Reply #3: Never say "always"! [View All]

[Peace Patriot]

"This will ALWAYS be an internet-only fight."

In any case, so what? The internet is where progressive political change is being organized, spread far and wide, reaching many demoralized people, and raising enough money, volunteers and innovative networks to beat the machines.

It starts here. It spreads. That is exactly what happened with the largely black-balled, marginalized election reform movement starting November 3, 2004. Now the vote suppression and fraud are much more widely known, and there are movements to combat it all over the country. The 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting is perhaps not as widely known as the blatant violations of the Voting Rights Act in visible suppression of black voters in Ohio in 2004, but the corruption of billion dollar 'TRADE SECRET' voting systems is harder to crack, and this matter is getting better known, as the vast corruption of our political system becomes so obvious and people look for the causes.

We have suffered an eight-year fascist junta, kept in power with 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting, fast-tracked all over the country during the 2002 to 2004 period, with a $3.9 billion corporate e-voting boondoggle, passed by the Anthrax Congress. The full consequences of suffering a fascist junta are only just becoming fully apparent. It will take decades to repair the damage. Ask South Americans, who suffered similar dictatorships and vast lootings before we did, and are only just now fighting their way back to democracy and solvency. It takes time. And the South Americans didn't have the internet to accelerate change--through information and networking--during their down years (and many still don't have it today--one of the key differences between what are otherwise very similar leftist movements, here and there).

For us, the internet makes up for fractured communities, broken (often deliberately targeted and destroyed) social/political networks (including unions, for instance), collusive political parties, and the corpo/fascist 'news' monopolies. South America suffered the latter two ills (and still suffers a largely corpo/fascist press), but was/is much stronger on the first two (strong communities and grass roots social/political networks). We have the internet, as a beginning. As people get informed, get exposed to new (and suppressed) ideas, share views and find common cause, they get active, and shed their feelings of demoralization and disempowerment. I've seen this happen at DU on the election fraud/election reform issue, very directly, as to California's election reform movement. They got informed and networked HERE--then they got rid of the Diebold shill whom Arnold Schwarzenegger had installed at Sec of State, managed to get an election reformer and open government advocate nominated and elected as SoS (Debra Bowen), and are kicking ass all over the state on the election reform issue. The Obama campaign supporters followed a similar learning/activist curve, and the campaign itself was awesomely internet-savvy. In the U.S., the internet is not a substitute for political action. It is the beginning of political action--the essential networking tool that we lacked here in the U.S. for reasons of our uniquely fractured communities/lifestyle, the size of our country, and the special targeting by global corporate predators that we have been subjected to (probably because our great potential power to curtail corporate predators).

To say that something is an "internet-only issue" is to greatly misunderstand the nature of political change as it is occurring in the U.S. today. The internet is the avant-garde--the forward guard, the pioneers--of progressive change. This is where many things start, because the mechanisms of starting things in the old ways have been so damaged and co-opted. Where would the progressive movement be today without the internet? Think about that.