Got an essay posted on tha Intarwebs

[symbot]

Okay, I'm gonna try using LJ as a notification board when I post things online.

Test case: I just posted an article on BlogCritics.  I wanted a different, less boring title, but the content of the essay is fresh from my brain Saturday night.  Synopsis: a simple meta-political rubric for making a mark on the political sphere.  If you've got any

Comments

Type O

[prometheisbound]

Stop, think about what you were going to do, and find a way to do it better. George Orwell would be proud

Re: Type O

[symbot]

WOAH. You're right. I put a comment on this at the end of the article... hopefully that will curb some of the flaming that might result from such a fuck-up.

I know what you mean about critiquing the left/right divide, too, but part of this essay is a response to partisanism. I wanted to write something about the two distinctive trends in political communication, but I didn't want to pitt them explicitly against one another.

And yeah, I have a lot of friends who bristle at the name "Michael Moore," many of them with political views that are similar to his. Lately, I've been entertaining the idea that democrats need to get a lot better at selling their ideas, marketing their philosophy, and even (egad) sensationalizing their issues. Although it's annoying that Michael Moore is self-righteous and moralizing, he does manage to turn his issues into pretty engaging media phenomena.

Go back to the book I cited, Dream (Stephen Duncombe) for a little more on my thinking in this area.

[tokyorose]

Congrats on the BC post, even though I know it's not your first. Perhaps that wall will soon contain an acceptance letter.... :)
~Tokyo Rose

[vigilantics]

Awesome. Common sensical, but extraordinarily clearly expressed, which is excactly what I would have expected, coming from you.

Level 1: Stop Bitching made me think in a different way about the political conversations Stew and I have been having pretty frequently lately. They tend to follow this formula:

Stew: X attribute of society is stupid and should be destroyed.
Me: X isn't so bad.
Stew: [gives example proving that X is, in fact, pretty bad.]
Me: OK, you're right, but it's the best we've got, what're you gonna do?
Stew: Dissolve the Union!
Me: I can'tOf course, part of our miscommunication happens because he is thinking on a global scale (what should society do?) and I am thinking on a personal scale (what can I do?). But the other disconnect is more fundamental. While he may fall into the complaint-instead-of-constructive-ideas cycle that you describe, I'm trapped by its flipside--complacency. I want to see the glass as, not just half full, but slightly fuller than it actually is. I think people who are sick of the

Thanks fo' feedback

[symbot]

1) Happy Birthday!

B) Yeah, I can see how that might be a problem... but if you don't have time to form principles or think through political positions, which is worse: ill-informed complacency, or ill-informed curmudgery and cynicism? I don't really have an answer to this question.

But I DO think that in order to form a productive political culture, it's gonna help us a lot to start overlooking the things we hate in favor of things we support, care about, or want to fight for. In fact, I don't think what you're doing counts as complacency, because of the question you're asking: What are you gonna do? Or better-phrased: what am I gonna do?

If that question is sincere, then you're not slipping into complacency... you're sublimating your discontent into proaction (woo! Made-up forms of words!)