How can a group of people committed to principles of openness and honesty support another group committed to concealment and dishonesty? That is the question this diary explores, and the answer is highly significant to the future of DKos and political activism on the Internet. I argue that the net is structurally biased toward openness and honesty and this bias is creating a growing tension with traditional political cultures that will result in a break leading to a politics of honesty.
The metaphor I use is the difference between the hand and the fist, where the hand represents the growing minority of individuals committed to openness and honesty and the fist represents the still dominant majority of those who shout "same as it ever was," viewing Internet politics simply as a continuation of the semi-civilized combat whose rules were articulated by Nicolo Machiavelli. Let's begin by meeting two people of the Fist.
Emanuel was so angry at the president's enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting "Dead! . . . Dead! . . . Dead!" and plunging the knife into the table after every name. "When he was done, the table looked like a lunar landscape," one campaign veteran recalls. "It was like something out of The Godfather. But that's Rahm for you."
Source: http://www.rollingstone.com/...
Inside, Rove was talking to an aide about some political stratagem in some state that had gone awry and a political operative who had displeased him. I paid it no mind and reviewed a jotted list of questions I hoped to ask. But after a moment, it was like ignoring a tornado flinging parked cars. "We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!"
Source: http://www.ronsuskind.com/...
Viewed through the lens of American Party politics, Rahm and Karl are polar opposites. But from the perspective of the Hand and the Fist, these two men are brothers of the Fist. They are ruthless, brutal, relentless commanders of a political operation, and they will do almost anything to achieve their mission. Deception, distortion, dissembling, and disinformation are routinely used by both to advance their schemes. Describing a future politics of honesty to either of these men would likely provoke hysterical laughter.
So what, a Kossack might ask? Rahm is our gangster, and I'm glad he eats Republicans for breakfast. That's the only way we can protect Social Security and get national health care. I wish we had a hundred more like him. So this: the ethics of an open Internet community, like DKos, are completely opposed to lying to get what you want. The fundamental test of a poster's character on DKos is their credibility. The surest path to being discredited on DKos is to knowingly post false information for some ulterior purpose. Nobody gets Mojo on DKos for being a successful liar. But the official "mission" of DKos is to "elect Democrats."
Democratic politicians have lied to America and continue to lie to America, most recently in their capitulation on May 24, fully funding the Iraq war. The Democratic leadership told us that this was a "victory," and that it was a necessary step toward ending the war. This is an obvious lie, and it attempts to conceal the Machiavellian game Democratic politicians are playing: improving their long-term chances at taking power by sacrificing 1,000 more American dead in Iraq. This kind of dishonest maneuvering is baked into the character of both American political parties, and it is reinforced by the twisted economics of electioneering.
Markos doesn't deal with this issue of structural dishonesty head on, so his response is to conjure up a mythical group of "good" Democrats, like Lamont, who will steadily replace the "bad" Democrats,like Lieberman and thus accomplish a miraculous transformation of the Democratic party into a clean and shining champion of populism. The supporters of this position maintain that lies and deception are so deeply woven into the cloth of politics that they cannot be removed. They maintain that politics is intrinsically dirty and that the best we can hope for is the least dirty result. This, they assert will be provided by the (new and improved!) Democratic netroots candidates. Guaranteed less dirty!
But where does the dirt come from? I argue that it comes from concealment. The people of the Fist rely on hiding what they know. When strange things happen in Congressional conference committees in the dead of night, it isn't because the conferees are especially wicked people, it happens because they can get away with it. The people on DKos are mainly people of the Hand. We have no interest in hiding things. We struggle desperately to explain, inform, and enlighten, and we despair when people fail to understand what we are saying.
By what logic does a growing community of political activists committed to openness and honesty channel increasing support into a political party structurally and culturally committed to deception? Something has got to give. Either communities like DKos will be peopled by deluded cultists with bicameral brains, half honest and half crooked, or they will find their way to a politics of honesty. I realize that proposing radical honesty as an organizing principle for future political action will strike many people as patently absurd, but I would ask them to examine the ethos of the existing DKos community and decide what is at its core: is it the pursuit of a wish list of societal reform goodies, or is it a fundamental commitment to the truth? If it is the latter, then the people of the Hand will write the future of politics.
The hand will defeat the fist because the fist conceals and harms while the hand reveals and sustains.