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Meta
While the page views per day at MoA is fairly constant, the number of comments per day seems to be down.
That’s sad as the blog and I are living off your comments. So I wonder why there are less and less.
Politically my writing moved a bit further to the left – content wise it got a bit more international? Could those be reasons for less participation?
What to do better? What themes should get more emphasis at MoA, what should be covered less?
Please check the archives of the last months and let me know.
I’d love to post more stuff from other writers here. If you’d like to publish on MoA please send your piece to the email address on the ‘about’ page.
Thank you all for coming here.
Boy, I step away for one day and all hell breaks loose!
Last winter, when I was away from this blog for a number of months, on Christmas Day I wrote a very personal post about how important this blog had been to me and how much it had meant to me, supported me in times of deep distress and feeling lost, and how much I had learnt from it. Unfortunately, I wrote it straight into Haloscan (Goodbye-scan is more like it), and as I was making my final polish, my browser crashed, and the post was gone and irretrievable. As I was deep into the Christmas spirit that grey morning, I cursed every cussword I knew, in every language I knew — which took almost a full hour — and then took it as a sign that the time wasn’t right for me to begin posting again with my own personal crises going on. But, I wish that post hadn’t been lost, b, and that you had received it, and heard the deep-felt appreciation I have for your work and your efforts. At this point in life, I am more interested in reducing my ecological footprint than traveling, but I was still sorry that I did not have a chance to meet with you and fellow MoA posters at the reunion — there are two dozen people I know through this blog, all over the world, that I would love to have a chance to meet and discuss ideas with.
Recent local and personal events have shaken me deeply, and I have again experienced moments of crisis of faith in living. I spoke with a mentor who has lead a long life of religious faith combined with the most radical political activism (involving serious jail-time — an old friend of the Berrigans, by the way), and rather than attempting to assuage my doubts, he affirmed them: Real political work, as with real religious work in a vital and living — not dead — tradition, takes great strength and courage, and always involves a struggle — a deep personal struggle — to seek what is right, and to continually question and examine our responses.
That said, running a blog like this, of this quality and depth of insight, involves serious dedication and commitment, lots of hard work, and it will always be a struggle, it will never come easy. Sorry to have to inform you of this, but I’m sure that you have already figured this out by now. Others are right, parroting the party line, being a Kos and jetting around the world giving glib and shallow speeches about “Netroots” is far easier and more rewarding. Really thinking through issues and debating them, critically reading the news, following the posts from the New Global Gulag™, experiencing the outright rapine pillage of our planet with eyes wide open, is hard and painful work. For most people it is simply too depressing. And we all have a right and a need for a mental health break. Perhaps, you should think of giving yourself a vacation from time-to-time, and handing the daily maintainence over to one of us for a week or two a year.
That said, let me make a few honest and direct points, since you would rather have constructive criticism than puffery and empty praise.
You have moved to the left, and that has probably pissed-off a few people. That’s life, and that’s the trade-off you have to make. Anyone can start a blog and post a few articles about what a jerk Bush is, with a few funny photoshopped pictures and have more views and comments than this blog in less than a month: But what’s the point of that? And where would all of us go? I have watched your thinking evolve and deepen with great love and admiration. I believe that you have been doing some of your best work quite recently. As I have found from some of what I consider my best posts, often that translates into fewer comments rather than more. I have agonized over this, and tried to figure out why this is so, but I’ve come to accept it. Yeah, it is far easier to write “What’s up with the Democrats” and get 50 quick responses, but then what makes this blog unique, and worth my precious time? I skip over those posts generally, and don’t even read them anymore, unless they are keyed into substantial institutional or social analysis of social change — all of which involves real thinking.
So I say to you, don’t worry about page views and post numbers, they wax and wane for all manner of reasons beyond your control; worry about the work, and everything else will take care of itself. I remember you posting something like this about a year-and-a-half ago, feeling stuck, and right after that, things picked up again.
I have introduced this blog to several of my friends, and quite frankly, most of them do not get it. They either do not have the time to post and read and become a member of a virtual community, or they are uncomfotable making the leap to a first post, or they do not see the point in analyzing their views, or whatever reason, it seems that a blog like this is simply not for everyone.
It would be nice if Billmon were still around; the man could write about his toenail clippings and it would be interesting and relevant the world over, but, sadly, few of us can write anywhere near as well as him. But, we should remember that Billmon began his blog during a much headier time for the world, and I think that many of us still had hope that we could REFORM our way out of our problems at that point in time. (My mentor emphasized to me that one must accept that the world is doomed and that we cannot personally save it, in order to have the strength and fortitude to do the day-to-day work to try and save our little piece of it.) We now live at a point in history when the simple, but essential, cataloging of atrocities is often all we can manage. We can attempt to push back, but if we are honest with ourselves, we must accept that in many, many, ways humanity and the planet have lost, and continue to lose, ground. That doesn’t mean that there has not been progress in some areas, and that there is not cause for hope, too, but it does underscore the essentialness of the work being done on this blog.
While I am on the topic of Billmon, I remember finding his blog and reading it and liking it. (How many years ago?) My own political thinking was changing so fast and deepening so quickly as I sought to make meaning of the events swirling around me: I went from wondering why Clinton was impeached, and why the election was stolen from Gore, and reading Daily Kos, to reading Ken Knabb and Guy Debord, and devouring Wade Frazier’s whole web site, and everything Chomsky wrote, starting with his talk on “The Grand Imperial Strategy in Iraq” — 0 to 60, literally, in less than a year of very heady late night studies, and bleary-eyed mornings at work. My whole construct of the world I thought I knew, and understood so well (with the help of NPR, of course), simply fell apart under the weight of events and evidence, and that is a scary thing to face and still find the strength to get up and find direction and function again in the world. One late Poe-like night, as I was pondering all of this, I navigated over to Billmon’s old site — before success hit and reader input was disabled — and chanced upon a discussion between r’giap and theodor in the comments section, and I was hooked. I knew I found a place where more substantive discussions, often free-roaming like jazz, yet supported by theory and evidence, could form and coalesce and take place; where poetry and spirit and politics could be fused together into a new and better understanding of the world, and, yes, a humanism, as many of you have called it, could take root and grow among us. I was hooked then and there, and Bernhard, never doubt it, I still am. After “Whisky Bar,” this place has become, and remains, my touchstone for understanding current realities.
So, what are my fantasies and wishes for this blog? Like others here, it is predominantly for less change rather than more. Still, there are several things I would love to see develop. It would be great to have more people posting, but talents like r’giap and DebsIsDead, who have so much to offer the rest of us, don’t grow on trees. (Actually, I’m not sure about DiD, perhaps they do grow on trees in the antipode.) Yet, I see the task of increasing posters and viewers in a very old-fashioned way: By word of mouth, from one person to another, and I think we should all make the effort to introduce others to this place and buy them a first round, so to speak. I, too, miss the occasonal slothrop comment, but I do not miss how he was allowed to take over threads at times and insult people, and derail discussion, with an unending stream of ad-hominems.
We have posters like Uncle $cam, b real, and Bea, who often post on a particular area of expertise or interest, for them: Civil liberties, or Africa, or Palestine, as the case may be. I generally comment at length about the mechanisms for engineering consent within society. It would be great to have more posters on these topics, but also on others who specialize in areas where we are weak.
Another thing I particularly value about this water-hole is the international feel of it — despite us employing the lead imperial language in our communications, and our focussing on the most central node of empire, namely, the US. I have encouraged a friend to post on events in Latin and South America, but unfortunately, without success. It would be great to have some posters from that area of the world where so much is happening these days. The more primary sources we can develop, the better. It would also be great to have some more posters from all parts of Asia. I have asked here for an explanation of the forces behind events in Korea without success.
I believe that every nation around the world faces struggles between the perquisites of power and exception, and the forces for equality and sustainability. The more we can find out about those struggles, big and small, all over the world, the more pieces of the puzzle we can put together, and the better we can understand our species and where we are going. So, I would like to encourage anyone who knows someone who can help us in this way to introduce them to MoA and encourage them to post about their exeriences and struggles.
Besides that, yes, we should all pitch in, myself included, and add a post or two, or even more, a week, to take the enormity of the load off of b’s shoulders before he burns out.
But beyond that, be careful: Don’t fix that which is not broken. If you want fame and fortune, open up a more traditional bar where people know what they will be drinking before they cross the threshold, and can predict their level of hang-over upon leaving. But for the rest of us locals, who like a little more adventure in our libations — even if we leave to face the world with an increasing case of indigestion, and fear and trembling — things are very much as they should be in the one place in this cyberworld which remains sane by the very pedestrian, but necessary and essential, work of naming and describing the ubiquitous insanity, itself.
Posted by: Malooga | Oct 13 2007 20:38 utc | 53
Briefly, when I say that we must look upon civilization as doomed, I am not making some sort of grand, albeit glancing, prognostication. Surely, I have no more idea of what will happen in the future than any of you do, although I’m willing to bet that things will not be altogether pretty.
I am merely offering up a model of non-attachment to success in “saving” anything, as the way to do activism.
Martin Luther King, among others, observed that the fights really worth fighting are the ones we are sure to lose — not forever, just now, in our short and insignificant lifetimes. Think of the fight against slavery (still ongoing in many forms), for the right to vote for women, etc.: Those fights were indeed won, at least to a significant extent, but not by the people who started the battle. Those people needed faith in the rightness of their cause to fight, but they could not be attached to saving the world, or even a small part of it. For victory, such as it was, and impermanent as it was, lay many generations ahead of those who initially raised society’s consciousness and began the struggle.
Think too of the glorious revolutions which did not last, The Paris Commune, for instance. The significence of the achievement does not pale because the success was ephemeral. Nor, was the sacrifice of those who struggled, and died for their cause, in vain.
For they, and in a similar manner, we, do not fight because we are sure we will win. We do not fight to save the world, because we, as individuals, can’t. We fight to save ourselves, whether we understand that to be in a religious manner, or agnostically, to save our consciences, our humanity, our dignity in this life. That is all we can do as humans.
It is a very small thing, but it is a very great thing.
When we think of a Paul Robeson, a Martin Luther King — the list of true heroes goes on forever, and most are anonymous to History as written by the “owners of things” — we do not think of whether they won or lost, as if they were some sort of baseball pitcher or football goalie, whose records we easily compare and debate from the comforts of our couches; we think of their natural digity and faith in their struggle, not matter what the cost was to them personally.
Life is always a struggle, and the highest form of that struggle is the struggle for peace, justice, and equality for all living beings. (It certainly beats struggling to make your first billion, or two, or whatever the pirate psychopaths of today, that Time and NPR treat with reverence, struggle for.)
I think, as I write this now, that the point I am trying to make is similar to the one Derrick Jensen made about the futility of hope. We don’t do what we do because we “hope” the world will get better; it might not, and surely some days it seems to be getting far worse. Even if things do improve, it will come on the back of the deaths, and suffering, of many of the world’s most innocent, poor, and helpless, not on the backs of the Al Gores of the world, who find a way to make a fortune by “doing good.” The Al Gores of this world can indeed expect to see a payback in this lifetime, but the peasants, campesinos, the so-called “wretched of the earth,” cannot, and yet the struggle for them, as for all of us, is the highest cause to aspire to.
The Buddhists refer to this as the Bodhisattva ideal. The Kissengers and Cheneys of the world rush to crush out the spark of unity and dignity in terror, and with terror, because they know full well that if they do not, it will spread like righteous wildfire among the parched souls of humanity.
I will amplify upon this more in another post, if anyone is interested.
Posted by: Malooga | Oct 14 2007 2:31 utc | 64
R’giap: i was simply suggesting that i get very little for a dkos site with their one line witticisms nor their breaking news hysteria. in fact other than those post that either a conchita or an uncle point out to me i see no quality at all
Agreed.
we have our off days here, me more than most – but the level of quality has remained significantly high
Also agreed, with a caveat about you being off “more than most”. I hadn’t noticed that.
& actually i am not an academic, all my life i have lived closer to the gutter than i do to the stars
We have quite a lot in common. I was just chafing at the remark about Ohio, really. It really was a beautiful place at one time and being a Buckeye was a favorable distinction. Change is a constant, I suppose.
I also realize how it might seem hypocritical of me in one breath to say that I prefer quality to quantity while in the next complaining about how snobbery is divisive and we should embrace our unwashed brethren. But, damn it, I believe that if we ever want to be more than an echo chamber impotently bemoaning the state of mankind, we have to acknowledge the role we play. We ARE mankind, even if we like to think we are somehow a species apart from those dreaded Republicans and NASCAR fans.
B linked to a wonderful Frank Rich essay in the most recent open thread about The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us (I’m re-linking here due to relevance). Rich describes a phenomenon we are all familar with: Those who enable others by burying their heads in the sand. There’s a variation of that, though. Some people bitch and, in doing so, seem to feel that this absolves them of the ‘Good German’ label. It’s a variation of the bumper sticker that says “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.” In other words, by making it clear that the person recognizes the state of affairs, they absolve themselves of any blame as well as the ‘Good German’ label. I’ve written about this before, and it’s not worth re-hashing now because I am not accusing anyone here of engaging in it.
But there’s another side to this self-styled absolution that is dangerous… and, again, I have written about it before. That is when our attempts to assuage ourselves that we are not part of the problem are so… well, off-putting, that we turn others away from being part of the solution. We are no longer passively empowering our enemies when we do that; we are actively empowering them. We need to examine our motives and explore contingencies when we feel the need to resort to shock and/or outrage to make ourselves heard (This is, incidentally, also why I didn’t feel that nasty little troll who is currently taking a break was just a harmless diversion).
Do we do more harm than good? Sometimes, I believe we might. The right-wing does not give a hoot in hell about the welfare of the poor, but they are the least hypocritical about it. When US servicemen lash out at their detractors and claim that they were protecting liberties, one wonders whose liberties they might possibly be referring to… certainly not the free speech of their detractors. More often than not, these detractors are poor. Similarly, when we on the left dismiss the Kossacks (and, Lord, it’s easy to do), one is left to wonder whose civil liberties and human rights it is that we are interested in. Certainly not our own comrades on the left whom we feel are misguided, nor again those on the right. So where is this mass of humanity we were ostensibly interested in helping? We’ve run them off for not being up to par. Annie recently wrote: “where do we focus when we look outside of ourselves, how far is the reach? for some people their empathy may be limited to their family, their race, their country, those that share the same political leaning.” Do we only focus on helping those we like or are we actually trying to redeem Republicans, Israelis, and the whole kit and caboodle of fellow human beings (This would include those unfortunate comrades of ours on the left who were born, through no fault of their own, without a trace of talent or insight)?
Once again, this is a scattershot and I am not accusing any specific person of any specific thing.
Oh, and by the way, Plushtown, I adore your chosen medium. Keep up the good work!
Posted by: Monolycus | Oct 14 2007 14:23 utc | 78
swedish kind of death, #62: Ok, some might see this as doomed, I see it as taking a clear look for what is coming our way. That was why I was interested in what Malooga meant by doomed, because in the scenario of melting ice and rising seas there is still room for survival.
I live on a hill and intend to keep living on ridges, hills and highlands, if not forced to do otherwise. No point in moving to the coast, it will come to me instead. And if the water receeds quickly one day, run for the hilltops.
There is always room for survival, but soon not on a coast. Problem is not melting of ice, stressed by our shepherds, but sliding, pushed by inevitable earthquakes, publicly ignored by them.
If you own coastal real estate, realize that any time our leaders want an induced sell-off all they have to do is have a celebrity or businessman state the obvious and your neighbours will try to sell to 0 buyers. The good news is, they probably don’t want such a panic. Fish stocks will be restored and consumers consumed much more elegantly if the whole visible species remains in denial.
My guess is that you want to be at least 300′ above sea level, and more is better. Ice totals, including estimates of 160′ from the non-melting/increasing East Antarctic and 20′ and 21′ respectively from the melting West Antarctic and Greenland would suggest a little over 200′ would suffice, but it must be hard to estimate East Antarctica’s glacial weight/potential displacement, and land worldwide may be toppled into ocean as well.
An NY Times article last May about Waterbury Ct ( 215’-865’ above current sea level ) makes me think the neighbourhood north of downtown called Hillside is probably ultimately dry, as is the evangelical Holy Land (former) amusement park on still higher ground. Similarly, Kiryas Joel in NY state is also only about 30 miles inland, but 850′ above current sea level. I doubt the hoi polloi of either devout group have a clue as to why inland is good, but this quote seems prescient: “the Rabbi Ahron Kaufman, who spearheaded the migration here, said that while growing up in New York, he had “never even heard of Waterbury, and Connecticut — what was that?”
Now he talks of it as the golden land, a sly smile spreading across his face, as if he were letting an interloper in on a secret. “This is the best of every world,” he said. “A city, the suburbs and the bungalows in the Catskills, all wrapped into one.”
And, at article end:
Rabbi Kaufman, 48, an ebullient man who sees the building of the Orthodox community in Waterbury as a personal mission, takes particular pride in Ingenious Productions, a fledgling film company that has made movies for several Jewish organizations and a three-part spoof called “Rabbis” for the yeshiva.
As Yossi Reichmann, 23, and Moshe Bree, 22, two filmmakers, sat in his office one afternoon, Rabbi Kaufman prodded them a bit about their future.
“You know, you could really make it,” Rabbi Kaufman said, another grin on his face.
“We know, we know,” Mr. Bree said.
“And,” Rabbi Kaufman said, his eyes gleaming, “you could set up a film company in Waterbury, bring in all kinds of business.”
Mr. Reichmann looked far more skeptical.
“Um, well,” he said, “I don’t know that Waterbury will ever be the center of the film industry. said the one without the “grin” and “gleaming” eyes.
In my 35 years in the used book business I’ve bought from guys who sensibly left Europe in the 30’s and talked with them about why they evacuated while friends and relatives did not. I’ve also looked at thousands of titles from the 20’s and 30’s (periods of better quality book production) for signs conscious and unconscious of cataclysms to come. Clues, hints, ironies abound.
I hesitate to put such here, the charge of anti-semitism being such a poisoned sword, but organized devout groups will be very useful as functionaries to the irreligious tippy-top. Evangelicals will be the other big yahoo pool, but sufficient #’s of them will already be inland.
Oh, from yesterday’s NYT: these 75,000 Syrian Jews will all be dead, their wealth and power gone, as will the money of Hollywood, Florida, unwarned London, and all coasts.
If anyone wants Waterbury article e-mailed because too old to be free, e-mail me.
Posted by: plushtown | Oct 15 2007 11:47 utc | 85
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