Whether they are aware of it or not, so-called “independent” liberal/progressive online news sites are pivotal divide and conquer pawns. The more established and well-funded progressive outlets are crucial players in suppressing mass movements for meaningful change.
That’s because, on the liberal side, sites like Kos, Crooks and Liars, Media Matters, et al tend to be divisively partisan and thus wedded to the two-party system even as they sometimes do excellent investigative reporting.
Their editorial framing is most often “Republicans bad, Democrats good.” They are critical of the Democratic Party to a point, no question about that, but a large part of their reporting and rhetoric serves to support the two-party system in service of the Democratic Party by consistently focusing blame on the Republican Party.
It’s too often about funding, donor bases, and insider access, all of which could vanish should they attack the Democratic Party too hard, much less attack the real powers. Paul Craig Roberts says “The Koch brothers are probably just a very small part of it, and I think probably not important. I mean Wall Street. Or Goldman Sachs.” I agree.
Continually attacking the Koch Brothers, noxious at they are, solves little and deflects genuine protest from the real targets – the banksters. Besides, last time I checked, the liberal side had a few billionaires contributing to it (Soros, Ted Turner.)
Also, as Peter Camejo says in The Avocado Declaration, a primary function of the Democratic Party is to funnel genuine dissent into itself where it is rendered harmless. The Republicans do the same thing, as the Tea Party has been discovering. Neither party can be trusted, neither wants genuine reform or change. Both are completely beholden to corporate interests. Sorry Koslings, but the Democratic Party can not be reformed from within.
In summation, so-called “independent” media organizations that engage in partisanship are not interested in real change. They are the insidious servants of the status quo. They are divide and conquer pawns. They are a significant reason why, even at this late stage in our crisis, there is still no effective mass movement for desperately needed structural change. They are pivotal players in the downfall of America. This is a bold and blatant truth – a truth that we must urgently come to grasp and overcome if we are going to keep our society from continuing on its downward spiral.
Can you PLEASE post this on Daily Kos? People do post stuff like this there every so often (or they did when I read it), but a lot of it tends to go unnoticed or goes over their head. See, for instance, this piece by one of the best and most underrated political bloggers out there:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/11/14/804164/-Fundamental-flaws-in-progressive-ideology?via=blog_503210
Bearing in mind I read perhaps a hundred blogs daily, some times twice, in addition to seven “news” papers, the occasional magazine and at least one book… I never read Kos, even though one of my radio co-hosts – Phil Philbin – regularly posts there and sends me “press releases” I occasionally post at my place. The whole place smacks of “I know everything you don’t know nuthin'”. I rarely visit Media Matters as 1) I don’t like the publication “style” and 2) more importantly they play right into the publicity hungery’s, notably Beck and Limbaugh, hand. They (Media Matters) extend their (Beck and Limbaugh’s) audience by keeping their names at the top of the cycle. Crooks and Liars I would argue, I visit there a lot because people I’ve become acquainted with over the past nine years have migrated there. Huffington would have been a better example.
Otherwise, nothing said that I haven’t already said. I’m always surprised when something of mine percolates up to an A-List blog. It’s we B-Listers that are breaking the status-quo.
All those websites do excellent reporting but, for example, I find David “One Note” Neiwert at C&L tedious because for him all conservatives only deserve mocking scorn and can never be capable of coherent thought.
But mostly those websites are about incremental reform. They believe the system is basically sound and just needs a little tweaking and fresh leadership. I think that’s naive. The system is corrupt, compromised, and needs major structural reform.