Like I do in http://wp.theoblogical.org/wp222/?p=6466  and other posts in the hours and days following the story on MSNBC that explored what George Soros was saying with his comments about “if this president can’t get the job done”,  I have been thinking about how I’d like to encourage/enable conversation between some of the best minds in Social Media,  on what it seems is being called for by Soros,  according to this Countdown segment: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/40244433#40244433

What I hear in  this conversation between Olbermann and the HuffPost reporter Sam Stein is a call for a “quick  response” mechanism to rival that of Right wing operatives like Karl Rove.  And I say AMEN to that.  It pains me to see these pro-corporation types having such stronger “info channels” than the organizations of the more progressive.  They (the Right)  have apparently harnessed the power of the meme,  and their echo chambers are in place.  More so than in any other time in my memory,  they have successfully planted myths that have become the daily staple talking points of the right wing.  This advantage has to be overcome. 

I would love to hear some conversation about what elements and tools would best advance this kind of “pushback” strategy; I have some folks in mind.  I wish I could send tweets to a group (maybe I can to a list? I don’t know)

The list I have in mind: 

@dangillmor @jeffjarvis @jayrosen_nyu @scobleizer @stevegillmor @leolaporte @docsearls @TerryHeaton @davewiner  and @KeithOlbermann (since it was his story that prompted me on this matter)

What tools can be leveraged to build a healthier public dialogue?  (Or even CREATE a public dialogue,  because what we have now doesn’t seem too much like dialogue). 

Some thoughts:

The tools that we have (or could be developed,  given the rapid pace and collaboration of developers in this field) are a reason to hope;  No,  EXPECT that we don’t need to stand for “leaving it there”.  How about “taking it up”, and showing the public how to more thoroughly examine what we really need as a nation.

(I really loved the segment Jon Stewart did on the mainstream media’s willingness or even  preference to “leave it there”,  as if two sides of an argument were enough to “settle the matter” with ”agree to disagree”.   Left vs Right does not constitute the striking of a balance.   There IS such a thing as deception,  and there  is such a thing as “the truth” in many matters or controversies. 

It seems that Obama ‘s orgs did a good job of mobilizing online to get him elected,  but then stopped pushing once he was in there (only 9 million voted Democratic in primaries vs 23 million in Presidential election).  There should have been an effort to  communicate the dangers of allowing the swing back to conservatives, and to combat their “fear mongering” with sober analysis.  Now,  as this “freshman class” is about to arrive  in D.C.,  their agenda needs to be confronted with a push back that exceeds that of the primary election backlash.  Some economic sobriety needs to be demonstrated;  the idea that this economic hardship is either Obama’s fault,  or made worse,  is nonsense.  Economic policies take time to have their effects (and,  even in two years’ time,  the fact that the TARP money HAS BEEN RECOVERED is somehow lost on the media.)   Such are things that could help confront  the inanities that have gained traction amongst the all-too-eager-to-be-malleable troops of the far right.  The mainstream media have stayed put in their “view from nowhere” and "pseudo-middle-ground”,  thus surrendering their responsibilities to inform the public. 

There’s  the content piece (the absence of which I bemoan in the above paragraph),  but the delivery piece is crucial to get the content out there so it can be the “push  back” that it can be, should be, and needs to be.  The delivery is dependent on grassroots distribution.  “We the Media” (as Dan Gillmor titled his book from 2004)  need to take up responsibility for seeking the facts and leveraging the expertise of authentic, seasoned, experienced people ,  like economists, climate scientists,  etc. and confront the real motivations of the pseudo-experts trotted out by the right wing (or the lack of ANY supporting information at all).  What the mainstream media constantly let slide (and “leave it there”),  needs to be taken up and have light shone upon it. 

So the channels need to take up the necessary coverage of the relevant fact seeking.  Rather than “leave it there”,  we are in need of a more robust public dialogue.  (Closely related to this and very much a similar thorn in my theological sensibilities is the tendency of the church to “leave it there” in  so many ways….but that’s another post).   The tools that we have (or could be developed,  given the rapid pace and collaboration of developers in this field) are a reason to hope;  No,  EXPECT that we don’t need to stand for “leaving it there”.  How about “taking it up”, and showing the public how to more thoroughly examine what we really need as a nation. 

How do we give these tools to the people so that more of us can work to seriously address the questions that people are asking,  and dispel the rampant notions that mere opposition does not equip us to actually address the problems we face?  We need to get the stories out like those of Wendell Potter who has written a book about his experience inside the Health Care insurance industry,  and it’s habits of working to deny as much coverage as they can so they can reap as much profit as possible.  Somehow,  the followers of the right wing,  who are themselves as much the victim of this as the ones opposing HealthCare companies,  are not seeing how they vote against themselves when they take the Tea Party angle and “fight Obamacare”.  The HealthCare lobby  has seen to it that they flood the media with disinformation to keep the public pacified and unaware of their sticking it to them,  and endangering their heath in the process.  Potter writes of how the industry created a fake consumer advocacy group called  “Health Care America” whose purpose was to scare people away from even  hearing what Michael Moore had to say. 

I keep segway-ing into content issues,  but this only serves to highlight how many issues need this “pushback” from the ranks of the informed against the disinformation promoted and supported by the rich and wealthy aimed at keeping their interests operating and “avoiding that public uprising” * that they fear.  They depend on that constant “manufacture of consent” (ala Chomsky) that is utilized by the powerful in a “democracy”  to keep enough support and ignorance alive to allow them to maintain their hold. 

Perhaps sites like Josh Marshall’s “Talking Points Memo” need to take a cue from MSNBC and their “clip and share” idea;  a web-based tool aimed at letting readers create their own subclips from MSNBC news stories (as mentioned at the beginning of this post).  Maybe they have such things  that I have missed,  but this is the kind of thing that needs to happen to build out a “quick response” push-back mechanism to help steer public debate toward what IS happening in  Wasington,  and what’s being debated where it actually counts.  “Clip and Share” is but one example of “grassroots enabling tools” that we need to begin amassing and distributing amongst ourselves on the  social  networks.

*Michael Moore told us in his conversation with Wendell Potter that the Health Care companies CANNOT win against ALL OF US.  Here is a blog post about that from Moore on his blog

"[We Must] Prepare for the Worst Case…SiCKO evolves into a sustained populist movement." There it is. Their biggest fear. Their "worst case" scenario. That YOU, the American public, would rise up against them. I wasn’t their worst nightmare — you were. Their own research and private polling showed that you were getting fed up with how they were screwing you, gouging you, ripping you off, denying you coverage and flat out just kicking you off the insurance. They knew, according to Potter, that they were killing 45,000 of you every year simply by denying you coverage.

We Americans don’t like people who kill us. We’re the kind of people who will throw billions of dollars and the mightiest military on earth at just one guy because he killed just 2,977 people. What would we do if we discovered who’s killing 45,000 of us every year? How fast would we act to sever the head of that beast?

You don’t need to answer that question because the executives of the country’s health insurance conglomerates already know it — it’s their big "What If", followed by an even bigger "Holy Shit." "What If the millions of average Joes and Janes ever got it together enough to bring us all down, to end our profiting off the misery of others? What If the citizenry one day begin electing representatives who couldn’t be bought and who would end our for-profit health insurance racket?" Holy shit, indeed.

Yes, they feared that day more than anything else, and a movie coming out before a big election year with two popular Democrats pushing for some vague version of universal heath care was all that was needed to get Big Insurance to spend millions of dollars to attack me. These corporate kingpins knew they had pushed their luck too far and now they were worried that a movie — a movie! — could ignite a "populist movement."

http://michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/last-thoughts-before-turkey

So it is things like this,  and the things Soros seems to articulate in his meeting with various donors/contributors on the Democratic side,  and my own sense that Social  Media and the Web represents a powerful suite of tools (aka “Opportunities”) for enabling grassroots movements,  that I feel myself energized to help usher  in an “onslaught” of tools that the populace;  the “users” of the network,  can use to make their own “networking” an enabler of a more enriched conversation about where the country is headed.  

To the extent that my development skills can help with that,  I want to help.  To the extent that my writing about the possibilities for such a political renaissance from such networking can help,  I want to do so.