Instead of galvanizing the apolitical truth squads of my fantasy world, weblogs became marvelous organizing tools for the most partisan citizens and groups. [...] So what’s wrong with a bunch of human beings using technology to organize themselves into political groupings? Absolutely nothing. The purpose of enhanced freedom is to enhance people’s ability act freely in the ways of their choosing, and we shouldn’t be surprised when they choose to do the same stuff they were doing before, only more efficiently. [...] But as I look back at December 2001, and prepare to hang up the blogging fun of Reason’s Hit & Run for the stodgier print pages of the L.A. Times, I can’t shake the feeling of nostalgia for a promising cross-partisan moment that just fizzled away. Americans are always much more interesting than their political parties or ideological labels, and for a few months there it was possible for readers and writers alike to feel the unfamiliar slap of collisions with worlds they’d previously sealed off from themselves. You couldn’t predict what anyone would say, especially yourself.
Well, he's wrong about that part I put in boldface up there. Well before the advent of blogs, conservatives could find liberal ideas, liberal attitudes, liberal policy initiatives by the joblots, from the national news media monoculture. Reading a DNC statement on a liberal blog wasn’t a revelation to conservatives, not when DNC statements had been run on the front pages as breaking news years before that. It was the *conservative* blogs and websites, following the trail blazed by conservative talk radio, that did the un-cloistering of the liberal mind. William Buckley once said that liberals are always calling for the airing of other views, but are then amazed when they discover that there are other views. Ann Coulter, if you'll forgive me for bringing her up to make this one teensy point, once called attention to how the reviewers at liberal newspapers would routinely call her new books and books by other conservatives a "surprise bestseller". A surprise to who? And how many holes must be poked in their bubble before it isn't a surprise anymore?
But, if the thrill is gone for Matt, then it's gone.
He makes a couple of other points which deserve some amplification:
...even if I was wrong about the transformative political nature of the post-9/11 blog explosion, the ensuing growth of the form has made it exponentially easier to seek out truth, however you define it.
Eason Jordan and Dan Rather can attest to that.
The changes brought by the digital age are real. Not utopian, but far-ranging, and profoundly democratizing. Here's hoping Matt will sidle over to the Times' blogs desk from time to time, and give in to temptation.
Trivia: I first blogged this on my other blog, Sorry For Not Blogging.
It was the *conservative* blogs and websites, following the trail blazed by conservative talk radio, that did the un-cloistering of the liberal mind.
ReplyDeleteYou're kidding, right? You somehow think that we were actually unaware of conservative views in the early ninties? After twelve years of Reagan and Bush?
That's abject nonsense, I'm afraid. We weren't unaware of conservative views, we just thought they were desperately, disasterously wrong.
Comparing the state the US is in now to our situation in 2000, I'd have to say we were correct, in the main.
Being aware of conservative ideas is not the same thing as taking them seriously. As late as the 1994 election, when the conservative groundswell finally broke out into ending 40 years of Democratic control of Congress, plenty of libs still thought it was all a sick joke. But with the success of reforms like welfare-to-work, for instance, quick-witted politicians like President Clinton moved to co-opt those positions. While by 2004, serious Dem candidates had no choice but to follow suit, as there was no alternative within their party anymore but the fever-swamp Left.
ReplyDeleteLiberals may still detest conservative ideas, but the only place they're still laughing is the studio audience on A Prairie Home Companion.
As for comparing then & now, well...
"At the time, conflict unceasing grew year by year to a more dangerous intensity at home, while abroad there gathered sullenly the hurricane that was to wreck our generation. Our days were spent in the furious party battles..., while always upon the horizon deadly shapes grew or faded, and even while the sun shone there was a curious whisper in the air."
That's Winston Churchill, reminiscing about the 1910s before the First World War.
You know, I was about to respond angrily, but you're finally in the right era. The 1910s are exactly where to look for parallels to 2000.
ReplyDeleteRemember, in the teens, it wasn't evil that was lurking, as in the thirties--it was stupidity. But for a combination of pride, willful blindness, and jingoism, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Czarist Russia might have continued their pre-war courses. Russia might have continued to slowly liberalize as the Czar's monetary problems continued. Austria-Hungary might have reaped the benefits of the generation of brilliant mathematicians and scientists it produced around the turn of the century. Germany might have continued to develop as the economic powerhouse that it was in 1910. Instead, three powerful countries were obliterated, and the UK lost a generation.
When liberals look at Bush, we don't see Churchill. We see Wilhelm II, substituting jingoism and pride for caution and diplomacy.
As to your first point, it never ceases to amaze me that the New Deal can now be dismissed as the "fever-swamp left," while supporting an administration that argues for the right to torture and to ignore laws of the Congress is somehow magically mainstream.
I'll stand with the Constitution, even if that puts me out in the fever swamps.
Historical cavil, to go along with the thread drift for a moment: IMO, Russia was already doomed by the time WWI rolled around. The last tsar with any inclination for political reform, Alexander III, was assassinated by revolutionaries in the 1880s. The last competent prime minister, Pyotr Stolypin, was assassinated in 1911--either for repressing revolutionaries too aggressively or pursuing land reform too aggressively; no one knows. Thereafter, no one was able to keep Russia off the shoals.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, yes; war is a horror and a waste, and no one responsible pretends otherwise. But do you really believe that it made no real difference who won the First World War? Or who wins this one?
When liberals look at Bush, we don't see Churchill. We see Wilhelm II, substituting jingoism and pride for caution and diplomacy.
But when conservatives look at the Dem leadership, we see Neville Chamberlain, Abbie Hoffman, and Jimmy Carter--none of whom we trust with national defense. There is certainly a place in America for people who insist terrorism is no threat or, if it is, we must have done something to deserve it. But not at the national helm, as evidenced by the last three elections.
There is certainly a place in America for people who insist terrorism is no threat or, if it is, we must have done something to deserve it. But not at the national helm, as evidenced by the last three elections.
ReplyDeleteYou're right--the Greens still haven't won any seats.
Or are you talking about the Democrats, who rallied behind the President in 2001 and 2002, only to have their support met with precisely the dishonest claptrap you used above?
Can anyone play this game of "any belief to my left/right represents the other side of the debate?" How can conservatives search for terrorists if they believe that federal agents are "jack-booted thugs?" Or that strikes against Al Quaida are a "Wag the Dog" scenario?
If I were supporting an administration that didn't bother to hold an single meeting of its antiterrorism task force, even in the face of a PDB entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.", I think I'd be a bit slower to haul out the "insist terrorism is no threat" canard.
Could we move on to honest debate now? Or should I just complete the cycle by lamenting the control of the country by racist theocrats, upon which we can both wander off feeling self-righteous?