I Hear Politics are on the Interweb Now

Part of the fun of the Internet is that you can self-publish without ever even seeing the graduate student in Eastern Philosophy at your local Kinko's. Never have to ask about different bindings, four color offset versus black and white, etc. I can't imagine the folks at Darpa and the development of Arpanet and even Mosaic ever expected the primary uses to be porn, videos of people getting hit in the testes with footballs, fantasy sports, and instant messaging the next dorm room, more likely they were thinking of particle physics and the like. Television was supposed to replace teachers as well.

My usual genius post structure is pointing out the complete obvious, make an obscure reference and then make fun of something in popular culture. Which of course makes the Internet a perfect medium for me, or else I just watch C-Span and talk to my three month old daughter, my wife and I are pretty sure her first word will either be "dooshbag" or "jackass" due to the number of times both Becky and I use it in relation to politicians and mediawhores. But being able to "blog" is a chance for me to just free write and to chronicle my own descent into madness as I age into a cranky old man.

I just put "political blog" into Google and there were over 24 million possible entries, now of course this doesn't mean there are 24 Million political blogs but even all of these references are amazing for something that didn't even exist 10 years ago. This is the true evolution of retail politics. There are few bloggers who have a huge influence on opinions or sites for that matter outside of Drudge (not technically a science fiction blog but close and a necessary read) which has had a real influence on American politics or the rehashing of limbaugh, malkin, coulter or other denizens of idiot central.

So there is a great decentralization of ideas which often gets networked through forums or larger blogs that are determined usually by wear the politics lie on the spectrum. You are likely to find yourself anywhere from a Sparticist web log to a group of white supremacists. People who lie somewhere near the center are less likely to post, I guess we're too busy taking care of our golden retrievers or something or blogging about recipes.

I get a little too agitated when I read blogs, especially when they are related to my field of educational policy, not blogs about curriculum or pedagogy or anything but when people come up with simple solutions to very complicated problems, want to get rid of standards or something like that. I sometimes stop and wonder if this is just the voice of those that choose not to speak. Kind of like people who are wealthy, privileged children at colleges and universities who believe they are the revolutionary vanguard of working people. Likely not. Just people with time on their hands and the ability to keyboard.

I get irritated when I read things I know aren't true, and when people just run with the first thing that strikes their fancy, true or not, wishing so hard for it to be true that they convince themselves. Sources are shady and shaky, sometimes going to the point of intelligent people believing Snapple is owned by the KKK due to the Kosher K on it's label or Tommy Hilfiger doesn't want black folks wearing his clothes. When politics becomes urban legend.

The timing or money to buy a URL can be a plus. And now all the established political entities have blogs of some kind. However, the short attention span of activists cannot be held by a static news broadcast, print news paper or polite discourse. Which makes us have the thousands upon thousands of egocentric people like myself who just communicate in this didactic way to virtually no readers. It's alright for me though, I'm not the tip of the spear for any political revolution.

The new devalpatrick.com is a bus station full of this weirdness. It is a bizarre attempt at the much promised public engagement of the Patrick campaign. It is what passes for public engagement in the blogosphere. There is no real discourse or discussion, just a list of "ideas,"mostly having to do with one constituency or another getting screwed. (see the Populism post) Much of it has to do with funding one program or another and how more funds are needed or the converse, give me my money back, where's my tax rollback.

It's a perverse albeit fascinating look at what constitutes public engagement nowadays, no polite discourse, no discussion, no agreeing to disagree, usually a series of statements filled with self-serving logic, frequent misspellings and often inaccurate looks at public policy. The capability to "keyboard commando" has been enabled by the relatively cheap price of Internet access, the education, class and capacity to interact in positive manners has not.