A couple Saturdays ago I attended the annual Symposium put on by Mass Humanities at Boston College. I defer to my wife on how things of this nature should properly be managed and since I attended only one of the three talks I will reserve comment. Also before I continue, full disclosure, I am an Evgeny Morozov fan.
I thought the talk was good and as much on point it could be with the topic pertaining to the naive debate that the internet can be a good thing for democracy, the participants mostly saw everything in the negative. I for one agree that the internet while having great democratic qualities (wikipedia, chat, forums) it has far more bad ones (malware, misinformation, government crackdown, selective censorship, etc). But that's not the point I'm trying to make here. I'm here to add my two cents railing against this American exceptionalism bullshit that happens to spew out of a pundit's mouth from time to time.
The particular pundit I wish to speak of is the Sunlight Foundation's Mike Klein (an amazing organization that I have great respect for, see this Planet Money story), whose pseudo rant about Americans being above allowing the government to co-opt them. Besides being incredibly rude in Mr. Morozov's arguement by saying that Morozov's accent (Belorussian btw) corrupts his thinking on the matter, Mr. Klein was flat our wrong in his interpretation of American history. His reference to the vote being given to former African American slaves and women as a sign of inclusion was pathetically naive. Both are evidence of our two party system co-opting a cause/people to further each individual parties own political gains. The American two party system (I don't think that exists for what it's worth) is adept at shifting with the national conversation and seizing on opportunities when they present themselves. African Americans and Women were each a large block of untapped voters who could help shift/maintain the balance of power. We like to tell ourselves it was the right thing to do, but hardly is that ever the case.
It might just have been ok if Mr. Klein's naive belief in the glory that is American people power was the only thing that bothered me, but of course it was not. What really got me was his insistance that America is not susceptible to Eastern European strongmen or Maoist party politics because we are America. Again with the incredible naivety but this time while having spent the whole time siting examples to the contrary. Jack Abramoff's 60 Minutes interview about buying participants in politics, our lack of campaign finance reform means incumbents rarely lose, the brutality towards OWS protestors. No it's not murdering journalists or rotating through presidents; but what is aides rotating through campaigns and administrations? What of campaigns speaking "unfiltered" to the American people or on slanted news programs?
Are we really that much better or are we just that much better at lying to ourselves?
I thought the talk was good and as much on point it could be with the topic pertaining to the naive debate that the internet can be a good thing for democracy, the participants mostly saw everything in the negative. I for one agree that the internet while having great democratic qualities (wikipedia, chat, forums) it has far more bad ones (malware, misinformation, government crackdown, selective censorship, etc). But that's not the point I'm trying to make here. I'm here to add my two cents railing against this American exceptionalism bullshit that happens to spew out of a pundit's mouth from time to time.
The particular pundit I wish to speak of is the Sunlight Foundation's Mike Klein (an amazing organization that I have great respect for, see this Planet Money story), whose pseudo rant about Americans being above allowing the government to co-opt them. Besides being incredibly rude in Mr. Morozov's arguement by saying that Morozov's accent (Belorussian btw) corrupts his thinking on the matter, Mr. Klein was flat our wrong in his interpretation of American history. His reference to the vote being given to former African American slaves and women as a sign of inclusion was pathetically naive. Both are evidence of our two party system co-opting a cause/people to further each individual parties own political gains. The American two party system (I don't think that exists for what it's worth) is adept at shifting with the national conversation and seizing on opportunities when they present themselves. African Americans and Women were each a large block of untapped voters who could help shift/maintain the balance of power. We like to tell ourselves it was the right thing to do, but hardly is that ever the case.
It might just have been ok if Mr. Klein's naive belief in the glory that is American people power was the only thing that bothered me, but of course it was not. What really got me was his insistance that America is not susceptible to Eastern European strongmen or Maoist party politics because we are America. Again with the incredible naivety but this time while having spent the whole time siting examples to the contrary. Jack Abramoff's 60 Minutes interview about buying participants in politics, our lack of campaign finance reform means incumbents rarely lose, the brutality towards OWS protestors. No it's not murdering journalists or rotating through presidents; but what is aides rotating through campaigns and administrations? What of campaigns speaking "unfiltered" to the American people or on slanted news programs?
Are we really that much better or are we just that much better at lying to ourselves?
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