Century Politics
This is the 201st post to the Arclist. Congratulations to all who've been on this ride with me since December 29th, 2001 and welcome to all who've joined since. I'm reprinting below that first day's post, delivered in a time when we were all somewhat dazed by the events of three months before. The drums of violence were beating and many of us were feeling horrified at the implacable drift toward war.
Where are we now and where are we headed four years after post number one?
As far as I can tell we're in the initial stages of a civil war. Our nation is as severely polarized as it has been since our last war over union and disunion. Its not likely to matter significantly who wins this election, because both sides will no doubt continue to escalate their attempts to neutralize the other. This war will not be fought over geographical boundaries, but over fundamentally different views of the world and our relationship with it. The whole world indeed is watching and will take part in the struggle, which is shaping up to be simultaneously a civil war and a world wide confllict. We will either make it a struggle shared by all toward a better planetary future, or waste everyone's precious time as we indulge in a perpetual battle with our own fears. Whatever the outcome of this war, the current political campaign is the moment in history when electronic media became fully engaged on every level, from individual and personal communication to mass campaigns and network propaganda. Yes, we will have to struggle, and the outcome is not certain, but the biggest battles will be fought on new ground, in a world that we've created out of digital pixels and the elements of sound, image and word.
This week is marked by a successful effort by the public to stand against a major media conglomerate that intended to force its political agenda upon consumers. The battle is a harbinger of the politics of the 21st century. This is not the first attempt by people to influence the mainstream media by means of the Internet. The right wing has been doing it successfully for years, initiating electronic campaigns that have caused previously respectable television news organizations to pull back from serious investigative journalism and cowed commercial networks and television stations into canceling programs that offered contrary views. The right has managed to bend public discourse decisively toward their point of view while the left has until now been swept outside the door to complain about media bias.
The affair involving Sinclair Broadcasting shows that the scales have become more balanced. Progressives have gotten motivated and organized to begin exercising their considerable power on the Web. Whoever wins the upcoming election, the criminal negligence and betrayal of the Bush administration can be partially credited with providing the incentive and passion necessary for people to start taking back the commons. Many credit the Howard Dean campaign and its offshoots for opening people's eyes to the political opportunities of the Internet. The seeds of action however go back at least to last years confluence of groups as diverse as the NRA and the Greens, who came together across the country to resist the suspension of media ownership rules by the FCC. Alerted by the Democrats on the Federal Communications Commission and partially spearheaded on television and the Internet by Bill Moyers through his NOW programs and groups like Move-On, citizens got together in an effective campaign that managed to break through numerous obstructions and legislative minefields to interrupt another massive corporate makeover of government regulations.
When the Sinclair network decided this month to force its stations to air the anti-Kerry propaganda piece all of the groups and forces that had been coalescing over these two or three years of presidential campaigning and resistance to Bush policies managed to gather all of the elements into a highly coordinated campaign that focused letter writers, consumers, stockholders, pension groups, legal agencies and activists of all varieties upon a single goal. The object was, if not to stop the network from violating the public trust, then to make it hurt financially as much as possible. Boycotts, legal challenges, the loss of advertisers, the fall of stock value, the firing of network executives, and most fundamentally the public exposure of Sinclair's intentions and behavior caused the owners to retreat from their original plans.
Here is a model for political struggle in the foreseeable future. Strategies and tactics can be focused, altered and coordinated on both national and international fronts very quickly and affectively. Campaigns can be directed for or against particular issues and particular candidates overnight. Funds can be raised and pressure can be brought to bear on whatever targets are chosen. Just as the far right used its base in the evangelical and Baptist church communities to bring its agenda to the White House, the forces of resistance will draw on local, national and international networks of activists, finding its base not in the church but on the personal computer. The Internet is now the public square, and it covers the whole planet.
I'll see you there.
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Arclist Post #1:
From: melcher@nets.com
Subject: Cities On Fire
Date: December 29, 2001 1:58:00 PM MST
To: melcher@nets.com
As we creep up on the New Year I grow increasingly weary of being told by politicians and propagandists what "we" the American people have learned over this past year. The whole world has changed we are told, but outside the once protected borders of our fairytale I don't think things have changed very much at all. From the images and words broadcast over our national media I have to conclude that Americans have learned very little, other than to be more afraid. There is nothing I find reassuring in the faces of George and Laura (brought to you by Enron, Inc.) and Rudy (brought to you by Time Warner) found on the covers of every supermarket magazine. I keep wondering who is this great "we" promulgated by every talking head and pundit from Susan Stamberg to Charlie Rose.
When we are told that the best way to perform our patriotic duty is to go on consuming as if nothing will ever change us or slow us down, I only see more disillusion ahead. The symbol we currently wave in the face of the world's poor is an enormous gas guzzling SUV proudly displaying the Stars and Stripes from it's antennas. Our nation in relation to much of the rest of the world resembles a spoiled teenage bully who refuses to grow up, stoked on drugs and arrogance and technology. Our response to attacks on what we see as our inalienable right to consume is to declare war on anyone standing in our way.
I keep hearing about the responsibility of the world's only 'superpower'. What does that mean? It's as if the only thing necessary for world conquest is to declare yourself the winner and then to kick the ass of anyone who disagrees. Like our surrogate Isreal in the Middle East, we've become the co-creators of our own worst nightmare. My best wish for this country in the New Year is that we wake up from the tailored national fantasy bought and paid for by the corporate powers now in charge. If not, we are likely to encounter more horrible lessons from the real world.
Wed Dec 19, 2001
Cities on Fire
Look up
It's gone
They are gone
All the people
All the concrete
All the glass
All the metal
All the money
All the lunch crowds
All the car exhausts
All the noise
Only the silent hole
the arc lights
filling the emptiness
with emptiness
We act as if something we do
will change it all
nothing will change
it will be no more
it will never be again
When I was very young
the cities burned
thirty years ago
instead of crumbling steel monuments
there were burning wooden tenements
ruined neighborhoods
armies patrolling the streets at midnight
in American cities
the streets since knocked down
to build steel towers
over the graves of neighborhoods
and memories
of slave quarters and refugee camps
and all the places where furies dwell
We built the towers
to show a nation[base ']s soul
Did we think the furies would go away
forgotten like the ghosts of empty houses?
They came back to us
didn't they?
They returned in the dark screaming faces
falling in burning towers
hurtled in suffocating vertigo
like the fall of empires
The furies always come back
Now we search for them in ruins
we try to torture them out of the earth
like screams
like shadows
as if the earth created them
but they are ours
Have you ever seen a city on fire?
11:13:59 PM 
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