Hey all. Any of you that might have seen my past diaries know that I’m a freshman here at the University of California Santa Cruz.
I’m currently in a class called Digital Democracy. It attempts to go into the new political atmosphere that is the Internet, and from an academic standpoint, understand the influence technology has had, is having, and will have on our political practices. Essentially a wet dream for a guy like me, who is an upstart online political activist, and a habitual lurker and occasional contributor here on Daily Kos. A college class about blogging and the Internet as to how it pertains to politics? Sweet. I know.
Today I want to talk about the lecture we had last Friday, May 8. We were lucky enough to have a very special guest, one some of you here at Daily Kos might be very familiar with.
Jump if you’re interested.
I’m sure some of you here might be familiar with saynotopombo. Unfortunately this slice of activism was before my entrance into the political world, and so I’m pretty unfamiliar with the specifics of it. However, I do know that it happened in the east bay, just a little ways away from where I lived at the time. And I do know that some bad guy was kicked out for some good guy, due in large part to the efforts of the netroots and the power of online activism. It was viewed as a victory for most of the online activist community, especially here in the bay area.
Even knowing these sparse details about the saynotopombo movement, I was truly excited when I learned that our lecturer last week would be Matt Lockshin, activist of and contributor to saynotopombo, and one of the new Online Directors for the California Democratic Party. It is always interesting to see an online personality in the flesh, but what was most grabbing about this lecture was that it had the uncanny ability to instill hope in me. You see this class has talked largely about the Internet as a tool of the wealthy and well educated, and thus no different than any other means of political participation—essentially that the internet, while it seems to have so much potential, most probably will not improve our democracy and one’s participation therein because of the digital divide. Thus, it was nice to have an actual blogger stand up and be able to tell us differently. Yes, the internet can be slightly exclusive and elusive if you don’t have the money or the time or the knowledge to participate, but, among those who do have those things, the internet has made it leagues easier to participate and get involved, thus increasing the amount of participation within this democracy, and thus increasing accountability. And then on top of this hopeful note, we realize that the California Democratic Party might be catching on to the potential of the Internet, and has hired one of many successful online activists to co-direct their online organization.
The lecture itself centered largely around Harry Frankfurt and his essay On Bullshit.
For those of you unfamiliar with Frankfurt’s description of bullshit, he basically says that bullshit is the practice of saying whatever it is that will get your audience to react in the way you want them too. It doesn’t mean that what you say to your audience is necessarily a fallacy; it in fact, could be a truth. But it’s the fact that you disregard the truth and say what ever you need to to get the reaction you’re looking for. Further, Frankfurt draws the difference between liars and bullshitters, and that lying is better than bullshiting because, on some level, a liar still understands and respects the truth. But a bullshitter has absolutely no respect for the truth, because he has only one goal: to get his audience to believe what he has to say.
There are a number of examples of bullshit. Consider the ongoing attacks against Barack Obama around the issue of Louis Farrakhan. It isn’t necessarily false that Jeremiah Wright said good things about Farrakhan’s position on Israel. However, neither was it said over and over by opponents because it was true. This statement was said over and over again with disregard for the truth in the hope that it would evoke a certain reaction from their audience. It doesn’t matter that one is playing the six degrees of separation game. It doesn’t matter that one part of the "truth" is said if other parts of the truth are left out. This is just one of many examples of bullshit you’ll find in today’s world because, essentially, today’s politics is made of bullshit. That is the modus operandi of many politicians and pundits in the modern era.
Anyway, Matt talked at length about the way in which bullshit has been integrated into the political system here in the US. He noted that, in politics, there is no truth, only interpretation—thus leaving the door wide open for bullshit. He cited, in particular, the way in which politics is a market for Ideas, and that people have taken that notion so literally that they’ve started selling ideas, trying to incentivize the purchase of (voting for) their ideas. Politicians all have their own PR and Advertising groups. It has become less about the ideas themselves, and more about which idea is most pretty, attractive-at-a-knee-jerk, and beneficial for our own selfish selves. Essentially, politics is now synonymous with bullshit, because everyone uses bullshit to try and win your vote.
Then he talked about the way the Internet is helping us cut through this form of politics by reinserting accountability into the equation. For one, he shows us that the Internet can help inform people. It allows for massive amounts of information to be available to any body. Blogs allow anybody to submit their commentary on the massive amounts of information, and increase the ways in which people can communicate and understand politics, thus increasing political participation and activism. Thus, the active and informed body politic through the Internet has an easy time sifting through bullshit, because bullshit, in itself, allows a politician to be rife with hypocrisy. A politician will say he or she is against gun control in front of the NRA, and will waver and say they’re for gun control in front of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. Because the idea of marketing makes the politician sell him or herself in different ways, anybody can stand back, and realize they’re be disingenuous and phony.
Essentially, the Internet, in the way that it collapses space and time, allows for authenticity. It changes the marketplace for ideas that is politics into more of a market place of conversation about ideas, and requires our vendors to be much more genuine and a lot less bullshitty. The Internet and the blogs are some of the new keys to better political participation. It allows us to form informed communities that can hold our politicians responsible though our collective conversation and our unprecedented access to information.
I’m so glad to realize that my California Democratic Party is wising up and getting informed people like Matt Lockshin into the fold. It bodes well for the future of our democracy.
The revolution may not be televised, but it certainly will be live blogged on teh interwebs.