Journal snjoseph's Journal: Votes, Bits, and Bullshit 6
The collapse of fin de siecle Cyberspace into the post-millenial Blogosphere is really an example of tragedy becoming farce; or, more accurately, farce becoming dirty limericks. Most blogs are defunct, most non-defunct blogs are illiterate, and most parsable blogs are screamingly dull. There's less entropy on the Citizen's Band than the Blogosphere, and no one's going around like an idiot claiming that a CB operator is worth ten voters.
But even among the blogger crowd, the politicos take the cake for fatuous, self-important techno-utopianism beyond the bounds of all reason. Even the typical teenie smearing her diary-feelings all over her LiveJournal has more real social weight than MyDD or Kos--at least she can deliver decisive blows to her classmates, boyfriends, etc. while the Herculean efforts of all the liberal bloggers have produced only a miserable electoral drubbing.
The Blogosphere was united for Dean; Dean went down in flames. They shifted to Kerry; Kerry ignored them. They shilled and screamed for him anyway; he lost. They demanded McAuliffe be fired; he was retained. They demanded a fighter for the Senate leadership; they got Reid, an inarticulate ghoul who has to continually reassure people that his close personal friendship with the President will not interfere with being his top political enemy. Now Kos is on about being a Reform Democrat, which I guess means someone who makes a lot of irritating noise before quietly slinking back into line. We used to call that just a Democrat.
Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto that "[t]he bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production." Bourgeois intellectuals, in turn, are constantly mistaking this revolutionizing with the social revolution, and every new invention becomes an opportunity to declare all hitherto existing social contradictions liquidated. This is either not true (eg, computers), obviously not true (eg, the Internet), or transparently untrue (eg, blogs). Techno-utopianism exists generally because it serves the useful purpose of avoiding all the sticky questions of political and social power by declaring them to be already--or very nearly--overcome in practice.
As an object lesson, let us examine who put the Berkman in Berkman Center. As is usually the case in the Ivy League, the Center was named after people who made the supreme intellectual achievement of forking over the dough. $5.4 million was chump change to a New Economy capitalist in 1997, but academics are trained to worship even a modest fortune.
From whence the Berkmans' cheddar? Until 2000, the Berkmans owned The Associated Group, an investment vehicle which owned, among other things, a big chunk of the phone company Teligent, mainly known these days for going totally and spectacularly bankrupt. Somehow, though, the Berkmans made out more than alright. As the Washington Business Journal wrote:
Almost forgotten by outsiders, the Berkman family of Pittsburgh walked away from Teligent with $1 billion last year. The family...sold their large stake in Vienna-based Teligent to Liberty Media in a deal that closed in January 2000, just two months before Teligent began its painful slide toward bankruptcy....
What fine luck. Or was it just luck?
Teligent insiders say the Berkmans may have cost Teligent $500 million in additional financing in November 1999. That extra money, which would have come from Microsoft and a Dallas investment bank called Hicks Muse Tate & Furst, could have sustained Teligent through the current downturn, executives say.
A former Teligent executive close to the deal says the Berkmans blocked the $500 million in financing because it would have diluted their pending deal with Liberty Media.
"It was clear that Teligent would need more money, but the Berkmans wouldn't let them do it," the executive says.
These clever fiscal manuevers cost two thousand people their jobs.
The way you can tell if a revolution has really occurred will be to visit the Berkmans: if they occupy a modest corner of the homeless shelter into which their mansion has been converted, you may call it revolution; otherwise, don't believe the hype.
Until then, a toast: To Internet and Society! May never the twain should meet!
you, of all people (Score:2)
In this country we make sure that people have the equal opportunity to vote, whether they come from a poor precinct or a rich precinct. It's not just a good idea, it's the law.
If people like you would quit your fractious whining long enough to cooperate with those who agree with you, then maybe, just maybe, the left would grow.
Re:you, of all people (Score:1)
Sorry man, Kerry lost [socialistworker.org]. And if you want to talk about voting inequities, my candidate [votenader.org] was screaming about it from Day One, while your candidate was employing them to kick my candidate off the ballot.
Re:you, of all people (Score:2)
Look, you can say all you want abut the popular vote, but it's not how we elect presidents. The law is the law. I'd be the first to support a national instant-runoff/choice/preference presidential and full proportional representation for everything else, and/or direct democracy and/or anything that I had to do to get a progressive agenda in place.
But until you get a fully populated
Re:you, of all people (Score:1)
Once again, who is requesting the recounts? Which campaigns are concretely doing the work to stand up for democratic principles? Nader, Badnarik, and Cobb. The Kerrycrats won't touch it because they're afraid of making Bush mad at them.
Getting Big Ket
Re:you, of all people (Score:2)
Neat! (Score:1)