Years ago, when I first began participating in the experiment of online political discourse, I held great hope that this new medium would allow ordinary citizens to eventually break the stranglehold that the monied interests have imposed upon the American political process, including the American media, and give voice to the voiceless. It almost seemed divine providence that just when that stranglehold was on the verge of choking the very life from our democracy, this little miracle called the Internet emerged allowing us to bypass the primary conduits of political power and rescue ourselves from the inevitable descent into a kind of mass media slavery. After all, if religion is the opiate of the masses, television is a coma.
But it is clear to me that the potential of the Internet to restore control over the government by the people also poses the threat of being used to expand control over the people by the government - or, as is usually the case, the monied interests that control the government.
Instead of seeing the People Powered web being used crash the gates and reclaim power from the monied interest who have seized both political parties, I'm beginning to see signs of sites such as Daily Kos being used as an arm of the establishment, enforcing an almost militant loyalty to the party line, censuring dissent and criticism, and even subverting the truth in the name of expediency.
The Machiavellian rationalization behind much of this towing and subversion is derived from a very real and just understanding of the threat posed by the Bush junta, and the need to defeat it. That is certainly the reason I helped raise money for Harold Ford Jr. - despite my strong opposition to his ascension to the Senate.
But now that the election is over, we must ask ourselves where our loyalties really lie. Is it to political leaders whose own loyalties lie with the same monied interests who have waged class warfare on the American people? Is it with a complacent establishment that profits from the status quo, and resists every effort to change it? Is it with people who have chosen to protect their own power at the expense of their country and its citizens? Is it with a brand or label that has come to mean nothing in terms of ideology or action?
Or do our loyalties lie with the American people, ourselves, and the ideal of restoring our government of the people, to the people? It is fortunate that we Democrats still have leaders in whom our support does not conflict with that goal. But aside from the necessary task of defeating the Republicans, where is the benefit in loyalty to those who are Democrats in name only?
It is the nature of people to coalesce around leaders. As any sociologist will tell you, if you throw a group of people together in a room long enough, a leader will eventually emerge. This tendency to coalesce has survived over millions of years of evolutionary development so there's no doubt that it offers benefits. But in modern American politics, where groups are formed from tenuous strings of long-distance wires and radio waves, the process by which we choose our leaders is so easily distorted, so easily manipulated by those who control the wires, that we must be vigorous in our skepticism and, most importantly, we must never blindly place our loyalties at the feet of power. For it is loyalty to power that inevitably strips the people of their own.
loy'al·ism n
1. Support or loyalty to the establishment, government, political party or leaders without condition or merit.
What could compel self-ascribed conservatives to blindly follow a regime that has violated every principle on which conservatism stands? Loyalism. Indeed, conservatives in large number embraced the violation of the very foundation of conservative ideology itself - the limit of government power - in their willingness to follow president Bush and his unprecedented expansion of such power in the name of loyalty.
When one steps back and beholds the scope of government power under the Bush regime, from the massive, secret and unaccountable national security apparatus, to the more than eight hundred radio stations that blanket the nation with pro-Bush, pro-government propaganda 24 hours a day, to their very own pro-Bush, pro-government television network - not to mention countless local television stations and newspapers, even the most dedicated Bush loyalist must wonder if so much power is safe in any politician's hands. And after the 2006 election, they should also be wondering if such loyalism has been good for their party.
Likewise, we Democrats should ask if it is good for ours. Our party is certainly not immune from the unmeritorious loyalty of our members. Perhaps by design, the dualism of our two party system perpetuates loyalism. The old saying, 'he may be a crook, but he's my crook' is the axiom of modern Democratic loyalism when victory over their "crook" is not just a preference, but a moral imperative.
But we must also acknowledge that loyalism, however rationalized, comes with a severe cost. For as long as your loyalty is given freely, without merit, without condition, and with only the promise that your guy is not their guy, you have sacrificed your political power.
MONEY, VOTES, and the POWER of FEAR
For all practical purposes, there are only two forms of political power available to ordinary Americans: money and votes. And the ability to deliver either, in significant quantities, will certainly get you invited to the parade. But real power comes from not just being able to deliver money or votes, but from being able to take them away. Just ask any politician who has tried to take on big oil, or the finance and insurance industries. The real power of big money unveils itself not when it is in your favor, but when it has set you in its sights for destruction.
Currently, the Netroots has raised a lot of money for Democrats. By my estimate, around $5 million for the 2006 midterm. And yet our power remains marginal compared to K Street. Why? Because they do not fear us. Fear is the product of conditionality. And as long as our support, our loyalty is unconditional, we lose that card to play.
For years, the Democratic establishment, the Corporocrats, have been able to walk all over many of their constituent blocks - labor, African Americans, us - because of the rationalized loyalty I mentioned above. Their campaign slogan may as well have been, 'Where ya gonna go?'
If the People Power movement is ever going to break this cycle of lesser of two evils and instigate real reform in the Democratic party, we are going to have to learn how to use real power by ransoming our support. Only when the Democratic establishment fears us will they bid to our will.
There are those in the Netroots movement who advocate a different tack. They profess that the way to bring the Democratic party back to the people is for the people to infiltrate it. To run for local office, precinct captain, or your local committee chair. While these are all valuable efforts, and certainly will not hurt, this strategy is the equivalent to leading the sheep to slaughter.
There is a fundamental flaw to this strategy: It assumes that the current precinct captains etc. are the problem. They are not. We do need more local participation to recover from the failed Twelve State Strategy. But by and large, the current local party officials are pretty much the same as us. They oppose the corporatization of our party by the DLC types. They want the party to represent the interests of ordinary Americans again. And they want out of Iraq.
A massive invasion of local party politics by the Netroots would certainly be a good thing, but it is naive think it will have much effect on the core problem that is ruining not just the Democratic party, but American politics as a whole. This, of course, is money.
I think it would be safe to say that most Democratic politicians started off with high hopes for reform. Not all, but most. And just like us, they wanted to see fundamental change in the way Washington, or their states, work. But the problem is what happens once they get a little bit of power. I've seen the process up close and it ain't pretty. It takes no time at all before every freshman congressman or senator, and their many staffers, figure out the game, who the hands that feed are, and who not to piss off. And after a while, the reformer gets slowly beaten out of them. The glamor of the beltway cocktail parties, trips to Bohemian Grove, lobbyists funded weekends abroad, all add up to a powerful persuasion not to rock the boat. And pretty soon, they no longer work for us. They work for the big money contributors who can sustain their power.
The forces of the status quo have trillions of dollars at stake in the way things work. Do you really think they are going to put that in jeopardy by allowing the Democratic leadership to start embracing people power? To allow Howard Dean any power beyond raising money? He's already being shown the door in case you didn't notice. This is Steny Hoyer's party now. And Hoyer is not one of us.
There is no political change without conflict. And the only way we are going to reclaim our party, and our country, is by force. We must become a voting and fundraising block that instills fear. We must learn to hold our support for ransom. Only then will the People Power movement actually gain any real power.
