In the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Centre, public discourse in the United States has undergone a transformation, embedded in the Presidential fiat "Those who are not with us, are against us" is the very clear implication that those who disagree with the President, or oppose his policies, are traitors. This has been very effective in silencing those who have doubts or positively oppose the Republican agenda or its implementation.
It is very difficult to speak out publicly with a position that has already been cast as treason, those who don't share the politically correct view feel threatened, isolated and disempowered and it is no wonder. The most experienced politicians can't do it so why would we expect individual citizens to do it, so what is the solution?
Maybe you turn the internet inside out.
The net has been criticised, vilified in some sectors, as contributing to people's isolation and pandering to their unorthodox, construed as perverted or weird, predilections. But what happens when you take people who are feeling isolated, devalued and disempowered, and pl;ug them in to a connecting tool? The net has certainly helped to connect people whose ability to share the common ethos is limited, or whose communication abilities are constrained in some way, and these days that may mean most of us.
While, in the early days of the web, practically everyone tried publishing a website, most of us gave it up when the technology started racing ahead of simple HTML and became overblown, baroque and frankly a sideshow to communication. Then along came blogs and the ability to think in public became idiotically simple.
The apotheosis of the process may well have arrived last weekend when the Democratic blogosphere in the US hit its straps in a very practical, and effective way. For months the various left wing pundits have been fulminating and strategising in public and the Howard Dean campaign was developed, energised and then organised online as more and more people who have no other outlet for their political expression have found each other through blogs, aggregators and online tools such as meetup.com.
That process has given rise to a whole new cohort of political activists whose nervousness about their real-world actions can be allayed and their confidence built because feel they already know the people and the processes, the issues and forms before they set foot inside one of Dean's gatherings.
The fact that Dean has felt able to let his supporters take control of their own part of the process, with online tools provided by the campaign for people to take individual action without having to get the OK from headquarters, speaks volumes for his understanding that the net is a power tool and if you don't let people share the power, they will go somewhere else at the click of a button.
But American politics is about money at some level and, while the Dotcoms struggled to build a business case for being online, people like Dean, and other Open Source politicians have had no trouble at all. When the Republicans launched a TV campaign last week to attack those who disagree with the President's handling of foreign affairs, both the Dean Campaign and Moveon.org responded immediately with a fundraiser.
The real story is not that people gave online, but that within a day Moveon had reached its target of $500,000 to pay for responding advertising, then left its link open until it had, by the end of the weekend, raised 230% of its target. The speed with which a response can be decided on, constructed, funded and launched is the new thing that is coming out of this process. We all knew we could use this technology to do something like that, but until politics stepped in, there really hadn't been much of a business case for it.
Howard Dean also opened a campaign fund and, within a few days has raised his target of $360,000 and is going on until his deadline of Tuesday night to see just how much he can raise, meanewhile his supporters in their hundreds have had a look at his ad campaign draft and happliy torn it to shreds in public; there is a strong breeze in some smoke filled rooms right now.
The Internet has, as the hype suggested, driven down the entry costs to a whole range of activities, publishing, music, banking and now political organising and fundraising. Until now the traditional political cash cow had been large-check writers whose acquisition costs were proportionally smaller. An hour spent shmoozing with someone who springs $2,000 is a much better deal than 5 minutes for a $20 donation. Until Paypal gets in the act.
When the total transaction cost for a $10 donation falls to a few cents, the potential donor pool is 100 million people and viral marketing can get to most of the prospects within hours, the rules are definitely up for a change.
Whether it will finally make the difference in a presidential election that will be brutal, strident and surrounded by the trappings of war and social unrest, is another thing altogether, the Internet is a cool tool, it isn't a magic wand.
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