This sentiment was inspired by a diary on Booman Tribune that I read...
For all of its sturm und drang... does the progressive blogosphere actually have a concrete declaration of sentiments and aims put together? Not necessarily a "platform" -- just a simple, articulable manifesto?
For the last four or five years, the blogosphere has been nauseatingly crammed with talk about "movements" -- either of bloggers, of political parties, or of candidates -- and yet, when you ask about where the manifestos for these movements are, all you get is a blank look.
"We're having a conference in New York," someone will say to you.
Great. When will the manifesto be presented?
"We're having breakaway working groups. You can sign up for as many as you want. And then, the keynote event will be an address by [insert famous politician name here]."
Terrific. When will you read the manifesto?
"Huh?"
Famous manifestos in history:
95 Theses
The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Sentiments
The Communist Manifesto
The Port Huron Statement
etc.
Some of these declarations were for successful movements, others for less successful ones; but the fact is, it's really hard to have a genuine movement without one. How are people supposed to get a clear picture of what you stand for?
The big-box bloggers seem to think that they, in themselves -- their activities, their passion, their small amount of celebrity, their buzz -- are the manifesto, but that's really b.s, isn't it? To date, they've articulated very little of anything concrete and if they did articulate something, they would have realized sooner that they haven't been reaching those 80% of Americans cited in the original Booman Tribune diary I referenced. Even worse, they'd realize that they're not really doing anything terribly revolutionary by just trying to game the existing pay-to-play system that excludes those vast tracts of Americans.
In fact, it benefits the gameplayers very much if they DON'T articulate their ideas in publishable, straightforwardly disseminable form, doesn't it?