Philosophically kos' positions are a mess. There is no consistency.
Ok, so a peace march should focus... I understand that.
But single issue groups shouldn't focus... I can understand that.
They don't add together too well, however, and I don't think it's possible to have a good strategy without a solid philosophical foundation because that is like navigation with no compass.
Meanwhile, dream if you like, but the blog elite are indeed keeping blogospheric leadership to themselves, like most that have some success, they interpret it as some divine or natural meritocracy that they have risen on. They are -deciding- how this influence is to be applied.
The common voice is being tamped down, in the name of practicality, and without realization this is the what we had going on. The great writers that rose to recognition were a perquisite, that was not the power. A few dozen great writers is not the answers to the unexpressed woe of the people... peer-to-peer communication is. "Quality" that subjective judgmental maiden is nothing compared to the Common Voice.
I lament that the Common Voice has gone from well handled and well amplified to poorly handled and filtered, in the name of quality. "Quality" means... subjective personal discretion. Ever noticed the quality "problem" on the net... but you log on anyway. Yes... you may have something to study a bit closer there.
Netroots, net-anything, is not about finally picking out our betters from us and then listening raptly while the true finally deliver us.
It's about putting our heads together to figure stuff out. I've -seen- these ideas before I'm being offered by our elite... a lot of people have, but no one is listening to history, the history of where they lead. An ego hierarchy is palpable, is coming to dominate the atmosphere. Kos has users with such experience, I don't see him learn from it... or even engage it. I see him ignore it.
I'm sorry, I can't take these contradictions too seriously. I can't help with a coalition that doesn't exist. I can't give benefit of the doubt when it's not given out to others. While the blogosphere has grown bigger in numbers of readers, it's grown smaller in spirit.
We are still ahead of where we were, and I'm sure many have no idea what promise I saw, some of us saw, that was there in peer-to-peer politics over the last few years. I'm sure many don't have a clear idea of what "open source" means or how this iteration of "open source politics" is becoming controlled, akin to MS's "shared source"... open source niceties, rhetoric which is only skin deep.
We're told it's still open, this is "just a blog" everything is equal, for example, if you don't like dkos, another blog is just the same. Everything is flat and equal because -they say so-, it's flat and equal just as it is for conservatives... you are equal to Bill Gates because you can just start your own software company.
Too bad that's not how reality works.
And I'm not whining, dkos doesn't have to fulfill that promise just because it was started from its nourishing soil. A community doesn't have to be free and self-determining just because it was started as such. A spirit doesn't have to be immortal just because it lived once. And in the end, I declare this because I think it's important, unfortunate, and I do not want to let it pass silently, but as for my hopes, they are not dashed, just my hopes in dkos are, for the leftosphere a bit in general.
But really, my faith in the spirit of the net, the peer to peer spirit, the evocation from the Common Voice that I'm sure peer-to-peer politics will rise again and finally break the propaganda machines.
And I'm patient. I have hoped before, I hope still. This was not the first peer-to-peer wave I've followed, watched, ridden, and it will not, I am sure, be the last.