To:

Zcom_simple
Home » Z Blogs » Justin Podur's Blog » So, um, what now?

Hello,

Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


Reading and
Navigating Blogs

Our blogs are quite powerful. Each writer can post, as is typically the case. Sustainers who have the option can also post, however. All Blogs appear in the blog system, and sometimes also in content boxes the top page of ZNet - and always via the left menu of the top page - and can be found via searches, etc.

Commenting on blogs follows the blogs, attached at the bottom, and blog comments, like all others, are also visible in many places that show comments including in the forum system. In addition, the entire blog system gathers content for everyone - but one can look at the accumulating content in many ways.

  • For example one can look at one writer's efforts - so one is seeing what is effectively a blog system for that one writer, or Sustainer.
  • One can also look at the content by topic, seeing blogs that are tagged as being about a certain topic - or place, as well. Thus, when doing that, it is a blog system about a topic, or a place, with many contributors.
  • One can look at only writer blogs, or only sustainer blogs, as well.
  • One can look at blogs for particular Groups, too.

All this is easily done using the left menu. Searches allow even more variables and refinements.


Creating Blog Posts

If you are a Sustainer with permission, and are logged in, you will see a link in the left menu for you to post a blog - and you can use that to post one, and then tag it various ways (such as with a topic or place, or a group tag), and once you do, it is in the system with you as the author.

You can also use the console button to the left to post a blog - anytime and from anywhere in the site, as long as you are logged in.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blogs - and, by the way, if you are a Free Member or a Sustainer with a ZSpace page, of course you can put one or more content boxes on it, pulling blog links of any sort you may want to filter for, for example, by you or by your friends or by others - and by topic, about places, for groups, etc.

Blogs

72

Justin Podur's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/justinpodur
Bio: Justin Podur is a writer and editor for ZNet (www.zmag.org), part of Z Communications, an alternative media organization dedicated to political analysis and support for movements for social change.... (More)

All Podur Blogs

Recent Podur Content

Znetarticle_icon ZNet Articles
Zmagarticle_icon ZMag Articles
Zcommentary_icon ZCommentaries
Zaudio_icon ZAudios
Zvideo_icon ZVideos
Zblogpost_icon Blog Posts
Zvideo_icon ZStores

So, um, what now?

By Justin Podur at Nov 05, 2004

PDF Version

Printer Friendly Version
Change Text Size a- | A+
I mostly wrote that "morning after" piece of yesterday because I was surfing around the morning after, going to all my usual sites and blogs, and nobody had written anything. So I forced myself to write something, because I thought of all the people like me who would be depressed and wondering if radicals had anything to say. The morning after the morning after, there was a lot more material. I was on the top page of Counterpunch for a while, set up as the exemplar of the Anybody But Bush position by the Socialist Worker's Sharon Smith, which I found odd. In a later email exchange with her, she suggested that I had implicitly given Kerry way too much credit. I replied that it wasn't about Kerry. I completely agree that the democratic party leaders did their best not to distinguish themselves from Bush and that is a strategy designed to convince nobody. The only thing Kerry had going for him was that he wasn't Bush. That ought to have been enough. But it wasn't, and that's the reality, so now that we've wallowed a little, it's time to think through what that means. The pieces that disagreed with me, including Michael Albert's own piece, argued that the election said little about the US population that wasn't already known. Roughly 30% went to Bush, 30% to Kerry, and 40% didn't vote. How would that 40% have voted? Well, they were disproportionately low income, and low income voters disproportionately voted for Kerry, so Bush would have lost. I'm not so sure. I suspect it would have broke down as much by region as by income. I'll be looking into this more. A good piece by Haider argues convincingly that the liberal strategy of not taking a strong antiwar or anti-occupation stance was not just morally bankrupt but also ineffective. Justin Felux pokes fun at the liberals and anyone else who was surprised at the outcome, again attacking the democrats. Doug Ireland and Paul Street also talk about Why Kerry Lost. But I still can't convince myself that Kerry lost. I think Bush won. Kerry is what he is, and the democrats are what they are. This defeat and a dozen more wouldn't be enough for them to take on class issues or anti-imperialism in a serious way. If they had, would they have won? In America today (or two days ago) I don't think so. Which brings us back to the question for radicals of what now? I think Jessica Azulay and Brian Dominick have some good advice, as they tend to do. My favourite part of their piece is: We dared hope that the American people would hold the Bush administration accountable for launching an illegal war abroad and plundering the poor in favor of the rich at home. So our short-term hopes have been handily dashed. Bush has been rewarded for lies, theft and aggression. Telling ourselves that most Americans are unaware of Bush's real agenda amounts to condescension the majority no longer deserves, and a benefit of the doubt we cannot afford to give them. They offer the following strategic advice for radicals: first, wage a genuine battle for public opinion. That's fair enough, though I think there might be a tension between developing and strengthening our own base and reaching out, and I think we might have to do a bit more of the former before we are really ready to do the latter. They also pick some short-term battles that need to be fought and that can be fought and won with intelligent coalition-building politics. Small victories, in other words, are what popular movements need right now, badly, for morale as much as anything else. Abandoning any hope in the Democratic Party is also advocated, and pretty hard to argue with at this point, but so are their ideas about ballot initiatives and electoral reform. Last, they discuss the building of alternative institutions, which I think is key. The grassroots right wing movement that has been sending me hate mails and helped Bush win has such power because of alternative institutions. The churches, the talk radio stations, the Cable TV, the local newspapers and newsletters, Christian Rock music, Christian fantasy thriller novels, all create a world in which a person can live in almost a parallel universe. In a culture where alienation and loneliness are so pervasive, that sense of community is incredibly powerful, and has enabled them to create a base of people, a substantial chunk of the population, that is fanatically loyal, disciplined and motivated politically. They had resources and power to do it: radicals trying to do it have neither. Or rather, we will have to find some somehow. A consolation prize: even if you didn't believe Gabriel Kolko's argument that Bush was the lesser evil because he would increase the international isolation and break down the alliances on which US power ultimately depends, well it's too late, so we might as well make the best of it, even if, as Tom Engelhardt said, there's no pleasure in predicting bad things. Last thought: let's not reject polarization, please. Let's not 'heal the wounds of the nation', please. Remember Stan Goff's piece in Counterpunch after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke (Abu Ghraib, remember that?) We are reaching a point of polarization with respect to this war, where these oxygen thieves with suits and stars feel they can get away with the MAM argument, justifying the murder of anyone who is male, military-aged and brown. We have reached some kind of social baseline of racially-stupefied consensus, where all that PC posturing is no longer necessary, where another half-wit in Congress can say he is "outraged at the outrage," and there is 35% of the US population that will sit perfectly still for it, many even cheering it on. For that polarization to be complete, we need 35% of the population that sets aside their maddening liberal squeamishness and dithering and demands that these suits and stars be strung up by their testicles. We need a good, in-your-face, knock-down, drag-out fight in this place. ... This place hasn't had a good old fashioned DEEP-DOWN change since Reconstruction. It's time.

Comment On This Blog Post  See All Comments (4)

Person

By Asola, Asola at Nov 05, 2004 21:53 PM
Hi, Justin, this is Alfred Sola. Just thought it would fit in here to mention the work of Thomas Frank "What's the matter with Kansas? How Conservatives won the heart of America", of which an excerpt was published in TomDispatch: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1551 and which is a very insightful view on why people vote against what seems to be their interests.

Reply this comment

Person

Re: So, um, what now?

By Justins, Felux at Nov 05, 2004 20:55 PM
I got tons of emails from people from Texas in response to my piece. It seems around here leftists are quickly getting sick of focusing on elections. This is mainly due to the fact that in Texas, everything is going to go Republican from President to dog catcher (outside the cities anyway). I'm still pondering what exactly I think we should do. The stuff that people have written so far has been helpful. Right now, I'm kind of distressed that the reaction from the Democrats has been exactly the wrong one, which is what I was expressing after the election. I would have hoped that this would turned some of them in the right direction, but if you read places like the Daily Kos and Democratic Underground, they're all talking about which right-wing positions they should adopt to try to appeal to racist white male Christian voters.

Reply this comment

Person

Re: So, um, what now?

By Cra008, Peeperkorn at Nov 05, 2004 12:52 PM
We must do class warfare. With no apologies, but with conditions. Struggle must be ethical and humane. In proportion to a threat. Physical or rhetorical "defense" which exceeds a real threat is defined as attack. Squashing of other viewpoints ought not be considered, even in response to same. Our range of gambits exludes moral and logical catastrophe, no less than physical. We're not gambling with human futures. There is no apocalypse on our agenda, nor any salvation which circumvents social reform. I am Socialist, Secular Humanist, Atheist. Perceive contradictions if you will, but I disavow relativism now. I will argue you're wrong, I will oppose you, etc. We've earned that right through centuries of thought and experience. Imperfect as efforts were, they've bought the right never to go back, never to re-enter a dismal hole unless to pull someone out of it. I've been listening to old folk music, labor songs, spirituals. Woodie Guthrie and others, Folkways etc. I noticed something again -- we're Americans. An alternate America, now it seems. But I've been invigorated like someone drinking from a strong, clear stream.

Reply this comment

Person

Re: So, um, what now?

By Mnutter2001, Hoping4anarchy at Nov 05, 2004 08:05 AM
I am a substitute teacher near Houston, Texas. Today, I taught a class of students who were supposed to be severely, emotionally disturbed. They asked me who I voted for, and they were all pleased to hear that I voted for Kerry. They were primarily African-American (I am white). But it just amazes me sometimes how easily people are or are not taken in by the rhetoric in the mainstream media. I have simply decided that America is now a Fascist country, and I'll have to deal with it and move forward. Additionally, the spin about "morals" being a deciding factor in this election is just more of the same meaningless propaganda/disinformation disseminated by the mainstream media. Many conservative Christians, my parents included, believe there is nothing more immoral than needlessly invading another country. They live in Florida and also voted for Kerry.

Reply this comment

Loading_border