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The Last Days Of Politics
(Note: First in a series.)Maybe those manifesto-spouting Wired gurus were right after all. The modern political campaign as an entity is increasingly surreal and remote, especially from the perspective of this corner of the world, where nobody seems to be paying any attention and virtual reality is taking on a whole new meaning. Are these the last days of politics? I think so, and I'll be posting (with permission) your e-mail and threads responses and thoughts in subsequent columns.
As the presidential election gets closer, what comes to my mind is some of the more fevered rhetoric of the early days of Wired, before Conde Nast slicked it up and the magazine starting smelling like a kid on the way to his first prom.
Enthralled by the early days of the Net and Web, the cyber-theorists (especially the most passionate (l/L)ibertarians) opined that politics were over, that the digital revolution would sweep away the very notion of two political parties running the country, the idea of bureaucracy, political fiefdoms, Washington itself.
The sci-fi writer and futurist Arthur C. Clarke once wrote that he hoped he would live to see the day -- and he believed he would -- when politics in its present form would cease to matter. "The time will come," he wrote in an essay, "when most of our present controversies on these matters will seem as trivial, or as meaningless, as the theological debates in which the keenest minds of the Middle Ages dissipated their energies."
Browsing on the CNN and Washington Post political Web sites and watching cable news, it seems to me that Clarke may live to see that day, at least for a part of the world -- the tech nation, many high school and college students, people under 40. Journalists, boomers, CEOs and the elderly may still be paying attention to the strange ritual being conducted by the Republicans and Democrats, but from this perspective smack in the middle of an ascending and vibrant alternative culture, nobody else appears to be.
Can anybody cite a single interesting or important idea or argument that's emerged from the months of campaigning in the current U.S. presidential race? Despite the millions spent on primaries, advertising, debates, press conferences, press-the-flesh tours, photo-ops? In the midst of a technological revolution, has anyone involved in this musty political ritual used technology in any imaginative or innovative way or invoked it, except as a (false) menace to children?
I'd be curious to know if anybody reading this believes there's much difference between these two exhausted ideologies, or that the country will be substantially altered if one rather than the other prevails. For me, and for most of the people I come in contact with online, electoral politics is like a ghost ship, fading out to sea; surreal and mystical and most of all, remote.
A few years ago, it would have seemed ludicrous to talk about the last days of politics. Now it seems almost belated. It's been years since a majority of Americans even bothered to vote in a national election. Poll after poll shows mistrust, boredom, alienation and disgust with the brawling, negativity, stalemating and irrationality of the process. Both conservatism and liberalism seem spent, far too small and narrow to survive the Digital Age, the explosion in research and information and thinking and community and economics pushed along by the digital revolution. Washington journalists look absurd as they gather to transmit the spin, breathless, blow-dried and self-absorbed. There's something relentlessly 19th Century about the way they talk and think. Big, even enormous stories are popping up all around them, but they only have eyes for one another and the increasingly arcane system they cover.
To me, politics is conducted so sordidly and unimaginatively its real potential for good is obscured, almost beside the point. It doesn't inspire ideals but disdain. It's covered more accurately by jeering late- night talk show hosts than by the journalists who feed on the process. The biggest suspense in the campaign seems to come from waiting to see which candidate will attack the other the most bitterly. When the campaign finally turns ugly, as it inevitably will, this kind of politics will perhaps be revealed for what it is: a nasty, top-down, anti-democratic, non-interactive and irrelevant exercise in marketing. Clarke's vision almost has to come true: politics has to be reborn if it is to survive at all.
Online, the world is still different, if far from perfect. It seems, to me at least, that the cyberculture has had an enormous, if indirect impact on institutions like politics. Cyberspace isn't going to replace everything in the the material world, or create a utopian alternative, but it sure has drained a lot of energy, enthusiasm, money and creativity from institutions like politics and media, which look especially dready and exhausted in comparison. Online, ideas fly through the ether, as do arguments and opinions. New communities pop up constantly; movements like open source become more political by the day, challenging one industry and institution after another. There's still the sense of innovation, revolution and opportunity.
In this environment, freedom isn't a platitude but a genuine value, embraced and practiced by millions of people. Online, innovation and originality remain prized and ubiquitous, whereas the political system hasn't advanced an innovative idea in years. Occasionally the system intrudes, as with the Sonny Bono Copyright Act or Digital Millennium Copyright Act or a failed Communications Decency Act. Mostly, what they do seems to matter less, whether or not it should. Napster is in trouble, then Gnutella appears. Some political historians -- Peter Gay, Langdon Winner -- compare the last days of conventional politics with the eclipse of the Holy Mother Church centuries ago.
Mostly, politics seems to generate moral outrage among the younger populace that's enthralled much more by technological change than politican convention. Officials who urge "young people" to get more involved with these system of politics sound increasingly desperate, because anybody who spends two hours in a high school or college knows it isn't going to happen, not while politics takes this form.
According to historians, this isn't all that new. Whenever technological change becomes intense -- as it is now -- old conventions, ideals and institutions become severed from the new. Moral standards shift, and people begin to treat institutions with increasing indifference and contempt. That seems a perfect description for the widening divide between Netizens and the political institutions beyond, girding for yet another barren, outdated exercise.
It's a borderline time, a transition between one culture and another. Technology is the most exciting political and social force in the world at the moment, and its innovations and impact seem likely only to accelerate. The figures on TV uttering soundbites at those campaign stops seem completely out of date; they're moving their lips but have almost nothing to say, and more and more people seem to have stopped even pretending to listen. We're constantly told that what they're doing is important, and that we should pay close attention, but it becomes tougher all the time to remember why.
So I think that maybe the Wired gurus were right: These are the last days of politics. On this site, the opportunity to disagree is implicit, and doesn't need to be stated, but I'd be especially interested to see if anybody else sees it this way.
For once I wish Katz was right. I'd very much like to see US politics get overhauled. It wouldn't even require a change to many of our laws or documents. The two party system has a stronghold on our choices for candidates in almost every election, and it is very rare that a third party candidate wins at any level of public office. Unfortunately, I think we'll be seeing the same old thing for many years to come.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
If you want representative government, pick names out of the phone book, like a lottery where the, uh, winners have to go, and we all live with the result for the next four years. Then throw 'em all out for the next bunch.
All you/we have now are party systems filled by failed lawyers. And where they all tow the party line, which is to say whatever the other party is saying is crap. (They're both right.)
All they know how to do, more deeply ingrained than a knee-jerk reflex, is pass more and more laws. Some are hilarious, many are contradictory none can even claim to be representative.
Bet the lobbyists would hate that. They'd have to get real jobs instead of kissing lawyers' butts. (No elections, no pond scum running for office, no pond scum to sell your orifice out for a chance at office.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
"Can anybody cite a single interesting or important idea or argument that's emerged from the months of campaigning in the current U.S. presidential race?"
Um, have you been paying attention? The differences in ideologies between the major candidates and even the third-party candidates are huge. Voters have a real and substantive choice here, regardless of what they think of the political process. Hell, you have Ralph Nader who couldn't be more outside the mainstream and hs no corporate ties and could do better than anyone thinks.
The entire thesis of Katz's article is just plain wrong. How many net-based campaigns have done a bit of political change without people actually getting off their butts and doing something. The whole idea that politics is irrelevant because of the Internet is like those who said that computers would replace schools - they haven't, they won't, and they can't.
There will always be politics. There will always be disagreements over who gets what, when, where, and how much.
The alternative to politics is a system where there are no decisions, no free thought, no choices, and no hope. Mr. Katz, you've railed against systems like that many times before - yet your proposals would lead exactly to what you despise.
Politics are what lets us fight injustice. Politics are what lets us fight things like the DCMA, the MPAA, and the RIAA. No amount of sitting behind a computer screen will ever fix those problems. You don't have to like politics, but you do have to live with it. It is those who actively take a stand that will decide the future, and the choice is clear: either be trampled by those who do realize this, or get organized and get involved.