I'm particular tired of the heated battles about whether the Democrats
are as bad as the Republicans. Sure, there are plenty of bad Dems, but the Repubicans have set a pretty high (low) bar for evil. (Gore as bad as Bush????) And some Democrats are pretty good, such as Dennis Kucinich and many members of the 60-strong Progressive Caucus. Millions of grassroots Democrats are progressive. In any case, it's worthwhile
to work within the Democratic Party to push it leftwards -- as PDA does. We need to push the Democrats leftwards while also being open to a
third-party candidate should a viable one arrive. Building a
third-party from scratch is a mighty task. The question whether the Dems are as bad as the Republicans seems unproductive to me, a distraction. I wonder, even, whether conservatives don't promote division on the left by harping on that question.
What we need on the Left are: the moral high ground and the ability to get our message heard. We need to speak with a louder voice. We need to stop the circular firing squad. We need a strong progressive media. We need good protest music. And we need more clever parody like Bill Maher (click here) and like "If Stephen Hawking Lived in England" and Other Great Points the Left Doesn't Want You to Know.
Humor and music can play a role similar to religion: they appeal to our emotions, not just to our reasoning mind. Progressives need to realize that voters usually decide based on feelings and personalities, not ideas. Unfortunate but largely true.
A few final words about getting our message heard.
Compared to the run-up to the Iraq War, when the news media were almost unanimous in their deference to the Bush Administration's propaganda in favor of war, the news media of today are doing a better job at presenting both sides of the story. I'm not saying it's good enough! Yes, the single-payer message has been suppressed to a large extent, but reading my daily newspaper, the Seattle Times, I sense a genuine effort to point out distortions and to give coverage to opposing viewpoints (e.g., in AP stories).
So, it is not impossible to influence the mainstream news media.
As for building our own, competing progressive news media... I've often wondered: aren't there, like, tens of millions of progressive Americans willing to donate, say, $5 a month. That's $60 a year per person. If we can find just five million Americans willing to donate that much, that would be $300,000,000 a year. Plus, I'm sure some wealthy donors would chip in. Plus there'd be ads. You can build an awful lot of news media with that kinda money.
With the demise of local newspaper and the rise of the Internet, online journalism is ours to master -- if we can figure out a way to overcome silly progressive infighting and if we can coordinate the activities of various progressive organizations.
What we need on the Left are: the moral high ground and the ability to get our message heard. We need to speak with a louder voice. We need to stop the circular firing squad. We need a strong progressive media. We need good protest music. And we need more clever parody like Bill Maher (click here) and like "If Stephen Hawking Lived in England" and Other Great Points the Left Doesn't Want You to Know.
Humor and music can play a role similar to religion: they appeal to our emotions, not just to our reasoning mind. Progressives need to realize that voters usually decide based on feelings and personalities, not ideas. Unfortunate but largely true.
A few final words about getting our message heard.
So, it is not impossible to influence the mainstream news media.
As for building our own, competing progressive news media... I've often wondered: aren't there, like, tens of millions of progressive Americans willing to donate, say, $5 a month. That's $60 a year per person. If we can find just five million Americans willing to donate that much, that would be $300,000,000 a year. Plus, I'm sure some wealthy donors would chip in. Plus there'd be ads. You can build an awful lot of news media with that kinda money.
With the demise of local newspaper and the rise of the Internet, online journalism is ours to master -- if we can figure out a way to overcome silly progressive infighting and if we can coordinate the activities of various progressive organizations.
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