Conason, Josh Marshall, Eric Alterman and Bob Somersby. Alongside these polished writers has sprung an impressive community of citizen bloggers and e-activists. Go skim the postings at Daily Kos, for instance, or the reader commentaries at Buzzflash! You will find outraged people trailblazing a new politics in a new medium.
So I am launching this site to add my note to the chorus. I will limit myself to two major themes of the new liberalism. One is the increasing bias of the major news media: to the right politically, down the tubes intellectually, and straight to hell morally. In answer to the once plausible claims of liberal bias in the news, a serious and coherent critique has emerged. The case, laid out by Gore himself late last year and elaborated daily on MWO, Daily Howler, and Altercation, is simple. Media organs like Fox News and the Washington Times, in close coordination with the Republican Party, push GOP spin into mainstream news discourse. The tactic works because mainstream pundits and reporters, while perhaps liberally inclined on social issues, are increasingly wealthy, complacent, sensationalist, and dumb. (Ok, not increasingly dumb; just plain dumb.) They are also increasingly beholden to corporate masters for their jobs and to the ruthless Bush machine for access. There are not enough websites on the internet to track the distortions, lies, distractions, and fallacies that flow constantly from the mouths of reasonable sounding and nicely dressed pundits. Count my site in the lists of the watchers.
The other theme, trailblazed in the mainstream by Krugman with some help here and there, has not fully taken root in the websites I follow: the theme of Plutocracy. Everyone knows that Dubya’s tax cuts skew towards millionaires. But Krugman (both in his columns and in a long New York Times Magazine article I will try to find and link) puts this phenomenon in a disturbing and revealing context. Krugman notes that income inequality now approaches levels last seen in the age of the Robber Barrons. Social attitudes towards wealth and its responsibilities are changing. The middle class that flourished after World War II is under stress. The egalitarian values that reigned in the post-war period are under attack from the tax cutters, fear mongers, social security bleeders, and bashers of the poor who have been licking their wounds since FDR.
In this analysis, not all businessmen or rich folk are Plutocrats. The technology entrepreneurs who drove economic growth in the 90’s are great. The problem is their evil cousins, the crony capitalists or (as Josh Marshall and others call them) the access capitalists: business titans (primarily in “old economy” sectors) who count on favorable government treatment to grow their businesses, often at the expense of consumers, the environment, and the working poor. Plutocracy is a dusty and faintly ridiculous term. But the connection between this style of capitalism and government policy justifies its rehabilitation. It helps to understand Bush’s governing style, his disdain for consensus and democracy, and (as I will try to point out) his gusto for unpopular war.
These are the themes that interest me. My humble private purpose in launching this Blog is to mull these themes daily with an eye towards writing some essays. Tomorrow, I will unfurl my vain but noble public purpose.
posted by danny at
9:20 PM
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