Dwayne Monroe wrote:
>
>
> The question is how will the left contend
> in the dominant information space.
>
> An example follows.
Let me try a grotesque analogy, before taking up the issue in more realistic terms. In 1944 the Allies invaded Normandy rather than sending a battalion of paratroops to invade Munich. And the response to Pearl Harbor was not to launch an invasion of Japan three months later. What kind of terrain are we choosing if we focus on what we can call the "Fox News Front"? I am claiming (with all respect to Kelley's careful arguments) that we would be choosing a terrain in which nothing, simply nothing, is to be gained, and in the process would be ignoring terrains where gains are to be made. Let me repeat once again a point I have made over and over. Since October 2001 poll after poll has shown 20%, even 30%, of u.s. residents opposed to u.s. wars abroad. For leftists to go whoring after O'Reilly's audience while this potential army is out there to be recruited is as bizarre as it would have been for the U.S. Army in the 1960s to focus its recruiting efforts in France.
I really don't know how large the audience is for Fox News. If and when someone on this list, Pen-L, or PSN can provide that information I will have more to say, but for the present what you and Kelley are advocating looks as odd to me as trout fishing in a city dump. (And incidentally, how many well-spoken leftists is Fox News going to put on the air? One more? Ten more? How many repetitions would it take to have an impact of any kind on any significant number of people? TV belongs to the enemy! Efforts to reach our constituency through it are going to be as wildly successful as a fund drive to build a new Jewish Temple in Munich in 1936 would have been.)
>
> Because I'm black and many people are quite thoroughly
> stupid I'm often complimented on how well I speak. The
> information space I contend with is one in which brown
> me = mumble mouth (hey Fat Albert, I do be wantin some
> ice b cream). The fact I'm not a mumble mouth is an
> inadvertent way of waging war upon a self
> re-energizing network of asinine ideas.
Granted. This is why I have always seized every opportunity to announce that I suffered from depression. It's a contribution to breaking through the stigma that clings to mental illness. And it does work. I have gotten quite a few off-list posts on five different maillists thanking me for that (three political, two literary). And every semester three to ten students would pass through my office to tell me how much better I had made them feel about their own illness or that of friends or family members. But I really don't see how this is analogous to the issue of the left contesting _O'Reilly's_ space.
> And so it is with the sharp performances of people
> like Moore, who fine tunes his style of
> self-presentation with each iteration of his media
> appearances. He's not weak. He doesn't fumble. He's
> on the Left. The cognitive dissonance this creates is
> useful.
I would challenge that it would have much effect on that part of the population that so obsesses Wojtek, Chuck Grimes, and Carl. Their misery will only be helped if and when they turn their attention to the 10s of millions out there who really are our potential friends and comrades and forget about those who simply, for the time being, can't be reached.
> Ideas form networks. Networks have the ability to
> route around damage (which, in the case of belief
> systems can be defined as heretical challenges) and
> continue packet transmission. The only effective way
> to deal with these networks is by introducing new
> nodes and packet streams.
Again I agree. But let's work in areas where those networks have the highest probability of starting and growing. And, noting your metaphors from the internet, I would question whether social networks form in quite the same way electronic ones do.
>
> Or, to put it another way...
>
> Building movements is essential. Building movements
> while ignoring the info-space and the need for
> head-to-head combat in that space is a bad tactic.
The info-space is huge. We at present are few. Let us choose those sectors of info-space where we will not be (a) wasting our time and (b) driving ourselves to despair (as Chuck G and Carl seem to be doing. I've been exchanging e-mails with a local woman whose son was in Iraq. And she is getting angrier and angrier. For the present that anger is directed against what I feel to be a pointless target, Bush, but we will see come next January.
Carrol
>
> .d.
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