I’m sorry it’s taken several days to find a blog that says something like this:

Here are a few things that I will not be doing in Denver:

I’m not going to cheerlead for the Democratic Party. I’m sure the oratory will be stirring and the energy and emotion infectious; we’ll have to see if I get swept up in a political Hallmark moment, but I somehow doubt it. The Democratic Party has simply spent too many years killing the romance with corruption and backstabbing to rekindle the faith with a few bright roses and sweet promises. We’ve got some long-term work to do in order to make things okay.

I’m not going to pretend to be a reporter or pundit. I’m a progressive activist and agitator, an anti-racist anti-corporatist anti-imperialist Asian American writer, a universal human rights advocate, and a generally ornery observer of media, culture, and politics, who somehow happens to be attending the DNC. If I were forced to name a journalistic role model for this trip, I’d probably have to go with Hunter S. Thompson, though I hesitate to mention him because nobody, nobody, can live up to that legacy.

I’m not going to declare that “we” are “taking back” the Democratic Party or “reclaiming our democracy” because I don’t believe that those things were ever really mine in the first place.  Read more 

After weeks of looking back and taking stock of what happened to the major players in the progressive blogosphere (PB1.0), let’s move forward, shall we?

It’s time to come out and stake our claim to a place in the blogosphere. We need to define ourselves as we are already being defined by others as "just disgruntled HRC supporters over there at Corrente."  Read more 

The Principles

What we for PB2.0

• Promotion of Justice / Social Justice
• Promotion of truth no matter what
• Promotion of the tools of critical analysis
• Party invariance
• We are not impartial, we are progressives

What we don’t want for PB2.0

• An exclusive focus on electoral politics
• Too close a relationship between the blogosphere, the media and party politics

Cross posted at MakeThemAccountable.

For years, I’ve been saying that the problem with progressives is that we don’t sell our message. We think that all we have to do is tell the truth, and promote issues that 60 to 80% of Americans want implemented. But we fail, time after time, to overcome the powerful message machine of the right. This week, David Cay Johnston reviewed Farhad Manjoo’s first book, True Enough, in which Manjoo tells us that “truth still matters, and in the long run, it will prevail so long as a decent number of people push for it.”

But that statement has to be wrong. How many Americans still believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and participated in the 9/11 attacks? How many still believe John Kerry lied to get his combat medals? How many still believe that Al Gore once said he invented the internet?  Read more 

Credit to all (and thanks to VL for being such a good host). Mistakes are mine. Please pardon me if I misrepresent your views or efforts.

Historical wrap-up: PB1.0 relied on the inherent goodness of human beings for honesty and fairness. Whoopsie.

The issues:
1. “Why should we post?” — principles, “we believe”, “progressive”
2. “Where should we post?” — decentralized structure
3. “How should we post?” — the procedures
4. “Who should post?” — those who adhere to the principles
5. “What should we post?” — truthful narrative

Why should we post? Principles

Who are we: PB2.0 is an honest broker on behalf of the progressive movement.  Read more 

Can we get to a new and improved liberal blogosphere if we’re “polite” about inconvenient truths?

This year’s running of the quadrennial horse race exposed — to those who would notice — many flaws in the progressive blogosphere, some as surprising as they were disappointing: bullying groupthink, classism, misogyny, and disturbing appetites for stale rightwing baloney and newly minted Drudgian smears.

Overarching the whole experience was a cloud of truthiness, believing whatever it felt good to believe, facts-be-damned.

The Obama skeptic found her/himself in the Ron Suskind role, the nose-against-the-glass reality-based wonk who “just didn’t get it,” being read the latest edition of the Arthur Jensen speech.

Truthiness rots everything. And so the need for a better, truthiness-proof blogosphere transcends the Hillbama wars. Thus, it’s tempting at this point, after a primary battle that Obama termed a “death march,” to try to unharsh the mellow by talking past the late unpleasantness and the failings of the candidate it gave us, assuming that “us” is Democrats.

Sorry, but I’m not going to do that. I’m going to be gauche.

The urge to wipe the slate clean with the presidential campaign still in progress — and progressive leverage over either presumptive nominee apparently non-existent — is symptomatic of our species’s hyperdeveloped, kneejerk impulse to “move on”:

Years ago on “60 Minutes,” they did a segment about an ex-Nazi honcho who was living in NYC. They had people in a nearby bar saying things like “hasn’t he suffered enough?” though apparently the only suffering he seemed to have encountered was living in a city with a huge Jewish population and being unable to do anything about it.

Ditto for all the “let it go” crap we still hear about Florida 2000. Hundreds of thousands of people are dead or wounded because of that, but we’re supposed to let it go.

Let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room, shall we?

Whether you think voting for Obama is the right thing to do or not, his candidacy doesn’t bode particularly well for anyone who believes in or relies on progressive policies.

You want links with that? Even recent history alone backs this up, as he distances himself from everything his party stands for, such as separation of church and state, freedom from unwarranted surveillance, timely exit from unnecessary wars, fair sentencing, reproductive freedoms, and environmentalism.

Yet, everywhere you turn, someone well-meaning or otherwise is offering us a nice hot cup of “Get Over It.”

One piping hot topic here this week was The First Black President’s announcement that he’s not a racist, and a look back at the smears that made such a statement all but necessary. It’s just part of a long-running story where, as Avedon puts it, “Obama created a situation where he can’t and won’t brag on what’s good about Democrats, and all that leaves is the stuff that does him (and Democrats) no good.”

Doesn’t that make you feel great about hitting the snooze button for eight years and talking around the suckitude of Obama’s campaign and presidency-to-come? (Too bad the country is so avidly approving of the Republican Party that it’s necessary for Obama to cave again and again on framing and issues.)

Throughout the campaign and perhaps especially now, countless very good bloggers and prominent Democrats have been swallowing at least some of the truth to help prop up Obama, for example defending him against charges of elitism, arrogance, and being insubstantial when he’s quite obviously vulnerable on those points. Those vulnerabilities include calling those who don’t prefer him bitter, xenophobic, god-clinging gun-nuts (and those are just the Democrats); taking a rudely superior tone with his opponent (“likable enough” and the dandruff and finger gestures); and running on a platform of content-free platitudes about his “movement” of “hope” and “change” and spending his entire career running for the next job.

Do we really want to be gnashing our teeth in fauxtrage about such topics? Is that why we’re here? It’s not like there’s a shortage of legitimate complaints about McCain, y’know.

If a PB2.0 is to rise from the ashes of PB1.0, we’re going to have to say no to truthiness and yes to inconvenient truths, rising above the culture of “move on.”

And with that, the floor is now open for your thoughts about building a better blogosphere!

Since there are no bookmarks for me to link you to the relevant section, I hope Glenn will forgive me for fair-using a large section (with any objections from him or Digby, I’ll trim this down to a smaller citation).

See Glenn’s Salon post about this interview (includes audio link), the comment I posted there, and the full transcript.

The relevant section appears below the fold:  Read more 

I know. I know. I’m supposed to have linky goodness and some grand solution to all of life’s problems (other than alcohol—also the cause of life’s problems) to post, but I have a question: Should PB2.0 be an amalgamation of “professionalized” bloggers?

When I look at a lot of the A-listers from PB1.0, I notice that their “professionalization” coincided with their regurgitation of Village Values. May be a coincidence, may be related. Who knows. I know many of us have dreams of accessing the top pols and hobnobbing with celebrities, but will that lead to corruption? Does the “professionalization” of the blogosphere lead to unchecked egos? Does it force you to toe a specific line?  Read more 

Lambert has kindly invited me to write this week’s installment in our PB2.0 series and I am happy to do so, although I live in a Central Time area so, my post will probably be up around 6pm, Eastern.

My contribution will focus on what I think should be central to PB2.0: social justice (Lambert and I have a slight difference of view on this, so, I’m sure / I hope he’ll explain in the discussion).  Read more 

In the the latest PB2.0 thread, thinkers/gardeners Lambert and FrenchDoc intrigued me with their parallel of PB1.0 to a monoculture. Hmmm, let’s consider that further: a monoculture is a biological desert which drives out most living things, sustained only by massive inputs of poison and manure, sucking resources from the surrounding environment, vulnerable to destruction from a single external stress, its product nutritionally weak.

Ecologists know this. It suggests a framing that could create exciting opportunities for support for PB2.0.  Read more