Or discussion boards? Or writing letters to newspapers and magazines? Or writing your own zines? Or attending protests?
I guess the real practical value of these things is the creation of a culture of dissent. I think it's been very important for progressives, to know that they're not alone in the world. We, as individuals in this community, gain some strength and some sanity knowing that there like-minded people out there, offering their progressive analysis.
But there are limits to the impact of this "activism." At the end of the day, we have to go out into the 3-d world and talk to the unconverted and take-on (in a very real way) the powers that are taking us on this course to the destruction of ourselves as a species.
I've been a little quiet lately because I've become very disillusioned with my country, my fellow Canadians, and with the practical value of typing these little blurts every day. While the Liberals were abominable (what with their attacks on Haiti and Afghanistan and their pillaging our pockets with their unemployment insurance shenanigans), with harper it's been one brazen act of stupidity after another. And Canadians have shrugged their collective shoulders at Canadian complicity in torture, the prorogation of democracy, and now, mass arrests and brutalization of peaceful protesters.
So now, when Peter Mackay shakes a meat martini in public about the Canadian airforce taking on the "Ruskies," or harper and his whole gang of idiots start babbling about the Census or building prisons to house the growing numbers of unreported criminals, I couldn't work up much enthusiasm to say anything.
But this blog is just a place to practice writing and thinking and to add my little grain of sand to the beach that is the Canadian political scene.
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8 comments:
I go through bouts of asking myself about the point of blogging too. I mean, because it is useful to me as a tool for writing, I have a good personal justification to keep doing it. But I often wonder whether there is really any political point to it. My answer fluctuates a lot, though your suggestion that it is part of creating a culture of dissent is a good one.
Have you found participation in discussion boards to be useful at all? I occasionally return to the idea of consistently doing that, but the few attempts I've made in the past have been unsatisfying and have not felt like a particularly great use of my time.
I dunno, buddy, I think each of us is a very very tiny part of something much more important - a movement to replace boring old diehard political partisanship with a loose coalition based on common cause about actual policies we can mostly agree on.
Early days yet.
what Alison said. It's disheartening, though, stating the obvious day after day as the majority of Canadians just find it all too boring or removed from their daily concerns to exercise their power as voters. Gotta keep that flame going, though.
We all are part of a collective consciousness. The really discouraging part is the number of people who have become not merely discouraged, but afraid. I find social media discussion boards a breath of fresh air after feeling that blogging is like talking down a well and hoping for an echo.
Time 'on the job' is supposed to help but for me,at least, that is faint praise indeed.
Politics 'n Poetry for instance, left blogging for a while...and came back. But that blog filled a unique niche. Most wonder how we can aspire to be noticed.
Tell me. Did you even notice your feed was syndicated on my board ?
Scott,
I think your blog is important in a very quiet way. I don't like to read something longer than your average CounterPunch article online, and you sometimes have very lengthy, involved arguments. But I notice that a lot of people that i respect have you on their blogroll, so i think that a lot of lefties decide to put aside the time to read you and it influences them in a big way.
I don't think your style of writing would be suited to a discussion board. Furthermore, it's hard to find a good one where you can really do more than carp and bitch about how bad things are and provide links to decent articles.
Alison,
Yeah, I think it's a life-saver for "progressive" Canadians of whatever stripe to be able to see that there are other people wrestling with their dissatisfaction with traditional politics and mainstream analysis.
I think that the USA progressive community has achieved a critical mass and has actually started to influence a throughly debased political culture, but they've just recently seen how easily it is to be betrayed and some of them are still in denial about that.
I don't know if Canadian internet community is ever going to get big enough to influence things, but then again, our ruling class is much weaker than the USA one.
And our harpercons are approaching US Repugnican levels of blatant, obvious stupidity, ... so there's possibilities there.
900-ft Jesus,
Your comment about voter apathy is something that I want to try to go out into the 3-d world to try to address.
I have hopes for my 3-d presence because i've been told that i'm occasionally inspiring, and i've also noticed that i can bring people to tears with my story-telling.
one thing i haven't said anything about is the lurkers. people who can think about things just as capably as us internet pontificaters, but who (for reasons inexplicable to me) are unable to begin putting their thoughts into written presentations.
I think going online and reading what like-minded people have to say is incredibly important.
Opit,
I feel that way about the blog as well. Sometimes i've spent a whole morning putting something together and then i wonder if five people will look at it.
When you think about how inconsequential a rally with 50,000 people is to the powers that be, you think twice about investing effort into an essay for five people.
But I suppose that's even more the case with the little essays i used to write in the mid-1990s for small local audiences.
But if none of us were doing this, then things would be that much more monopolized by cretins like Marcus Gee and Christie Belchforth.
And yeah, i guess some people are afraid. "Big Brother is Watching Them" and all that. But giving in to that fear isn't "smart" or "pragmatic."
That's why i went to that Canada Day protest against police brutality recently. We have to show them that we're not afraid.
As to your question: No, I haven't noticed that I'm syndicated on your blog. As I understand it, you post a lot of links. I'm going to go and look write after posting this.
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