Posted on 09/05/2005 4:39:52 PM PDT by MikeHu
Hurricane Katrina and its horrific aftermath has filled the media and blogosphere. As a wakeup call about the fragility of civilization, even in the world's most powerful country, it's a worthy story. And as a story, it's vastly beyond politics, too, but politics goes wherever human events are.
Sharp differences are emerging between left and right in this crisis. It's evident in the blogosphere, which now drives the framing of U.S. political debate. Bloggers on the left are awash in finger-pointing, using this catastrophe as their grand opportunity to Blame Bush, once and for all.
But on the right, there's quite a bit less of that. True to the American spirit, most right-leaning bloggers are mobilizing aid for the rescue of the people in the city of New Orleans. They seem to be mainly urging people to give, give, give for hurricane relief. This says a lot about the character of the two sides. On the left, it doesn't seem to matter that there's an overwhelming humanitarian crisis right now. Politics, upon which they are intensely focused, like a hungry beggar outside a bakery window, is drawing their attention. And they are struggling to fit the vast event into their narrow simplistic political template, which isn't easy.
Here is why: Looking at New Orleans, there's mixed political picture - Louisiana is a red state, but New Orleans is a blue city whose voters elect Democrats. Casting blame should be a self-canceling political picture, rendering ideology unimportant against the great humanitarian need. Besides this, the big U.S. charities that can help New Orleans' marooned castaways are generally run by liberals, which should make them an attractive cause for left advocacy. But for some reason, the left isn't interested. Leftists instead are yelling about Bush, and throwing in some of the most far-fetched retro race-baiting ever, relying on words and not action.
By contrast, on the right, bloggers are fiercely urging donations to aid relief. They don't care about who votes for whom in New Orleans' elections, nor do they care about the ideologies of the charities so long as they get the cash to the needy.
It should be noted that the people of New Orleans struggling for survival don't care about politics either, suggesting a political comity.
Through thousands of private efforts, a little here and a little there, a vast great American spirit of pitching in is emerging from their direction, acting, not talking, with no political litmus test. At Val Prieto's Babalu blog, all blogging has been suspended until $5000 in donations is reached. Deeds before words.
A likely explanation for this pattern of behavior is in the nature of left and right ideologies. The left has little faith in anything except Big Government to take care of all needs. Therefore, one wonders if their wrath at Bush is grounded in a firm belief that the federal government and only the federal government can do anything to alleviate the catastrophe.
Charities don't register on their mental thermometer, only government does.
Since they don't like the leader of the government, it's pretty difficult for them - and thus their yawps against Bush are especially loud. The single interesting exception on the left is Bill Clinton, who to his great credit agreed to help lead the relief effort along with President Bush Senior. That he is on the outs with most of the Democratic Party is further indicative of their political fever. It's no coincidence that one of Clinton's more memorable statements is that 'the era of Big Government is over.'
On the right there is a belief that individuals in the private sector are not just handout receptacles from Big Government, but empowered citizens who can act on their own and make a difference. So we see a fierce effort to get involved and make a positive difference - fully in the spirit of Alexis de Tocqueville who first chronicled this cultural action in his Democracy in America.
On the right they are even, as believers in markets and competition, apparently competing with each other on NZ Bear's site to see who can donate the most to charity. Who such a contest to raise the most cash ultimately helps becomes obvious when one thinks of the photos of poor people in wheelchairs awaiting help in New Orleans. A look at those blogs in the running for donations shows a paucity of left-leaning blogs seeking to raise aid.
What does this mean? The reactive exclamations from the left, focused on Bush, all talk and no action, are a sure sign that the left still isn't ready for prime time in the political arena. Until they scrap their selfish concern about their political prospects and embrace pitching in and seeking a solution greater than Big Government, they're going to remain in the political wilderness for a long long time.
A.M. Mora y Leon
Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in Mankind.
The people dying in New Orleans are Americans. They may be poor, they may be black, they may be young, they may be old. But they are US. This is not a time for partisanship or petty backbiting. It's a time for Americans to come to the aid of other Americans in their hour of need, to rise above the dismal standards of mundane existence and embrace the noblest in our nature.
The day will come when the politics can resume, and the fingerpointing can begin in earnest. Commissions will be formed and hearings will be held and lies will be spread like spring manure. But for now, America has work to do. And America has never been one to shirk its task, regardless how demanding or dire.
This one really should be under News/Activism to get as wide a reading as possible because it may be the defining moments for blogs and political forums -- as the day they left mainstream media in the dust because there's nothing close to it in their publications.
In their publications, there is only the uninspired and uninsightful recounting of meaningless union picnics and hot dogs, produced by dutiful union writers. It's almost the reverse now. The bloggers have become News, and the mainstream media news, vain bad blogs.
I just noticed there was a previous post of this article a few hours ago that also got shunted to the personal and blogger category -- when this piece is significant writing that will soon be the kind of reading, writing and thinking Americans are doing -- and not all that partisan crap sniping that has become the mainstream media. Their situation is hopeless. They wouldn't know a good piece of writing if they saw any -- and would suppress it because it made all their other writers look bad.
Bloggers are the state of the art in writing now (including political forums like this). It's time they woke up and realized that the revolution has been won. There are no great writers coming out of the old mainstream media tradition -- only the envious, bitter, resentful who sense their time has passed -- and demand that they are still in charge. It's just comical now.
The mainstream media is not reporting News anymore; they're reporting their opinions and ideologies as news. Their reporters go to press releases and get the handouts, and if its at the union hall, they print them in their entirety as an article they wrote themselves -- because the union is not going to charge that they plagiarized. They want the public to think the reporters wrote it themselves.
And vice-versa when it's a letter to the editor.
Most of the mainstream media has become merely a leftist blog -- like the Democratic Underground, except they actually pay those guys quite generously for the stuff they spew out freely at the DU! What a masterful con-job by the lefties. Bravo.
That's the ticket isn't it. They think their bosses will be too stupid to notice.
You can fake down -- but you can't fake up.
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