Politics as Usual

With this election, we finally saw the "fulfillment" of the long-standing promise that the Internet would revolutionize the world of politics. There’s already been enough press about how Howard Dean raked in the political contributions from supporters via the Internet, so I won’t rehash that. There’s been even more buzz about the blogging community’s contribution to the election, so I don’t feel the need to revisit that either. What I would like to do though, is discuss how the media and political bloggers still don’t get it. Though people seem to think that the Internet is revolutionizing American politics, it’s really not. In fact, I’d argue that it’s more of the same old crap, just migrated to a different media.

When Howard Dean brought up his web site and successfully gathered all of that money and all of those signatures during his campaign, I will concede that he caught the political world off guard. Never before had a political candidate successfully accomplished so much, using the Internet as a medium. But somewhere along the line, politics as usual kicked in. Dean had his notorious red-faced, vein-in-the-middle-of-the-head-bulging, temper-tantrum-looking, conniption fit, and the rest of the Democrats said “Woah, we don’t want this guy around.” So I suspect that backroom favors were called in, the old Democratic establishment mobilized themselves, and suddenly Dean was a pariah. I’m not calling this into judgment. I’m not saying whether or not this should have happened. I’m merely pointing out that after this alleged “revolution,” politics as usual was the order of the day. It’s tough to call it a revolution if the status quo prevails.

Around the same time, bloggers started garnering a lot of media buzz. In my opinion, a couple of things happened. People got tired of the mainstream media spoon-feeding them the news – complete with opinion, and like-minded people used the Internet to flock together. Not since the days of Walter Cronkite has the media truly “reported” the news. For almost as long as I can remember, the media has gone after flash and sensationalism, instead of strictly reporting the news and allowing us to make up our own minds. (This, in my opinion, is the logical result of broadcasting the news for ratings, instead of broadcasting the news in an attempt to inform, but that’s a completely separate topic.)

And since the public couldn’t get their wish of truly “reporting” the news fulfilled by mainstream media, they took to the Internet in droves, partially in a quest for real answers, and partially to find others who thought and believed the same as they did. This brought blogging into the mainstream. Unfortunately, people fail to see that this was still more of the same. If you notice, the sites that really took off either deified or vilified Bush or Kerry. The majority, who in my opinion thought both of these alleged candidates were (and still are) ass-clowns, was still completely ignored. Those who haven’t bought into the party line are still marginalized. Yes, I acknowledge that there are a plethora of blogs out there made by mainstream, disenfranchised Americans. Unfortunately they don’t get even close to the number of hits of the blogs that toe the party line. So once again the status quo prevails, and the “revolution” is a mirage.

The Internet has come closer to truly bringing about a real revolution in politics than anything I’ve experienced in my life – as great as radio and as great as television could have been if things had played out a little differently. The Internet can still become the great equalizer, making the little guy’s voice as loud and coherent as the voice of the Democratic and Republican political machine. But in order for this to happen, the little guy is going to have to do a little bit of extra work and search for the truth, instead of accepting the top posts on their search engines. After all, the political establishment has purchased the top search engine returns. In the end, I doubt that the Internet will bring about a revolution. Money seems to speak louder than critical thinking. But I’d still like to hope…