Long, thoughtful, must-read reflection on the growing love affair the media have with weblogging, from Turbulent Velvet. As stories about weblogging become more prevalent, he observes, “People are using a small subset of urbane and civilized weblogs in order to draw conclusions about both the medium and the sociology of blogging without acknowledging some far more ugly developments,” by which he means the attack blogs and in particular the “warblogs”. While I’d like to be complacent in the distinctions, as I read I became more and more disquieted by how much the things for which the warblogs are vilified in my circles also apply to the antiwarblogs of my circles:

“The right’s attack blogs are really a very efficient chain of routers, repeaters essentially, multiplying punditry about punditry. I can’t think of one that is adding to the sum of human knowledge.” Bingo. And not only that: there are as many if not more attack blogs out there as urbane dialogic, thoughtful ones. “What worries me is that the cumulative effect [of attack blogs] actually diminishes the value of news…as they drive the fact/opinion ratio down through the floor.”

I’m not comfortable reassuring myself that the repeater phenomenon and the degradation of signal-to-noise ratio are any more endemic to the conservatives than the progressives. I’m not sure if TV is troubled by this when he attempts to pull the following rabbit out of the hat — that it’s more courageous to blog in dissent against the prevailing norms, like support for the War-on-Terrorism®, than in lockstep support of the status quo. As a fervent dissenter, I’d love to think I’m taking an illustrious, courageous stand, but it worries me how easy this is when I’m preaching to the converted. If you don’t like my cynical critique of everything under the sun, I know you won’t be reading FmH regularly for long no matter if I’m the most thoughtful, literate, erudite weblogger on the planet.

There’s very little crosstalk; I’m disappointed that the warbloggers don’t find me to get under their skins enough to flame back, with the exception of Dan Hartung, an early supporter and friend in the weblogging community, and even that dialogue didn’t last long. (They surely do lambast some of the thoughtful, passionate, leftist bloggers out there; why aren’t I on their radar screens? Am I just too much off the beaten path, without sufficient visibility? Or not worthy of replying to?) In this sense, the weblogging community is not at all seeming like the digital equivalent of the speakers’ corner in a pluralistic society it is sometimes made out to be. More often, it is seeming like a sad reminder of our atomization and solipsism. So what do I want here? to find comfort in a likeminded countercultural community? to have some influence if I’m ever, for a moment, thoughtful and original enough that I can transcend the usual sanctimoniousness of my dissenting views? to provoke a fight and unleash my reservoir of rage against the machine? to surpass mere passive whining and help build a vigorous opposition movement again in this nation of sheep? I think so, at least a little, in each instance. ’60’s and ’70’s lefties like myself, with the experience of inhabiting a viable countercultural and politically dissenting context, have not thought through the challenges and opportunities to community-building that the digital age provides. The weblogging world should be a deliberate part of that…

But I’m not sure I’m really talking about, narrowly defined, political dissent, with which through my life I’ve had quite a dialectical relationship. When I started this, long ago in a galaxy far away (everyone says that 9-11 was a demarcation line, but for me it was only one of twin ‘hits’, along with the theft of the Presidential election the year before, that have moved me — us — into an irrevocably changed alien world) I was in a relatively apolitical period in my life and FmH had a meandering, more eclectic flavor. I said here, with superior disdain, that I couldn’t be bothered to expend much energy or attention on the Presidential campaign, that there couldn’t be much of a difference regardless which of the Republicrats bought the Office (and I couldn’t get behind Nader’s impaired judgment in any sense…). Now I think at times FmH’s focus has become a bit too narrowly, obsessively, built around political criticism. Not that I’ve had some kind of religious conversion to membership in the Liberal Democratic Church or anything, but just because Bush is so unbelievably bad, such an execrable, befitting figurehead for what is so wrong with American politics and modern life. I am pulled vigorously, too vigorously, to reading the political news first, and often never getting beyond it. I never watch The West Wing (or virtually any television, for that matter), but last night I walked into the room and caught a little vignette in which a White House staffer is amazed that a fearsome political reporter hasn’t taken offense at some deception he suffered in covering the White House. He explains, to paraphrase, that he hates his beat, hates being “a stenographer,” and that she can’t imagine how little he cares about the trivial machinations of Palace intrigue. Sometimes I feel like that…

So, increasingly, I hope what I write here is more than just easy cheap shots and variations on one, obvious, theme. (On the other hand, when I read how well it’s done by some, e.g. blowback, cursor, ethelor rc3, off the top of my head, I’m inspired that there is a quality way to do polit.crit….) Still, I hope to get a bit away from this groove, if I can let go. Who was it who said, surveying the impact of the Shrub hegemony even before 9-11, that the only sane response was to resurrect beatnik counterculture again? It seems even more relevant as we seem to be slipping into this Orwellian age of permanent amorphous war footing and increasing autocratic intrusion. Yet these are not new phenomena. While what we’re subjected to now is unprecedented in magnitude rather than in kind — an opportunist perfection of age-old tendencies toward mind-control and autocratic rule by whatever memes are handy. A deeper, more fundamental critique of consensus reality, a critique of the cultural trance, the perennial human susceptibility to self-delusion, alienation and submissiveness, is called for. That’s what ‘Beat’ must mean. That’s a community to get behind. A political stance flows out of that, as a subsidiary, unavoidably. [Although it might be worthwhile postponing a retreat from politics until we have organized massive resistance to the momentum to attack Iraq… ] In any case, thanks, Velvet, for allowing me to riff off your thoughts; it’s been a useful reflection to me, especially if it means anything at all to you all. (I’m sure the warbloggers would think it doesn’t…)

“I refuse to be intimidated by reality anymore. After all, what is reality anyway? Nothin’ but a collective hunch.” –Lily Tomlin (parenthetically, there’s an appreciation of the much-beloved Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe over at the bitter shack; and a happy birthday, Brooke!)