This post has been brewing up for some time now. In fact, the only reason I never fully completed it until now is that I never thought the timing was exactly right. But now, in light of the news about the Ohio Senate race, and the netroots' reaction to it, suddenly it seems quite appropriate. My involvement in mainstream partisan politics is a relatively recent development. My parents are Republicans, much of my mother's family are Midwestern labor Democrats, and none of my friends has ever been overly political. From a pretty young age, I identified myself as a progressive. I was a social liberal like my parents, but much more of an economic idealist, with a healthy distrust of corporate power. At 17, I paid union dues as a waiter, but I didn't make a connection between that act and the fight, which I was heavily involved in, at my school to stop the school board from privatizing the janitorial staff. I did pretty well in my American politics and economics courses senior year, but my understanding of politics was incomplete at best. In fact, to the extent that I had any advanced political beliefs at all, it's a pretty safe bet that I picked them up from my involvement with the punk rock scene.
The punk scene is, as you can imagine, pretty liberal. And I'm continually struck by how many similarities I see between the scene and the netroots. Essentially, I think it comes down to the fact that the two cultures have very similar structures and aims. Punk rock (mind you, I'm including a wide variety of subgenres under this umbrella, from indie to hardcore to emo to pop-punk) is known for its do-it-yourself, DIY attitude. Kids wants to make music that doesn't necessarily fit in with what they're hearing on the radio. Rather than going out for auditions or spending hours on music education, they just get together with a bunch of their friends and start making noise. Eventually that noise develops into songs. And when a band has a a few songs, they don't wait for local talent shows or club showcases. They either pass a demo tape around to their friends or really go for broke, get a few other bands, rent a VFW hall, find someone with a crappy PA system, invite a bunch of their friends and their friends' friends, make some flyers, and put on a show.
They do it again, week after week, with a rotating cast of bands, until people start listening. The bands start playing small clubs instead of halls or basements. The good bands go into recording studios, make records, and go on tour with other bands from around the country in their exact same position. Of those, a choice few get noticed by national indie labels and college radio. Maybe even a few make it onto MTV2, into the pages of Alternative Press, or onto the Warped Tour. I'll admit things have changed a bit in the past few years. On the DIY recording front, boom boxes have given way to laptops pre-installed with Garage Band. Similarly, demo tapes have gone the way of the dodo, replaced first by CD-Rs, then by Napster'ed MP3s, and most recently (and efficiently) websites like MySpace and Pure Volume. But the fundamentals are still the same.
Are you seeing the similarities yet? Allow me to play Captain Obvious for you. Bloggers have thoughts and opinions they're not hearing expressed in the old fashioned media. Rather than submitting countless op-ed pieces that they know will be rejected, they gripe to their friends over e-mail. Eventually, they go to Blogger or Wordpress or Typepad or (here it is again) MySpace and start blogging. They e-mail links to friends and friends of friends or really go for broke, get a few other bloggers, pay for hosting a Scoop-based site, and invite a bunch of people to check out what they're writing.
This might all seem like a cute little comparison so far, but here's where things start getting important and the group dynamic comes into play. Some bloggers get recognized and some don't. Some comment and write diaries at the big sites, while others do their own thing, both groups ultimately hoping that people take notice and start taking them seriously. The most polished writers start having pieces linked to and highlighted by bigger bloggers and even the old fashioned media. Of those, a choice few start writing pieces for national magazines, essays for books, or get noticed by progressive talk radio. Maybe even a few make it on to MSNBC, into the pages of Newsweek, or onto the staff of an establishment political campaign.
Unfortunately, this is where Chris's idea of an activist class war comes into play. Suddenly our ebullient little scene isn't all basement shows and singalongs anymore. Bands are getting bigger and their fans are accusing them of selling out. Even bands stuck in the middle, still working day jobs to pay the rent, are being attacked by smaller bands for not being able to do more to get them on bigger bills. Forget that it was a big band doing the medium band a favor that got them on the tour to begin with. The small band wants to know why they're being sold out and left behind by their backstabbing former friends. And sometimes, a medium-to-big band will get dropped by their indie label for reasons that aren't all that clear. The band's fans will vow never to buy another release from that label again. Forgotten is the fact that the label that dropped them is run by other outsiders not much different from themselves.
I've seen this in the punk scene and now I'm seeing it now in the progressive blogosphere. It's as sad to me as it was predictable. This 'us versus them' mentality (or perhaps 'you versus us') is interesting to see at this level, because we tend to inflate everything beyond its actual importance. For example, media stories about the progressive blogosphere almost uniformly describe us as all being of the same political persuasion, holding the exact same opinions about everything and demanding adherence to a party line. When you see this, you might ask yourself how they can say that. They can say it because they think it. And they think it because they're largely not paying attention. While that may be frustrating, it's also an important reminder that the divide between bloggers and blog readers is ultimately not that wide. We need to come to a better understanding that the things that divide us are nowhere near as important as the things that unite us. We're all not going to agree on everything, but that's what makes us different from the rightist blogosphere -- we don't suffer under the same regime of "tight internal controls on message." In other words, at the end of the day, we're all still punk rock.
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