by Jay Hazen, Reading Liberally Denver
I arrived at YearlyKos 2007 uninitiated to the blogosphere, ready to tell a tightly knit, politically literate community about Reading Liberally, a new offshoot of Living Liberally. As I shuffled from O'Hare and through the hotel lobby at two in the morning of Thursday, my iPod narrated Al Gore's The Assault on Reason, one of the first selections of Reading Liberally Denver and a book I am now already re-reading. I saw geographically diverse nodes of the netroots lounging in armchairs, putting faces to very familiar names, and thought about what a friend told me about Yearly Kos: "If, God forbid, a bomb went off in Chicago's McCormick Center it would take movement progressives a decade or more to recover." When I saw this community in person, I felt like I was a part of the antidote to something discussed in chapter 5 of Gore's book: The Assault on the Individual.
You could say that the idea of individual dignity acquired new meaning with the new accessibility of information that arrived in the wake of the printing press.
Further:
The Information Revolution that began in the late fifteenth century progressively substituted the force of thought for force of arms in the political economy of Europe.
The force of thought is an operative phrase that Gore credits with Enlightenment theories of individual liberty and their objective (radical at the time) to quell the pernicious influence of rivalrous nation-states on the lives of everyday people. This expression can be seen in the writings of revolutionaries like Tom Paine, who wrote, "Man is not the enemy of man but through the medium of a false system of government."
Yet military conscription and mercantilism by force are not the problems of our age. Power manifests itself in many ways. John Kenneth Galbraith mentions in The Anatomy of Power that the last several centuries have seen a transition from a compulsory, hording, protectionist states to market driven economies. The shifts have been accompanied by a change in the exercise of power, valuing compensation as "far more civilized, greatly more consistent with the liberty and dignity of the individual" than the use of force. Yet organization remains one of the primary sources of power, and in the Information Age that organization is media presence.
Gore is turned off that the high cost of television "commercials has radically increased the role of money in American politics-and the influence of those who contribute it." The role of robber baron wealth is enhanced further with the barriers to entry and expensive operations that have resulted in massive media consolidation "by an ever smaller number of larger corporations that now effectively control the majority of television programming in America." Gore himself mentions Galbraith's earlier work The Affluent Society, which says that advertising manufactures wants and needs and warps the demands of consumers through social conditioning. Heavy doses of passive media controlled by a select number of wealthy people will warp public policy just as advertising has to the free market, bending the will of the people to the requirements of those who control public debate from the top down.
In 1995, when TV was king and the Internet a mewling pretender, Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam published a highly influential essay called Bowling Alone. In it, he says that a few things have been tracked alongside the increasing dominance of the television culture Gore describes. Putnam describes trends observed to that point for decades. He says that Americans are more cynical, that they value civic life less and participate less in it. He says that Americans have also withdrawn from social clubs and replaced them with passive, isolated entertainment activities like television. Putnam notes that social cohesion falls in and out of favor with the American people, and in a question and answer session in 2002 with the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco added that the turn of the last century saw an explosion of new technologies as well as new social organizations (The Lions, The Elks, "all the animals," and many other types of civic organizations besides). Dr. Putnam speculated that the revolution in communications might bridge the gap erected by television and improve civic engagement, adding that membership in even one club that encourages conversation - be it a bowling league or a book club - results in a significant increase in the likelihood a person will vote. Here might I humbly suggest that Reading Liberally and other Living Liberally organizations, as manifestations of regular, local connections of the same sort seen for the past two years at Yearly Kos, might be the new entrepreneurs of social capital…and that no antler hats are required?
From the underground six years before Putnam was published, Chuck D rebuked the public about the once-again-revolutionary ideals of individual rights with "Fight the Power": "What we got to say / Power to the people no delay / To make everybody see / In order to fight the powers that be." Public Enemy relied on word of mouth, placement in an explosive work of art (The song in question was featured prominently in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing) as well as a free market with an interest in promoting Hip Hop. Much of the public interest issues at heart in the netroots might have word of mouth and creative energy, but are inherently at odds with the amalgamated capital which sided with the release of "Fight the Power." It will take repetition and creative collaboration to "make everybody see." If that means taking the initiative to start something for the community like was seen at Yearly Kos or like we hope to see in regularly meeting local Reading Liberally chapters where we can regularly discuss ideas with our neighbors, the interests of individuals as well as the country can be strengthened together.
Surely Johannes Gutenberg, Tom Paine, and Chuck D could all agree on that.
