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AN EXISTENTIAL HOLIDAY GREETING

My good friend Mykeru recently posted an essay, which touched on a central issue for rightwingers, namely, the "necessity" of God and religious faith. As it happens, this fundamental of rightwing ideology is a subject I have been thinking about lately. So rather than clutter up his comment section with some equally lengthy commentary, and since I need to put something in this space from time to time until my new blog/forum is ready to launch, I have decided to post my comments on his article, here.

First, the relevant portions of Myk's post.

That pretty well sums up the post-modern "existential" view of the human condition -- including, specifically, our perception of the nature of religious faith. Needless to say, rightwingers are not amused by this worldview, and spill a fair amount of ink anguishing over it. A typical summary of their view of the matter can be found over at a place called "The American Thinker" in a rant entitled "The Mad King and The Crazy Left" by one Timothy Birdnow.  Here is the part that is most relevant to this discussion.

This argument is essentially the same every time it is made -- and rightwingers make the argument often. "Without God, there is no basis for morality or social order beyond our own human imagination and will." Or even more simply, without a god to constrain you, you can do anything you want -- as if allegedly religious people don't find some religious justification to do whatever they want, anyway.

The argument fails for a couple of reasons -- at least. The first is a logical failure. This argument is a variant on the "ad miseracordiam" fallacy. There must be a god, since if there isn't we will have unpleasant consequences, in the form of "moral degeneracy," etc. That's the claim, anyway. Mr. Birdenow appears to make much of his "acceptance" of "unpleasant reality." Meanwhile, his argument -- the standard contemporary argument for the alleged necessity of God -- is in fact based on the refusal to accept unpleasant reality, namely that you might be all alone in a vast universe -- which means that you might just by golly be able to do whatever the hell you want to, subject only to power of your neighbors to restrain you. The fact that you need a god to prevent this existential nightmare, doesn't mean that you get one. The passengers on the Titanic needed more lifeboats. If you need a god to make your life meaningful, the answer might be the same answer they got. "Tough shit."

Which brings us to the empirical failure of his position. "Without the authority of Divine Law, Man is forced to constrain the actions of the individual through force of arms, and that constraint is codified as law." And what is it that we do now? Isn't that what YOU do, Mr. Birdenow. Do you advocate that we abolish the rule of secular law in favor of "divine law?" Why don't we just have faith that God will visit punishment on the wicked and dismantle our own human institutions called "courts" and "prisons." Is that what this rightwing kook advocates? Oh, hell no. He will be one of those rightwing champions of harsh retribution -- administerd by the state using "force of arms," naturally.

Or maybe he's one of these people who quote Saint Paul to the effect that secular authorities are "instruments of divine justice" -- except when it comes to Social Security, the minimum wage, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Those programs are "tyranny." It seems that the serfs can't legitimately use secular government for the divine purpose of establishing any measure of social justice. But rightwing kooks like Timothy Birdenow can gleefully throw people in prison, or worse, to defend his interests. It's just another example of the "no government for us, lots of government for you" brand of conservative "liberty." His "faith" is nothing more than the conjuring of a god that justifies his own social, political and economic position -- and nobody else's. He gets the police, the courts, and the army to protect his interests. You have to wait until you get to heaven.

All of which points out a rather plain and obvious problem. God -- if any such exists -- doesn't appear to intervene in human affairs either very often or very effectively. It is the famous problem of evil, where "faith" doesn't appear to restrain much of anybody. Armed with faith in God, the armies of the righteous have historically been every bit as willing to visit misery and death on their fellow human beings as anybody else.

As for Albert Camus, the French existentialist, Mykeru is quoting the "bete noir" of rightwing religious nuts. Existentialists postulate something worse than the mere absense of God -- and resulting sovereignty of people over their own lives. They postulate human existence as "absurd" -- having no meaning at all. This -- according to the righties -- justifies all manner of depravity and oppression. It justifies the utter narcissistic selfishness that, it turns out, rightwingers themselves are so very good at exercising. While they busy themselves chaining you to the oars of their industries, they tell you that your serfdom has meaning, you just have to wait until you die to see it. So get back to work, and quit causing trouble.

As for the conscience of the cheap labor conservative, they are not merely piling up lives of luxury for themselves on the back on their workforce. They are doing "God's work." Either they are seriously deluded megalomaniacs, believing that they -- and not you -- are agents for "divine law," or they are exactly what they profess to fear in you, namely godless charlatans, who having discovered that there is no god out there to punish them, figure they can enslave and oppress anyone they want in the rather banal quest for a little personal comfort and entertainment during their absurd sojourn on earth. They can't ever let you figure out this absurdity, though. You might decide to do something that would be really simple, if they didn't have the specter of "eternal damnation" to threaten you with. You might stop putting up with them.

Given this apparent reality of "godly" oppressors, who are -- if nothing else -- absolutely committed to establishing a "divine order" where they are conveniently ensconced on top of the heap, it is probably true that we progressives frequently find ourselves in despair as we watch the machinations of these bastards. Hence, Mykeru's description of politics as a "kicked over bucket of shit." It is the process of watching human beings visit poverty, oppression, environmental destruction, ignorance and fear on their fellow human beings, simply because they have figured out that nothing matters except their owm personal acquisition of nifty toys and distractions to pass the time until they die. It explains the conservative revulsion at "existentialism," which comes uncomfortably close to describing their own brand of nihilism.

Behold the transformation of the entire question. Some say that God exists, others say the opposite, while still others say they "don't know." I say, it doesn't matter. By the terms of their own faith, religious fundamentalists prove that God has made himself irrelevant. The reason to have faith, in the first place, is because their god offers no compelling evidence of his existence. He also metes out no unequivocal punishment for evil, and places us in a situation where we are permitted to believe that we are alone, and that our existence is absurd. Which means that we might as well be alone, and our existences might as well be absurd. And so, we might as well come up with a basis for social organization and morality that can be grounded in the reality we can all see in front of our faces, rather than some reality we must make some leap of faith to believe. Because those who don't make that leap -- and God, if there is one, permits such people to exist -- will wind up having to be persuaded by immediately perceivable reality, anyway.

Here is how I do it, using a simple analogy.

If you ever visited the ocean as a child, you no doubt built a sand castle. I can't think of a more ephemeral and temporary human achievement than construction of a sand castle. They have a life expectancy of 11 hours, at best, assuming you start work immediately after the tide starts to go out. I suppose that if you happened to build one the last time the tide came in that high, and if some perfect confluence of geological forces came together, your sandcastle might survive a few tens of millions of years, like the fossilized tracks of dinosaurs. But nobody much hopes for any such miracle. They build their sand castles knowing that the ocean will almost certainly put asunder their hour or so worth of labor. It never occurs to them that their work is "absurd" or "meaningless." If such were pointed out to them, they might readily acknowledge as much -- and go on right on building.

You see, it isn't enduring nature of the sand castle that matters. It is the fun of building of it. It isn't the boundless future, which will eventually destroy every monument to human enterprise. It is the present. The only future that matters, is the "present" that isn't here yet, in which our children will build and create their sandcastles. What matters isn't what we create, or how long it lasts. There is only ever one reason to build or create anything. Because you can, and because you want to.

Now let us take the next step, and imagine another familiar wrinkle on this scenario. Imagine that a child of say eight has labored mightily to build his monument of sand, and some older kid comes along and stomps on it. Why does he do that? I suppose we might explore the deep seated psychological reasons, but I pretty much chalk it up to simple meanness. Now we could argue -- rightwing style -- that Ghawd and eternal reward and punishment are "necessary" to restrain our young hoodlum from such a wanton act of destruction, but our young hoodlum doesn't believe that for one minute. If he was concerned about some divine retribution, he wouldn't have done it -- which means that such divine retribution may as well not exist for all the good it does.

Once again, we see that fly in the ointment of the rightwing argument for the "necessity" of Ghawd to ground our notions of morality. Everybody doesn't believe it -- which pretty much leaves you with force of arms to restrain them, anyway. Maybe God exists, and maybe He does furnish the metaphysical basis for morality. But he doesn't do so in any manner that is clear and unequivocal. Ultimately, we just don't have any overwhelming empirical evidence. God doesn't show up on television and part the Atlantic Ocean -- furnishing undeniable evidence that he exists, and can fuck you up if he feels like it. Instead we get 3000 year old legends coupled with the obvious fact that there is frequently no immediate and unequivocal punishment for doing evil. In fact, the evil people among us appear to be absolutely free to wantonly step on our sand castles, unless we resort to our own devices to stop them. If everyone had faith, we would have no problem with evil, and the fact that God fails to furnish us with any unequivocal evidence, guarantees that we will have to deal with the evil of those who lack any such "faith," one way or the other. And that's not getting into having to deal with the evil of those who DO have faith -- which is frequently even worse.

Which brings us right back where we started. The question of the existence of a god is irrelevant, because "God" doesn't solve the problem of evil, anyway you slice it. If there is no "God" then there is nothing to restrain you from evil, except for other people. If there is a God, he has hidden Himself and restrained His own hand. This makes you free to believe that there is nothing to restrain you from evil except for other people. The result is exactly the same. One thing is certain, evil is PERMITTED to exist, as is the lack of faith, which means that God -- if God exists -- allows us to experience at least the possibility of the meaninglessness of existence, and make our own decisions about how we will choose to conduct ourselves in the face of that possibility. We might as well save a step and find a basis for morality and living together with other people in a godless, meaningless and absurd existence. Because that is all that is apparent to us on the face of things.

Here's the good news. It isn't really that hard to do. Consider our sand castle destroying cretan. Does his evil have any ultimate "meaning" beyond fucking up some little kid's day at the beach? No, it doesn't. Both our young builder, and our little cretan will grow up, and forget about the whole thing in the fullness of time. The likelihood is that both will grow up to be responsible citizens. Plenty of kid have their sand castles squashes, plenty of other kids have done the squashing, and a good many have lived both experiences. Most of them manage to grow up to be civilized adults. As for the sand castle, it is doomed, anyway, and our young "victim" can always build another one.

History is the same way. Hitler's genocide against the Jews, as terrible as it was at the time, will eventually diminish in its significance. Like Caligula or Nero, Hitler's name will be remembered for 2,000 years as an object lesson in pure evil. And like Caligula and Nero, his ultimate impact on history will be negligible. You see, Hitler is dead, while Judaism still lives and flourishes.

So what is the nature of the "evil" of our little urchin, stepping on sand castles -- which is the real question? It is just mindless destruction, different by several orders of magnitude from the mindless destruction wrought by Hitler, but not different in its fundamental nature. Which is condemnation enough. It is nothing -- or more specifically, "nothingness." It is a contribution to chaos and entropy in a universe that is perfectly capable of furnishing its own chaos and entropy. It is utterly pointless -- precisely because the sand castle will be destroyed by the elements in the fullness of time, anyway. What did our little bastard accomplish but speeding up what the universe will do all by itself -- just a few hours hence? His act is as meaningless as the act of building the sand castle, only more so. Because in the case of the building, there was this moment in time, this instant, when the forces of chaos and entropy were held at bay, and some conscious being created order and meaning. However short the time, that order and meaning existed -- and some human being created it. The destroyer created nothing but the chaos that already exists, and accomplished nothing that the entropy of the universe wouldn't accomplish in its own good time.

Behold Augustine of Hippo's conception of evil. Evil is "nothingness." Evil is destruction, where good is creation. It doesn't matter how brief and fleeting that creation is, because all creation is equally brief and fleeting. A sand castle that survives for ten million years will sooner or later succumb to chaotic forces of wind and water, or it may even wait for the expansion of the sun to a red giant five billion years from now. One way or the other, as a monument, it is doomed. In the face of eternity, five billion years brings you no closer to eternity than five nanoseconds, such that no monument to the human ego will ever amount to anymore than a flicker.

Nevertheless, for that one instant, it is there. And it is more than "nothing." Going the other way -- not considering unimaginably long periods of time, but those that are unimaginably brief -- gives you a completely different perspective. If five billion years is a nanosecond in the face of etermity, then a nanosecond likewise contains five billions years. Which means that anything that existed for a nanosecond, might as well have existed for five billion years. The fact that it existed at all, for any portion of eternity, is a fact that cannot be denied and cannot be annihilated.

That is why we build sand castles. Because we can, and for one brief period, in the few hours between the tides, we create something that, even though it no longer exists, did exist once, at the time when we created it. That act of creation -- in the eternal present -- is what we human beings do. It is why we get up in the morning, and it is reason enough. As for the puny acts of destruction -- and all acts of destruction are puny in the face of eternity -- they are truly meaningless, which is precisely what condemns them. Or as Sam Rayburn famously said, "any jackass can kick down a barn." There is one occupation anyone can qualify for. Anyone can be a killer. Anyone with a .38 caliber revolver can do what hardening of the arteries will get around to in the long run. Which makes anyone with .38 caliber revolver exactly nothing. It makes him a force of nature to be avoided, just as we avoid tornadoes, earthquakes, and deadly pathogens. Hitler, in this sense, accomplished nothing more than the tiny bacillus that killed a third of Europe in the fourteenth century. In fact, it took him considerably more effort to accomplish what a germ managed to do without going out of its way. Today, the Black Death is a distant bad memory. We descendents of those who survived it are doing just fine, thank you very much. In the fullness of time, the descendents of those who survived Auschwitz will be able to say the same thing -- if they can't say that already.

Now let us consider the act of creation, as it relates to the nature of God and eternity -- as given to us by our fundamenatlist friends. Let us ask a question they never get around to asking. From God's point of view, what is the meaning of God's existence? He is -- we are told -- all knowing, ever present, and all powerful. He can whip up an entire universe with nothing more than a thought. He is self-contained and is absolutely complete. What is the point of doing anything? In fact, in such a circumstance what is the point of existing at all? When you are the sum and substance of the entire universe, how long does it take you to wonder why you even exist? As for people claim to want "eternal life," I don't think they have ever bothered to consider just how long "eternity" is. Eternity is the time frame when absolutely nothing matters. Perhaps we would find something interesting to keep us occupied for the first thousand years, or maybe ten thousand years, or maybe a million years. But at what point does it all just blend into boring sameness? Is that what Christians have burned other people at the stake to guarantee for themselves, an eternity of what eventually devolves into "same shit, different eon?"

It raises that elementary question, which the non-thinking religious person never ponders. Why did God create the heavens and the earth to start with? And the answer is simple. He was bored out of his fucking mind. He did it because he could, and because he wanted to, and because, what the hell, he didn't have anything else better to do. Which means that He created the heavens and the earth for the same reason you build sand castles. Are we created in the image and likeness of God? Yes we are, complete with that question God himself must have asked at some point, namely, whether his own existence is an absurdity. Like the God of our mythology, we choose to fill up our otherwise absurd existence with the creation of meaning and purpose, if for no other reason than to give ourselves something to do.

Here's the best part. While we are creating that meaning and purpose, while we are creating order out of chaos, while we are participating in the creation of the universe, in however miniscule a capacity, we are happy. We forget about our smallness, and we forget about the future we will not live to see. We forget about the good that is beyond our limited capacity to create, and focus on the good we can create right now. We forget about the tide that will soon come in and destroy our sand castle. Because it isn't how long the sand castle will last that makes building it worthwhile, or even how long we will last. It is the fact that we exist to build it. The process of creating meaning out of absurdity and order out of chaos -- which is precisely what makes us in the image and likeness of God -- is itself the meaning of our existence.

I had a conversation some months back with a webmaster of a site called "The World We Want."  That is the question they ask over there. At the time, I thought about it, but I didn't know what to tell him. So I never sent him anything. Now, I know. The world I want -- and the world I work to build at this site -- is a world where every human being has a fair chance at participating in creating the universe -- by simply creating whatever it is that they are inspired to create. It is a world where poverty, corruption, exploitation, oppression and ignorance are understood as the unnecessary evils that they are. Why? Because those things rob human beings of the only thing they have, or ever will have, in the one life they are given. Those things rob human beings of their one brief chance to participate in that creation.

We don't need "God" to create meaning and order in an otherwise chaotic universe. We don't need an overseer wielding a bullwhip, either. We don't need the threat of starvation or the fear of punishment to motivate us. We don't need to have our labor stolen from us, or traded in exchange for a bare subsistence. We don't need to have our ambitions, however modest, thwarted because someone else needs our help to advance his -- but isn't willing to pay a fair price for that help. We don't need to be organized and herded to work in enterprises that belong to somebody else whose chief labor in life appears to be making sure that he derives more benefits from your imagination and creativity than you do.

What we need is to be free to organize ourselves as we see fit, to find our own motivation, to create our own meaning, and to build our own lives. This is what governments -- and churches, and business corporations, and labor unions, and political parties, and schools, and every other human organization -- are instituted among human beings to promote. If they don't promote our freedom and creativity, then they are useless and we need to be rid of them. As for our practical problems, such as poverty, oppression, ignorance, exploitation, and environmental destruction, we have the creative imaginations to solve those problems. All we have to do is decide that we want to -- and to make up our minds that those who don't want to are simply not going to stand in our way.

Will we succeed in any permanent and lasting way in establishing a world of justice and liberty and peace? In the long run, that world will be as temporary as a sand castle. But that's no reason not to build it. The rightwingers who tell us that we just can't make the world more fair, more just, more free and more humane, who tell us that we can't transcend oppression and exploitation -- THEIR oppression and exploitation -- well, they're just wrong. We can, and indeed we have from time to time. America used to be such a place, and not so long ago, either. In fact, it probably still is -- for at least a little while longer before wars, storms, and debt turn it, at long last, into the third world cheap labor heaven rightwingers clamor for. We will stop that process, and build that better world -- because we can, and because we want to, and because we've made up our minds that we're going to, which is the only reason we need.

To Mykeru, and to all the rest of my friends and family who believe that a better world is possible, and worth working to achieve, I wish you a happy whichever holiday is your favorite, and offer this simple holiday greeting. Glory to God, if there is one, and even if there isn't, peace -- and justice -- to people of good will.

THE REVOLUTIONARY POTENTIAL OF THE BLOGOSPHERE

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Very soon, right here at this url, we will be launching a new blog, a new forum, and a new online community of progressive bloggers. More than merely following the "raw story," we will be introducing a new level of online jounalism. In addition to some original reporting, and passing along the useful facts unearthed by others, we will also be working on sythesis of the "raw story" into a meaningful narrative. We will be "framing" the story, even as we develop the raw facts. This represents the "next level" of online journalism -- popularly known as "blogging."

We will not be the first blog to do ";synthesis." Blogs have always included a healthy dose of "op/ed." But we may be the first blog to realize the importance of that process -- turning facts into narrative -- to advancing the progressive agenda. We hope to inspire lots of imitators. Indeed, we hope in the fullness of time, that we will wind up receiving even more good suggestions for that narrative than we originate.

Our new blog depends on developing some fairly simple software for a new blog/forum interface -- the most versatile I have seen, anywhere on the internet. That software is under development, and indeed we are testing components of it, as we speak. It will be ready for launch in just a few short weeks. In the meantime, I thought those of you who have enjoyed my occasional essays might be interested in hearing a little preview of the vision behind this new project.

You may not have realized this, but you are looking at the "political engine" that will change the world. I don't mean this site, in particular -- though I would certainly love a place at the table in that process. I mean the "blogosphere," in general. I'm not sure that very many people realize just how powerful, how culturally transforming, this media could become.

Consider the following blog article at "Americablog."

That's right, folks, the "business press" has noticed you, they don't much like you, and here's the best part. There's nothing they can do about you. Indeed, the so-called "mainstream media" has also taken notice -- occasionally conducting conferences on "blogger ethics." It seems we're "irresponsible," and lack "journalistic standards."

All of which is complete hogwash. Consider the latest example of "journalistic standards" as practiced by Chris Matthews on MSNBC. Link to the video at Crooks and Liars. Apparently, some Democratic congresscritters have published some talking points regarding Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. They refer to him by the same nickname, "Scalito," he has been known by for years. It is a reference to his ideological similarity to Justice Antonin Scalia -- the most right wing Supreme Court Justice since the days when the Supreme Court struck down child labor laws in Hamer v. Dagenhart.

One would think that a judge's ideological bent would be fair game, particularly in the wake of the far right's ideological attack on Harriet Miers. But wait, the far right isn't worried about attacks on Scalito based on ideology. They're worried about "ethnic attacks." It seems that Chris Matthews finds this Democratic memo to be "disgusting" -- containing an "ethnic slur." Well, here, take a look at the offending memo -- an option he neglected to offer.

See the "ethnic slur" in there? Look hard, now, it's a little hard to see. Give up? I couldn't find it either. Apparently it had something to do with Scalito's failure to convict twenty mobsters in the longest trial in US history. Frankly, I'm not sure how relevant being an ineffective prosecutor is to being an effective judge. After all, prosecuting and judging are different functions in the judicial system, requiring different skill sets. But I'm not prepared to say its completely irrelevant. Reasonable people can certainly disagree about its importance, which makes it worth discussing, for those who think it matters.

And of course, ineffectiveness as a prosecutor, has nothing whatever to do with Scalito's ethnic heritage. Indeed, concerns with Scalia's ideology have nothing to do with his ethnic heritage, either. Scalito will not only be an ideological brother to Scalia, but to Clarence Thomas and William Rehnquist -- and Van Devanter, and McReynolds, and the rest of the wingnuts from the days of the child labor decision. We could just as easily call him "Renquito," or "Thomasito," or "Van Devito" or "McReynito" -- except that well, those just don't trip off the toungue quite as well as "Scalito."

The source for all of this faux outrage by Chris Matthews is none other than Drudge -- no doubt channeling the puppet masters at "wingnut wurlitzer central." It's just plain bad journalism. One might even call it "irresponsible" on the part of Mr. Matthews.

And who called him on it? Well let's see. We have "hunter" over at Daily Kos. We have the folks over at Crooks and Liars. We have my good friend Mykeru. Hunter tracked down the source for this, and found the actual offending memo -- exposing this shoddy excuse for "mainstream" journalism that looks an awful lot like a deliberate smear. Meanwhile, each of these bloggers has something in common. They're all Italian-American -- and they don't appreciate the "Italian equals mafia" suggestion made by Matthews.

This sorry excuse for reporting by Chris Matthews points to an ugly truth just dawning on the majority of Americans, in the wake of the Plamegate scandal. The mainstream media has failed this country. Scooter Libby -- possibly along with Karl Rove and maybe even Dick Cheney, himself -- spoon fed the leak of Plame's identity to Judith Miller, Robert Novak and the rest of the MSM, who dutifully reported it to the public. Being the "responsible jounalists" that they are, they failed to notice the politically motivated animosity behind the leak. Joe Wilson didn't tell Dubya what he wanted to hear -- and then went public with the "yellowcake" scam. So the White House ruined his wife's career -- exposing her to danger as an undercover operative, while they were at it. Did they actually break the law? A grand jury said they did, and I'm betting that a petit jury will agree.

The blogosphere was all over that story, the second it broke in July, 2003. The mainstream media didn't pick it up until September -- and indeed they picked it up from the blogosphere. And remember, they were the one's reporting the original story. The blogosphere detected the politics of the story. The MSM blithely ignored that part. In fact, bloggers noticed the "big lie" about yellowcake, the day after the President's State of the Union message. Again, it was September before the alleged "professionals" in the MSM caught up with the "amateurs."

The whole "drumbeat for war" pumped out daily by the Bush administration, was dutifully passed along by the MSM, with nary a "fact check" forthcoming. Judith Miller's role as a mouthpiece for the administration regarding weapons of mass destruction is well documented -- so much so that the New York Times issued an "apology" for her for piss poor reporting. In fact, we didn't simply march off to a needless war because of the White House's PR operation. We marched off to a needless war, because the mainstream media aided and abetted that PR operation -- instead of asking the hard questions, and digging for the true facts, the way they claim to do.

Then they have the nerve to question the "responsibility" of the citizen bloggers who called them to account. The problem isn't "irresponsible bloggers." It's irresponsible journalists and their editors -- not those pesky "amateurs" who expose the deficiencies of those "professional" jounalists, such as they are. That's their real problem. People are looking over their shoulder. Citizens on the internet are "paying attention to that man behind the curtain," instead of being dutifully impressed with the smoke and flames of the wizard's theatrics.

Take it to the bank Mr. Matthews and Forbes magazine, bloggers are a problem -- for you. You're going to have to start doing your job, because we will surely do it for you. And again, you can bitch and moan about it until you are old. The internet genie isn't going back in the bottle. It's a new world of citizen "fact checkers," and they will burn your ass the next time a Judith Miller slouches into the newsroom with some crock of bullshit from the likes of Chalabi and Dick Cheney.

Meanwhile, the more people get who get "wired" into the blogosphere, the more people will realize just what a narrow, distorted picture of the public's business they have been getting from the mainstream media. Which brings us to the "point of departure" in understanding the revolutionary impact of the blogosphere. The internet is much more than an extension of your telephone, maibox and TV set. It is a new medium, with its own unique characteristics. It is a technological change on a par with the automobile or the printing press in its capability to fundamentally transform our culture. It isn't any particular individual's effort that will do this. It is the nature of the medium itself -- something many of us are only just beginning to become aware of.

Let us start with a fairly regular complaint about average American citizens. They are profoundy ignorant, and grossly uninformed about the world they live in. Well informed and well educated Americans are painfully aware of the cultural milieu in which they exist. It is as if average middle class Americans live in Disneyland. They believe in the image of "heroic America," for example -- the one that saved Europe from Nazism and rebuilt it with the Marshall plan. They are blissfully unaware of all of the history of US foreign policy in the ensuing sixty years.

They are utterly unaware of a long list of democratically elected regimes toppled by the US government, from Iran in 1953, to Guatemala, to Brazil, to the Dominican Republic, to Chile, right up to current efforts against the elected govenrment of Venezuela. Most Americans can't tell you what "IMF" stands for -- "International Monetary Fund, for those internet "newbies" who don't know -- let alone what it does. Basically, the IMF is majority owned by the US government, and dictates domestic policy in other supposedly sovereign nations, on matters like public infrastructure, social spending, and labor unions. What they dictate are "business friendly" policies, that ruin domestic economies, and mire them in "McKinley era" squalor. See Argentina for a perfect example of how the IMF beggars developing nations. Middle class Americans know nothing of this. They just know how we beat the Nazi's and rebuilt Europe -- blissfully ignorant of the fact that the US government ruthlessly squashes any effort in the third world to create the kind of social democratic economies that exist in Europe, and used to exist here, before the "Reagan revolution" started beggaring our own working people.

How did Americans get to be so god damned ignorant? One word. Television -- another culture creating technology. Here's a little research project for you. Go read some of Alexis DeToqueville's "Democracy in America." While you're at it, read a few of the numerous speeches delivered by Abraham Lincoln in the late 1850's, just before his election as President. Or how about checking out some of the pamphlets, leaflets, newspapers and other assorted "literature" from the early history of the US. If you think politics is "down and dirty" today, you will be in for a surprise. The founding fathers practiced "take no prisoners" rhetoric. It wasn't all "low brow," either. Lincoln's speeches -- at the Cooper Union in New York, for example -- were published in full in the newspapers. People read, largely because there wasn't much else to do, except hang around the saloon. There wasn't a boob tube at the saloon, either. In the age before television and radio, vigorous debate -- and I mean vigorous -- was one of the things people did in the saloons. Instead of vegetating in front of the blue tit, people headed out for a drink, and argued politics -- creating the huge irony that in the years before the so-called "information age" Americans may well have been better informed.

Not only did you know what was in the paper, you knew what your neighbors thought about it -- including neighbors who didn't necessarily see things the same way you did. Oh, and what you saw in "the papers" would be more accurate. There were lots of them -- competing with each other. In fact, the word "press" as it is used in the first amendment meant literally, the printing press. The "press" was any asshole who owned one. While a printing press is somewhat of a "big ticket" item, it was not beyond the means of plenty of ordinary citizens -- who used their presses to speak their minds. A television station on the other hand, is another kettle of fish. There are only a finite number of available frequencies for one thing, and the capital requirements for your own TV station run into the tens of millions of dollars. There aren't very many people in your town with that kind of jack.

As for the "press" today, it quit meaning "ordinary citizens" over a hundred years ago, when Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst turned the newspaper business into "big business." Today, there is lots of blather in the pages of American newspapers about "fairness," and "objectivity" and "impartiality." Newspapers are supposed to be "unbiased," and reflect some sort of "neutral" point of view. That "objectivity" is the invention of the newspapers, themselves. It is marketing by news organizations who wish to cultivate the image of "trustworthiness" and "respectability" -- the better to sell more newspapers to a mass market.

Meanwhile, the tenderest sensibilities in that mass market have become the standard for what newspapers allow themselves to say. You see, if they upset anybody's sensibilities -- giving bourgeois wives a case of the "vapors" -- why, folks might cancel their subscriptions. Fewer eyeballs mean less ad revenue for corporate media giants with an insatiable appetite for money. Forget the cold hard facts, newspapers are much more interested in cold hard cash, the result of which is bland homogenization of opinion, and even of the facts that get reported. Newspapers are now "newspapers of record," and their editors are butthole buddies with every mover and shaker in town. "All the news that's fit to print," means all the news those movers and shakers -- the same movers and shakers who pay for advertising -- want the public to know about. "Objectivity?" Horseshit. Newspapers reflect the "point of view" of the rich, powerful and well-connected -- something newspaper editors never advertise, but which they never forget.

Television is even worse. Starting with the economics of it, you're talking tens of millions of dollars to set up your "microphone." You're talking about the necessity for a large techical support crew to run the thing -- people who have to eat. It is a recipe for being beholden to the advertising dollar, in a medium where advertising is necessarily expensive. In short, "newspapers of record" and television are the medium of corporate oligarchy, not democracy.

To further illustrate this, let's consider the actual nature of the medium. Television is a passive medium. It is linear for one thing and time bound for another. Though "Tivo" is changing that somwhat, it can only go so far. A program has a beginning and an end. You can't jump around, or at least not conveniently. And here's the thing. Nobody wants to jump around. They don't want to "fiddle" with it. They want to turn it on, recline under it's blue glow and "absorb" their news and entertainment. Television does not engage the viewer, it pacifiies him.

It doesn't necessarily have to be that way. Certain famous television shows -- The Twilight Zone and Star Trek, for the two best known examples -- did what good theatre is supposed to do, engaging people's minds and imaginations. Network executives didn't like those shows. "Too cerebral" they said. Right, that's why they have cult followings who watch them to this day -- generating many millions in advertising revenue for their syndicators. What those executives really meant was, "we don't want people thinking." Instead, they want them passively \lquote receiving' the messages of their advertisers. Because really, "critical thinking" is poison to Madison Avenue. Since Madison Avenue is paying for your television entertainment, they want that entertainment to compliment their advertising, not undermine it.

The result is that American television is the most banal, stultifying cultural shit ever devised by the mind of man. It exists to sell Budweiser -- the blandest, sorriest excuse for beer ever devised by the mind of man. It exists to serve consumers -- not citizens -- in a "one size fits all" marketplace, where the goal is to sell millions of mass produced copies of mediocrity. It is a medium of standardized products, and it needs standardized minds. Imagination and creativity have no place in the corporate workplace, the corporate marketplace, and therefore, they have no place in the TV production studio -- with one noteworthy exception. Television programming is so bad, and the mush minds of "Disneyland Americans" so inured to the "blue light," that advertising is the last refuge of American creativity, to the point that the commercials are getting better than the programs, which isn't saying much.

This is where our "Disneyland culture" comes from. It is a corporate mass-produced commodity, like every individual product it sells. Television created it. Television lulls the American working person to sleep every night, telling him fairytales about "heroic America," and carefully keeping any fact, any opinion, any point of view, any concept away from him that might cause some of his unused synapses to spring to life. All Disneyland Americans have to do is turn on the box, and find out what a wonderful land this is, and what wonderful corporate employers they have, and what wonderful mass produced products they can buy. Oh, and it also ladles out a heeping helping of irrational fear, oh and what awful "non-Disney approved" people are out there lurking.

Television does something else even worse. It isolates people. Corporate America has a propaganda pipeline straight into your living room. The more you "tune in" to the commercial messages, and to the frames and memes of the corporate media, the less you listen to your neighbors. Even if you see something on TV you don't like, what can you do about it? Talk back to your TV screen? In fact, many Americans do just that, only to hear their spouses say, "he can't hear you." And he can't. The talking head -- talking to you -- is in an windowless studio somewhere. He's talking to you, but he doesn't know you exist, and worse, he doesn't care.

Television creates more than mere "passivity," it creates "learned helplessness." I tells you about an "objective reality" that is no such thing. That reality is simply the editorial decisions of people just like you -- listening to their corporate paymasters, just like you. But they don't present themselves that way. They present their images as "reality," and teach you that your experience, your insight, your research, and your point of view are all worthless. It shows you other people who believe in their Disneyland reality, subtly suggesting that you must be "crazy" if you aren't happy in the cultural wasteland presented on television. Since you haven't had a meaningful conversation with your neighbors in years, if not decades, you assume that they must be "believers," and there must be something wrong with you, if you aren't. That's why Americans don't talk to each other anymore, except to the extent that they talk about what's on TV. Best not to let anyone know that you have "strange ideas" that aren't on TV. Your neighbors might think you a heretic, or something. Or more likely, they will think you are one of the "bogeymen," the news readers caution you to fear on a regular basis. Thanks to the media, Americans now fear their neighbors -- who they never get to know, aggravating the problem -- further reinforcing their isolation.

Then , about ten years ago, that started to change. Something really unexpected happened in Disneyland. We call it the "world wide web." The first thing you learn in this new medium is something really eye opening. For some, it might be disturbing. There is much more to reality than what is on TV. Not only are there other points of view, other stories not being told, and other opinions, they are held by educated, respectable, intelligent people. The web is a world where people talk to each other. The first thing they learn is that they are not isolated "weirdos" because they don't believe what they see on television. The second thing they learn is the awsome power of their own voice.

You can't talk back to your TV. You can barely talk back to your newspaper -- writing them "snail mail" letters, they might publish if your point of view matches the frame for the debate they have chosen. On the internet, you can talk back to everybody. In fact, web designers are learning a really interesting lesson these days. Blogs and other sites that have "comments" get more traffic than those that don't. People don't just want to hear from other people, they want to talk back. They want to be heard. That is why the size of the blogosphere doubles every year.

Television and newspapers give you "canned" news, information and opinion. They give you "McKnowledge." The blogosphere is a gourmet buffet. If there is a "marketplace of ideas" you can find it on the internet, not on your TV, and not in your newspaper. I open the op/ed page of my local newspaper from time to time. I just can't believe what I see there. A whole lot of nothing is what I see. Bland "safe" opinions, on the narrow facts that are acceptable to the nation's editors. Online I get the full spectrum of human opinion, from neonazi skinheads to Maoists, and everybody in between. I see facts -- backed up by solid research, and documentation -- mainstream news reporters never seem to learn about. I get to see television talking heads -- like Chris Matthews in the example I started with -- cut down to size.

Image mongering was what he was giving us, not rigorous reporting of the true facts. It was the blogosphere that let the air out of his balloon. Here's the other neat thing. It isn't bloggers whose "irresponsibility" is the problem. We police each other, as much as we police Chris Matthews. Remember, in this medium, people talk back. You post up some bullshit, you'll get called on it. It doesn't take long either. Drudge was the source of Matthews' bilge. Progressive bloggers ripped him a new asshole -- with the actual memo in question -- and they did it in a matter of hours.

But wait, there's more. Ultimately, that speed of response itself, is why cybernews will simply outcompete the traditional media. Your local newspaper is already obsolete. By the name it shows up on your doorstep in the mornings, it's stories are old. I keep up with the news in "real time." Fact checking, and counterspin occur in real time. It takes tradtional news organizations weeks and months to catch up to where bloggers are in a matter of hours. You see, they have limited numbers of people to chase down stories. We have millions of people, who fact check and counterspin for fun. The mainstream media can't possibly match the blogosphere in terms of speed or even accuracy. Oh, none of us individually are necessarily any more accurate than anyone else -- and there are plenty of charlatans and hucksters on the internet, you can believe it. But we fact check and challenge each other -- in "real time."

In other words, to stay relevant, news organizations are not going to be able to fight us, and they're not going to be able to match us. They're going to have to learn how to make use of us, or they are going to risk extinction. In fact, a new kind of "news organization" may emerge. "Reporters" may be obsolete -- with "citizen journalists" gathering the facts, much faster and more thoroughly than "professional reporters." News organizations may become editorial organizations -- synthesizing the raw data generated by citizens, and communicated in blog land. The new paradigm for the "media professional" will not be that of a "reporter" uncovering the facts. Many of those facts will come from citizens, or straight from the eyewitnesses. The media professional will be the guy who turns the facts into a "story," -- a narrative, rigorously challenged and debated.

As for the rightwing media wurlitzer, that's where we have some really good news. Their propaganda machine doesn't work in this medium. The nature of their propaganda machine is "media manipulation" -- using the characteristics of the media. They learned to do this as they built their organization, following the defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964. Their techniques are quite simple, once you know how to spot them. Image, sound bites and slogans -- repeated ad nauseum -- are the mainstays of rightwing political activism. Their slogans and catch phrases -- "less governemnt," "lower taxes," "family values" and "personal responsibility" -- should be well familiar, since every Republican activist makes it his business to insert them into the public conversation every chance he gets. Every rightwing letter you read in your local paper, usually contains one or more of these "soundbite" themes.

That propaganda machine uses and exploits the very weaknesses in traditional news organizations, that make those organizations uncompetitive with the blogosphere. New organizations have limited staffs and limited resources. They love the "soundbite journalism" the rightwing specializes in, because its cheap and easy. A reporter has only so many hours in the day to do his job. When some rightwing shill offers prepackaged facts and "framing," jounalists snap them right up. It saves them a lot of shoe leather, you see.

Bloggers have the same twenty four hour day as traditional reporters. But there are millions of us -- helping each other, backing each other up, checking each other's facts, alerting each other to facts we may have missed. In other words, the blogosphere can't be seduced with the kind of misleading, distorted picture rightwing activists regularly feed the tradtional media. For proof, just look at the "drumbeat to war" that seized the traditional media. That "drumbeat" never took root here. We saw through it from the beginning.

The rightwing propaganda effort is tailored to a media environment where people are barely paying attention. Their television commercials, for example, are not designed to be watched, let alone studied. They are designed to be "heard," while you're in the kitchen with the TV playing in the background. The same with the soundbites and slogans of their talking heads. They don't communicate in complete sentences. They use words and phrases, designed to drift into people's consciousness, no matter how vegetative or distracted they are, while the TV is playing. And remember, you can't talk back. Even if you hear a phrase or a reported "fact" that doesn't quite ring true, no one is around to flesh out exactly how your pocket is being picked.

Things are different online. You can talk back, so can other people, and you can hear their response. Television messages beam into your living room, where you receive them alone. The internet brings the voice of other people just like you into your home. Not only do you hear the "canned message," you hear the reaction. You get the "reality check" to which bloggers submit those slogans. If you hear "less government" for example, you can find your way right here, and read my deconstruction of that phrase http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/lessgovernment.htm -- it means "less government for the rich, not you."

Just look at the difference between conservative and progressive forums and blogs. Go to Free Republic , log in and post an objection to any of the horseshit they post over there. Watch how fast you get banned, and your post deleted. Now go to my forum [old forum, soon to be replaced by a new blog/forum]. I'll take on anybody. I don't even require you to register. Only one right-winger has ever stayed more than a few weeks. They come in and I mow \lquote em down. Here lately, the crew that hangs out with me pretty much handles them.

So ineffective are rightwing operatives in cyberspace, that over the past five or six months I have noticed a change in their tactics. They have pretty much quit arguing, head to head. Now they do things like "griefing," and masquerading as progressives, peddling the latest conspiracy theories. That doesn't work either. Remember, the internet is not friendly to "flabby" thinking, poor research and general hysteria. There are too many people to run stories down. Conspiracy theories don't hold up under the scrutiny, or at least the bullshit theories don't. The one's that hold water, won't die. The General Accounting Office, for example, just released a report giving credence to reports of the porous security in electronic voting machines.

Take a look at Newsmax, perhaps the largest rightwing news outlet on the net. What a piece of shit that place is. It is basically the latest news about Hillary and Ted Kennedy. If you want news about Scalito's judicial record, or Plamegate, or the latest Bush crony to "screw the pooch," don't go to Newsmax. They don't report any bad news about Republicans -- which seems to be the only news there is these days. The quality of online journalism is so poor at Newsmax, nobody outside of the far right pays the least bit of attention to them. The rightwing propaganda machine works on television. It is irrelevant in the blogosphere -- except to the extent that bloggers debunk what the rightwing does on television.

Maybe you have underestimated the influence of the progressive blogosphere -- or at least its potential. I am keenly aware that many progressives lament the lack of meaningful opposition to the Bush administration, and we are correct to a point. Until yesterday -- when Harry Reid, the Senate's Democratic leader forced the Republican Senate to move forward in its investigation of the Bush Administration's manipulation of intelligence -- we saw little evidence of any backbone from Congressional Democrats. We already know all about how the mainstream media has failed. But opposition to Dubya and his corrosive agenda is alive and well, right here in blogland. We online dissidents have a number of little appreciated, but fundamental strengths.

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