When everyone from Bill O'Reilly, to Harold Ford, to a Wall Street Journal hack feels a need to take a swipe at Daily Kos, you know something is happening. They know something is happening. They're too isolated and insulated, and they spend too much time listening to the echoes in their chamber, but something is happening out there, and they're not sure what, but they are sure that it doesn't involve them.
They worked very hard to get where they are. They went to the right schools, made the right friends, then carefully climbed the rungs and kissed the right asses, and finally they were part of the In Crowd and the Kewl Kids, and just when they were in the position to be the ones who get to tell people what to think and for whom to vote, suddenly the entire illusory edifice of their own relevance is crumbling around them. They don't know what and they don't know why, but they do know that people out there in the hinterlands are talking and thinking and strategizing and politicking and it has absolutely nothing to do with them!
What you've seen in the past few weeks is only the beginning. Their wake-up call was that the 2008 candidates decided to attend Yearly Kos rather than the DLC Convention. And it must seriously rattle their rickety bones that just as Yearly Kos established its brand name, it's changing that name to accurately reflect that this is bigger and more important than any one person or any one blog. In their world, this is the moment when Markos should be cashing in, not spreading the credit. In their world, we should be following his every lead. They don't understand that the abusive comments and diaries on Daily Kos have nothing to do with Markos, because they don't understand that most people are actually capable of thinking and writing for themselves. Good and bad. Right and wrong. Everyone has a voice, and many are now using theirs. This whole democracy thing just doesn't make sense! Free speech and the freedom to vote only work if the parameters are carefully controlled, and the choices are appropriately few!
This is a paradigm shift. This is an important moment in that shift. They are beginning to realize that we're here. They are beginning to realize that we're a threat. You bet they're scared! They're trying to marginalize us, and they're resorting to the most obvious and simplistic stereotypes. They're used to simplistic. They're used to stereotypes. So, we're the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis and anti-Semitic and Cannibals. Damn! And here I thought we were just the unwashed masses! We're even worse than I could have ever suspected! And all I came here for was the savory pie!
So, there are two important points on which we need to focus. The first is that they're scared. This is no longer just one lonely lunatic with a loofah and soggy falafel balls, this is becoming a pandemic of panic. It's systemic. The second is that the ridiculousness of their first attempts to quash us should not be dismissed on that basis. Soon, they will discover that it's not working. We are not the voice of the people, we are the people. And just when media consolidation was finally beginning to give them the Orwellian control of public discourse towards which they'd always aspired, it's all disintegrating, right before their eyes. They don't understand it, but they feel it. Soon, they will understand it. And then the attacks will start, in earnest. They will be more focused and more strategically intelligent. Net Neutrality will be part of it. But there will be much more.
This is the most dangerous movement that could have possibly happened to them. The people have a voice. Some went to the same schools they did, and some didn't go to school. Some served in the military, and some didn't. Some spent time in prison, and some didn't. We are all genders and all races and all religions and all everythings. We are sitting in our underwear in our own homes, and we are sitting in business attire in Fortune 500 offices. We are dropouts and we are professors. We think and we feel and we are passionate and we are inspired. And we communicate. We write, we talk, we party, and we listen. It's not always pretty, and it's not always easy, but it's what people do when they have the means to control their own dialogue. They begin to want to control their own fates. They begin to realize that by working together, there is nothing they cannot accomplish. It's a dangerous lesson. It's a lesson they take directly from a group of rebels who gathered in Boston and Philadelphia more than two centuries ago, to begin the end of the Age of Monarchy. It's still happening.
So, the attacks will come. They will be smarter. They will be more vicious. The old guard is growing desperate. They're staring into the gaping maw of their own irrelevance and extinction. They're scared. They should be.