Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Has the emergence of self-constructing internet communities created a new politics?

I think not quite yet. There's a better ferment overall and it's easier to find like-minded people, once you know how, but it's generally served to reinforce preexisting patterns. More of the same things happen faster and only in a few rare cases better.

The better parts: It's easier to be a refusenik in company, even if the company consists mainly of correspondents. It's easier to get face to faces with people you might otherwise never meet (I've met a bunch of people and will be meeting more). In some circumstances, you can steer actually handy things to people who will make good use of them. There's a quality of life boost to that, which though somewhat diluted and indirect still makes for better politics. The best part is being able to pick the brains of people wiser than yourself in something close to real time. I've found that resource handy for offline talks and writing.

I don't count the big swinging pwog bwogs and wingnut roosts as anything but extensions of the Beltway's demoralize and defund program. The fleecing is more efficient as are the disinfo pushes. They're still locked into futility -- with the exception of the judas goat bloggers, who may get some career mileage.

That's a lot of topics. Let's just take this one for now:

What about the fearless-leader cult? Is this emergent characteristic optional or inevitable?

Practically all of the internet personality cults I've seen have lasted, on average, perhaps five years. For example, Nancy Leider over at ZetaTalk had a once thriving community of apocalypse-panting fans back in '98-'99. Since '03 there's maybe a dozen regulars left.

Most of these cults, like Kos, burn themselves out pretty quickly. My theory is that the lack of face-to-face reinforcement makes it difficult for the average believer to sustain the amount of unthinking belief necessary to fend off the ever growning cognitive dissonance.

It's too soon to say whether the net can offer anything but cosmetic change. At least I tell myself that, because imagining that what we've seen to date is the best we can hope for is too depressing for words.

BTW, did anyone catch the hue and cry and positively electric outrage a few weeks ago on Escaton regarding McCurry's shilling for that bullshit internet bill ? Here are the professional and wannabe' professional "realists" and dealmakers and what have you-- all professing shock and dismay that McCurry and his cronies were ready to sell them all down the river-- possibly taking yet another step to hamstring their own party's fortune yet more-- all for the sake of another heaping mound of cash that the greedy fucker didn't even need ?

How could the man's behavior possibly, at this late date, be a surprise to anyone with two brain cells to rub together ? How can any rational being still be roaming the Earth under the delusion that the McCurrys of the world think of us as anything but a resource to be sucked dry and then discarded ? It just boggles my mind. I'm going to take to lunch hours composed of nothing but beers and shots if this keeps up.

Maestro Scruggs has it. Right now it's easier for independent thinkers to find one another, but a new politics has yet to emerge.

As for the reasons why, I'm afraid USians, especially those with pretensions to an informed political realism, are too much in thrall to the received ideas of their tribe to entertain other possibilities, regardless of their objective worth.

What is to be done? Right now, not a lot. Just watch and wait, watch and wait...