Category: Meta

One of the biggest problems of the Netroots remains its inability to take criticism. Consider this post from Matt Stoller:

Frank Rich wrote a column called ‘The Good Germans’.  He spends a bunch of column inches lamenting how ‘we’ have let the war go on, and are as complicit as the Germans during the Nazi regime.  Here’s the nub:

As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.

And yet, last month, here’s Frank Rich.

Americans are looking for leadership, somewhere, anywhere. At least one of the Democratic presidential contenders might have shown the guts to soundly slap the “General Betray-Us” headline on the ad placed by MoveOn.org in The Times, if only to deflate a counterproductive distraction.

Rich is operating according to the rules of the media elite.  It’s ok to whine about the problem, but try to do anything about it and you’re getting very much uncivil, sir.

Um Matt, it was not the incivility, it was the stupidity. The Netroots’ problem on Move On, indeed, regarding ANY criticism of the Netroots, is the uncheckable impulse to attack the criticizer instead of considering the point. Matt might be interested to learn that Frank Rich was harshly critical of General Petraeus in repeated columns, including in the very column cited by Stoller.

It so happens that I myself was subject to criticism in a Frank Rich column:

Oh my goodness!

I got home a little while ago from a morning at church and then a barbecue at my cousin’s house with the whole family here in Chicago. She lives close by. I started reading the blogs, like I do most days – Docudharma, Daily Kos, and then pff.

Today I clicked on a diary titled “Who is pinche – loafano?” at pff and I saw my Docudharma username has been included in a poll. The poll asks the question, “Who is pinche _ loafano? And lo and behold I am leading in the poll with two votes. OK ,that’s not many, but still!

here’s the link : http://politicalfles…

My goodness. I’m figuring the author of the diary at pff, pinche _ loafano, saw my name in Jay Elias’s diary here yesterday. Jay was responding to p _ l’s diary falsely claiming that Jay had left Docudharma.  He must have used my name in the poll cause it’s sort of unusual.

It’s a mistake imo to talk about “the netroots” as if it’s a something instead of many things, because it gets thinking about what can be done off on the wrong foot right from the start. It’s like saying “the American citizenry is at a crossroads.” Um, OK, but not particularly useful.

The leftosphere blogs perform five main functions that I can see:

I have a .net head and a .org heart.
I am trying to transform a .com game using .gov players.

The nature of American politics is highly competitive. It is not rule by the majority. It is rule by those who can take power and dig the deepest trenches to defend it. Getting an office is a series of rivalries and victories. At each step another 49% of the voices get pushed aside, and the remaining 51% go on to the next divisive round. Tiny factions get the spoils.

This paradigm of competition is such a deep part of the structure, that to generate participation I sometimes have to cloak ‘all of us together’ projects in the language of ‘us vs. them.’

I think there is a larger point to be made here about cooperative blog projects, the ecology of bloggers each doing their own thing, and the underlying competitiveness of Left vs. Right, Dem vs Rep, DLC vs Progressive, and my blog vs. their blog.

I am not sure that I can fully make that point, but I will nibble around the edges while telling you what I am doing to mess with the system in the Colorado 2nd Congressional District ‘Coats and Cans‘ straw poll.

pfiore8 asked me to take her place this week for Writing in the Raw.  So here are some of my thoughts on poetry and a few suggestions for writing quick sketches followed by poems when I tried the exercises.

I was listening to the new American Poet Laureate, Charles Simic, last night on The News Hour as he was interviewed by Jeffery Brown and he had some interesting commentary on poetry and the writers of such.  I like to collect some of the better quotes of poets trying to explain their craft and what it means to them and society in general.  No one quote ever fits all possibilities of poetry, but there are several that resonate with me:

Poetry is just the evidence of life.  If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.  ~Leonard Cohen

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.  ~Robert Frost

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.  ~Carl Sandburg

The poem is the point at which our strength gave out.  ~Richard Rosen

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.  ~Novalis

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.  ~Carl Sandburg

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.  ~Thomas Gray

Meditations on the cause of suffering.