The Againstocrats--a review

You'll find the complete review of The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to remake Democratic politics by Matt Bai, reviewed by Fred Siegal in City Journal. After exposing the fleshy pink underside of the power hungry billionaires and Moveonskis, he gets to bloggers. My personal favorite:

The bloggers, for their part, are as emotionally stunted as the billionaires, but as inhabitants of "a fantasy game inflected world," far less literate: "The Daily Kos and other blogs resemble a political version of those escapist online games where anyone with a modem can disappear into an alternate society, reinventing himself among neighbors and colleagues who exist only in a virtual realm." Bai adds: "One of the hallmarks of the netroots culture was a complete disconnect from history—meaning basically anything that happened before 1998." Unlike the radicals of the 1960s, who knew something of the anti-Stalinism that had preceded them but dismissed its significance for their time, the bloggers take pride in their ignorance. In the eyes of the bloggers, "the more history you knew," explains Bai, "the more bogged down and less relevant you were likely to be."

But if they were short on learning and thinking, they were long on "profanity, hyperbole, and conspiracy theories." America, the bloggers believe, yearns to be governed by Deanlike Democrats, but is thwarted by so-called moderates willing to compromise with the Republican foe. Like sixties radicals, the bloggers see moderates as the real enemy, but unlike them, they have no positive ideology. Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of the influential Daily Kos blog, insists, "I'm not ideological at all, I’m just all about [Democrats'] winning."

You'll not find a more interesting or well-written on-line journal than City Journal. Summer 2007 issue now available.