In a fine comment on my recent post Hillary Clinton, the Blogleft, and Groupthink, mrboma said
This got me to thinking.
It gave me a BIG “Hmmmmmm…!!!” moment.
And I replied.
As is often the case with me, the reply grew.
I now submit it as a post.
Read on.
Fragmented groupthink?
Not such an oxymoron, if you think about it. In fact, it perfectly describes one of the basic faults of left blogworld as represented by dKos. The groupthink is so solidly in favor of what it considers diversity of opinion that it distrusts ANY large or general agreements, and there are literally hundreds of posters there who can be counted on attacking such agreements.
Obsessive, compulsive argumentation.
In fact, that idea could very well be extended to explain the relative failures of the left and/or ANY attempts at “the new” in all of human history.
Conservative, centrist human movements are much more agreeable among themselves than are radical ones.
We literally argue ourselves into failure.
Fragmented groupthink.
An interesting idea.
Thanks.
Also…you say:
“Diaries like yours that help people see when their opinions are running away from the facts would never be tolerated on the right.”
The fact is, “diaries like mine” have been BARELY tolerated on the left. My year and a half of blogging has been an ongoing series of educational surprises to this 35+ years out of the loop radical. I stepped away from politics…indeed, away from MUCH of the mainstream white American culture…in the late ’60s/early ’70s. I was simply too absorbed in mastering a particular craft/art/call it what you will to GIVE much of a damn about a culture dominated by fools like Nixon, Reagan and their Bushbaby progeny. I remember walking down a Greenwich Village side street the night after Nixon completely crushed George McGovern in 1972 and feeling something literally break in my being. Here I was involved in the most American of all arts…jazz…and the America from which it sprang had just chosen the dark side in a a perfectly clear competition between darkness and light.
So I left the culture. I was in it but not of it. Didn’t actually think much about it one way or another, except in terms of personal survival. I looked in many other directions instead.
It wasn’t really until Butch II’s selection in 2000 that it began to dawn on me that the idea of “personal survival” was getting to a point where I had to either leave the country or start to fight this evil myself in whatever ways I could. And it wasn’t until 9/11 and the ensuing Iraq invasion that I TRULY realized the extent of the danger. That it literally would make no difference WHERE on this good green earth I moved as long as these people were in power because they were going to keep ramping up the stakes until we had a true world war.
A NUCLEAR war. Those other “world wars?” Sorry, baby. In 9/10ths of the world, there almost WAS no “war.” No shooting, anyway. No bloody death. But THESE people?
THIS version of the Nova Gang?
They are threatening to take the whole thing down.
You say that you think consensus is “inevitable and necessary”.
I agree about the “necessary” part, if we are to survive on this planet. On the evidence however, I am not so sure about the “inevitable” idea.
We shall see.
We shall VERY SOON see.
The 2006 election will be the harbinger of things to come. The left…the blogleft, anyway…is presently getting all het up about “the coming victory”. There are apparently perfectly rational people on the blogs talking about taking over BOTH houses of Congress in November, about a Democratic landslide, about a mandate for change, about impeachment, about Happy Times Are Here Again and a chicken in every gas tank, etc.
We shall see.
These are the same people who have started crowing every time some piece of damaging news about the criminals in power has surfaced over the past couple of years. The Downing St. Papers, Guckert/Gannon, Enron, Katrina, the whole Fitzgerald investigation, etc. etc. etc.
Ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
And every time BushCo has Teflon Donned itself right out of trouble.
So…we shall see.
On the evidence if what I have seen and personally experienced on left blogworld…we have a long way to go before we can deal with these BushCo people effectively.
A LONG way.
Fragmented groupthink?
Yup.
That just about perfectly sums it up.
We shall see.
If we do not hang together we shall most certainly burn apart.
Let us pray.
AG
I have no solutions.
We clomp clomp clomp off in all directions simultaneously.
Let’s talk about it. (Or is that the REAL problem? Talkytalk. We shall see.)
Recs + tips appreciated as usual, thank you/please.
Later…
AG
I go to the frontpage and what do I see staring out at me under Booman’s byline?
Retaking the Senate
Sorry, Boo. Nothing personal.
I hope we do.
Later…
AG
I understand and agree that too much brouhaha has been made over things that were expected to bring down the other side. (Guckert, Downing St, etc.) But at least BooMan’s post is a measured analysis of the relevant races and not just more baseless cheerleading.
It is indeed.
And I fervently hope that is a CORRECT analysis as well. I really do.
But that “Once burned, twice shy” idea?
Seventeen times burned make the word “shy” totally inadequate to describe how I am seeing things these days on this level.
Later…
AG
OK for bacon and homefries.
Not so good for people.
AG
As I see it, boran, the problem is that many of the “it’s all about to come down!” stories of the past (how many is it now?) years have not been mere baseless cheerleading. They’ve been grounded in arguments, evidence. The evidence, of course, was incomplete — as is always the case where such prognostication is concerned. Promoters of/believers in such stories may have wanted their conclusion to be true so badly that a vital self-directed skepticism — “What is it in me that is guiding me toward this conclusion, really?” — got lost.
The more this happens, the more reason we have to be skeptical of any such stories, no matter how measured the analyses supporting them. As Arthur says here, seventeen times burned…
The trick, I guess, is to maintain the proper degree of self-directed skepticism without becoming defeatist, quietistic, perhaps internally fragmented. And that’s some trick.
I’ll associate myself with the remarks of these wise women:
If voting really mattered, they’d make it illegal. Anne Cameron
I worry that no matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up. Jane Wagner
An excellent, thought-provoking diary AG. Here’s my take: Labels like left and right, progressive, liberal, conservative, etc. can be pretty tricky to define. Sure, you can pick up a PoliSci book or check wikipedia for a nice, neat definition, but we’re trying to put a single label on the thoughts and feelings of thousands, if not millions of people. It’s an illusion. However, with that said, I would argue that notions such as ‘inclusion’, ‘diversity’, and ‘compromise’ (as in fairness and equality, not as in backing down) are essential to progressive/liberal thought.
Now, for my point: I don’t think we’re wasting time arguing, because this is a process of trying to build new institutions and new ways of relating to one another – ways which are inclusive and fair.
The Right can function like a well-oiled machine because they’ve got their command and control structures down pat. I see a continuous line, going back from the modern empires (USA, the European powers) through the Romans, right back to those Egyptians that managed to build the pyramids. Follow that line forward in time, and human history appears as a continuous process of destruction and subjugation of the world’s people.
From that perspective, there’s nothing new about ‘progressivism’ or ‘liberalism’: it’s the way so many people have lived throughout the world’s [unrecorded or erased] history. Put the Declaration of Independence (1776) beside the Magna Carta (1215) and compare. And what are those two documents? Two of the most beautiful examples from all the world’s history of how to disagree and remain civil.
It might seem like groupthink if we each agree to be a ‘dissenting’ voice. But there are only two ways to achieve equality and harmony: by annihilating anyone who opposes the majority, or by building structures that allow us to disagree together. As a tactic I’m not sure if it works, but as a philosophy, I’m all for ‘Big Tent’ politics (again, I have to qualify that the same way I qualified ‘compromise’ above).
This is why I’m so proud of everyone here at BMT: I don’t care whether we agree or disagree on issue X; I care that we’re all working together and exploring ways in which we can all be different and yet be together.
Just to be on the safe side, I’d like to say that the subject line and content isn’t directed at you or anyone else, of course…. It was only intended to summarize the idea that disagreement is built into the philosophy, and so it should be expected to be found in practice. 😉
My $0.02.
Yup.
I agree.
AG
“On the evidence however, I am not so sure about the “inevitable” idea.”
I wasn’t saying universal consensus is inevitable, just that consensus within each faction is inevitable. The left tolerates more factions within factions than does the right (which tolerates none)… hence our fragmented groupthink, I guess.
The psychological desire for belonging is tempered by the desire to be unique. Thus, we often form small groups of “counter-culture.” Even when you left the mainstream, you were joining a group of like-minded people, joining the world of jazz. You didn’t go live alone in a cave. When teens rebel, they select a counter-culture to join (I know… most of the teen counter-cultures are nothing of the sort because they are manufactured by the media, but the teens don’t realize that). It isn’t any fun to be a counter-culture of one (hey… I’m a poet and I’m not aware of it… or something like that).
Why do I, and I’m sure most others, come to the blogs? To find like-minded individuals. To belong. It is comforting to know there are so many other people who think and feel as I do. With the blogs, anyone who disagrees with the consensus can either find someplace they fit in, or start their own blog.
So that is why I think consensus is inevitable when it comes to the blogging factions of the left.
… and corporate supremacy. We are a disenfranchised democracy.
Iraq War = ((3 evil doers (Rummy + Cheney + Condi) x (1 Moronic President)) – (Kool Aid Sipping. Sec. State Powell)
And A.G. how has W become the new Teflon Don, probably by all the secret wire tapping…he probably has goods on “I Love you Joe from Conneticut”
We argue ourselves into failure. Obsessive, compulsive argumentation. Good stuff AG. Really good stuff. I’d love to pick your brain about this post the next time you don’t feel like kicking me in the figurative balls for being so presumptuous as to post something not featuring pandas or David Hasselhoff.
My experience in this medium tells me that the tendency to indulge in obsessive, compulsive argumentation, on sites like this one, comes from the seriously misguided impression that the day to day posts and interactions that occur on sites like this amount to something more than a sizable gentleman’s morning dump. The worst mistake some of us make, on a day to day basis, is confusing what we do here for something that moves and shatters mountains. It’s when this gets elevated to that level, that the tendency of unreformed political junkies to engage in obsessive compulsive argumentation becomes unbearable, and lint spews from the navel like a mushroom cloud, and we argue ourselves into failure.
In groups, we can move the meter just a little right now. That’s it. We sometimes do, and we ought to strive for more. We aren’t ever going to get more if we confuse where we’re at now for anywhere other than nowhere much at all. Movements don’t build themselves from false presumptions of real power. They die quick and forgotten deaths because of it.
I didn’t say anything about pandas or David Hasselhoff.
Ever.
I don’t GIVE a shit about pandas of David Hasselhoff. I have my own obsessions not to worry about.
Must’ve been someone else.
As far as moving and shattering mountains…the constant erosive action of grains of sand blown by the invisible wind, the endless gentle lapping of little rivulets of water, the inexorably slow grinding of the unwitting glacier…THESE are what move mountains.
And we are part of that action. For better, for worse or for something else.
Silly, obsessive ladies and gentlemen in the midst of their necessary and proper morning, afternoon and evening dumps that we may be.
You write:
“Movements don’t build themselves from false presumptions of real power. They die quick and forgotten deaths because of it.”
Fact is, movements”do not build themselves at ALL. Any more than said morning dumps can be considered as witting and self-built. “Movements” are built by historical imperatives, by forces so large that we can no more conceive of them than grains of sand can conceive of the wind or water conceive of gravity.
Or the bowels conceive of Chinese take-out.
Grind on, Chris. ALL deaths are quick and forgotten in the eyes of the universe.
Enjoy the ride.
AG
Oh.
I misread.
Did I kick you in the balls?
For NOT writnig about Hasselhoff and pandas?
When?
Sorry.
It was not my intention.
AG
Nope. Just seems to be the only time I’m not pissing somebody off. No big deal. Wrote it when I was half asleep.