KosKids

Henry Farrell in the Boston Review has decided to discuss the influence and power of the so-called Netroots movement which clusters around the website Daily Kos . His article is interesting and well worth reading for anyone who wishes to understand how Kos and other liberal bloggers atrios or Jerome Armstrong have attacked the current Democratic Party establishment over their bipartisanship, general ceding of space to the Republican noise machine and ignoring of various state which can’t be won. These blogger have definitely challenged the cozy Washington atmosphere of consensus between consultants like Bob Shrum who can’t help losing every time and politicians like John Kerry who have lived their political lives, accepting their minority status.

There is something in these blogs that reminds a student of American politics of the highly controversial spin doctors of the early Clinton years, the rajun cajun Jimmy Carville for instance, in their attention to Republican attacks and repudiating them and their general aggressiveness they fit the template well. Farrell thinks that they need to do more, to recapture the agenda of debate and reframe it. The problem is that Kos and his Kossacks are never going to do that- its fascinating that in politics today we frequently here about how x side has run out of ideas or how y side has lots of ideas but never about what those ideas are. Kos has no ideas about policy- he seldom expresses anything apart from opposition to Republicans. What he has is ideas about how to run and win elections- that’s as true of so many of these bloggers. To reannex the framing of ideas in part what you need is a rapid rebuttle machine- which is what these guys do well- they do rebutt and use evidence to good effect, look for example at the George Allen racism affair in Virginia almost entirely constructed by bloggers.

Political success and political ideas are not tied together. Merely looking at the magazines that Blogs like Kos are going to replace magazines like the American Spectator but never going to be able to replace a magazine like Foreign Affairs. (One reason for the hatred expressed at places like the New Republic for Kos et al is a sign that they see a competitor which lays bare the fact that that was what these magazines were about, not serious ideas). What is fascinating is the way that on both sides of the Atlantic the Blogosphere has become the netroots- whether Kos or Guido Fawkes- the main icons of the blogosphere are not blogs about ideas but blogs about tactics. The interesting thing about this is what it reveals about the people who read blogs- most of them come convinced to Blogs and read there the tactics of getting their message about there, the blogs in that sense are the equivalent of seminaries sending missionaries out into the communities. What Kos and his comrades reccomend is not a particular policy position but an ethics of evangelisation. Curiously Farrell reccomends them to begin doing other things- ie reconstructing the argumentative space in which politics takes place, but this account shows in one sense they are doing it, they are becoming a democratic noise machine, but on the other they can’t replicate the work done by Milton Freidman and F.A. Hayek.

These bloggers are not manufacturers of truth, they are brand managers for what they think is the truth.

[music] sgt. pepper’s still tops

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has been voted Britain’s favourite No.1 album. With more than 200,000 votes cast, only 201 separated The Beatles’ 1967 hit from Michael Jackson’s Thriller in second place. The nationwide survey of music fans was commissioned by BBC Radio to mark the 50th anniversary of the official UK album chart. U2’s Joshua Tree was third, with Rumours by Fleetwood Mac taking fourth place. Interesting – I always thought Abbey Road was much better and Thriller was vastly over-rated. Tastes differ.

[gruzia] not worth commenting on

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who held talks with ministers from the NATO alliance Friday in Slovenia, complained bitterly about Georgia’s actions in this matter of the so-called spies. Ivanov charged that Georgia was provoking a conflict to try to oust Russian forces from two breakaway parts of Georgia that pledge loyalty to Moscow. Precisely. This is just a beat-up for political ends. Ignore it, like the Orange Revolution which turned out to be the Orange Power Grab.

Harry’s Place, Iraq and Galloway

Two interesting and worthwhile items on Harry’s Place today- one marks a new Iraqi Opinion Poll which shows the hostility of the Iraqi people to both the occupation and to Al Quaeda. Another item disloses the latest antics of George Galloway who having expressed his pride in knowing Saddam Hussein now beleives that there is no genocide in Darfur, ummm.

[music] sgt. pepper’s still tops

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has been voted Britain’s favourite No.1 album. With more than 200,000 votes cast, only 201 separated The Beatles’ 1967 hit from Michael Jackson’s Thriller in second place. The nationwide survey of music fans was commissioned by BBC Radio to mark the 50th anniversary of the official UK album chart. U2’s Joshua Tree was third, with Rumours by Fleetwood Mac taking fourth place. Interesting – I always thought Abbey Road was much better and Thriller was vastly over-rated. Tastes differ.

[gruzia] not worth commenting on

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who held talks with ministers from the NATO alliance Friday in Slovenia, complained bitterly about Georgia’s actions in this matter of the so-called spies. Ivanov charged that Georgia was provoking a conflict to try to oust Russian forces from two breakaway parts of Georgia that pledge loyalty to Moscow. Precisely. This is just a beat-up for political ends. Ignore it, like the Orange Revolution which turned out to be the Orange Power Grab.

[strange flora] mexican jumping beans

Probably the most interesting thing about Mexican jumping bean shrubs are the remarkable “beans” that jerk and roll about with seemingly perpetual motion. It is doubtful (or very rare) that they actually “jump” above the surface of the ground, but they can certainly roll and tumble along in different directions. Just as pineapples are not apples and peanuts are not nuts, the jumping bean is not a bean, nor is it a seed. It is actually … continued here.

[voyages] nouvelle zélande

Malgré la distance lointaine qui la sépare de l’Europe et ses conditions climatiques parfois moins chaudes qu’en Australie, la Nouvelle-Zélande reste un pays fantastique. Je n’aurai pas eu la chance de beaucoup voyagerdans l’île du nord mais là aussi j’espère que ce n’est que partie remise. Suivez.

Appealing Apocalypse

The New York Metro magazine carries an interesting report on apocalyptic thinking in this issue , the writer argues that apocalyptic thinking of the times is far from unusual and its preponderance in the US reflects the age of the baby boomer generation (a seductive idea which doesn’t explain the global reach of apocalyptic ideas say to Iran where a quarter of the population is under the age of 14 and the median age is 24 (source C.I.A. World Fact Book )).

The predominance of apocalyptic thinking on the left and the right reflects in this blog’s opinion two interesting ideas. The first of which is that religious discourse has continued to dominate the West’s imagination despite religion’s obvious fall from grace- we are affected more by our Christian backgrounds than our secular pretences. The second though explains I think the apocalyptic appeal- one of the interesting characteristics of human depression is what is called catastrophising, the ability to understand every crisis as a terminal one instead of as a minor interruption- as a fatal flaw rather than as a problem to be overcome. In many senses the model of apocalyptic thinking is something to be sceptical of because it reinforces so many of our perceptions about the world we privately live in.

[foreign office] the only word is treason

On the Afghanistan debacle, please muse one more time on Capt. Leo Docherty’s words, as he described how British troops managed to capture the Taliban stronghold but then had nothing to offer by way of development: “The military is just one side of the triangle,” he said. “Where were the Department for International Development and the Foreign Office?” As forces sat back with little to offer, the Taliban hit back and British troops there were bunkered up and under daily attack. “Now the ground has been lost and all we’re doing in places like Sangin is surviving. It’s completely barking mad.” More than one blogger has written about the pro-muslim, anti-jewish bias of the FCO and if you put that together with Docherty’s words and if you accept both as containing at least a grain of truth, then what we have here is nothing short of actual ‘treason’ somewhere within the FCO. Someone knowingly allowed this to occur and is thus betraying the British army in favour of a foreign group of insurgents. How else can the military interpret it?