BLOGSWARM!!!!!®

Here we go.

Jeebus.

Jane got her panties all in a wad because of an email that got sent out from the New Mexico OFA operation that linked to a blogpost at The People's View that got posted at Huffpost that called out some critics of the Debt Crisis Crisis Deal such as Paul Krugman and the "Firebaggers" and oh my has the shit been twisted and turned and hurled with furious abandon.

BLOGSWARM!!!!®

Of course damn few of those swarming have read the offending post in question, fewer still must have received the email from Ray Sandoval at New Mexico OFA HQ. Nor, I'm sure, have more than a few Swarmers read the follow up post at The People's View titled:

Too Bad for Huffington Post, but the "Dumbest Motherfuckers in the World" are Fighting Back

in which the author, Deaniac83 (who I seem to recall from times gone by, but who knows) doubles down and waxes quite wroth his ownself:

But Terkel did get something right. I mean, you know, credit where credit is due. She patiently explains to her readers - who I suppose she assumes are even more political novices than Krugman - what the term firebagger could possibly mean.

"Firebagger" is most likely a combined reference to the liberal blog FireDogLake, founded by Jane Hamsher, and "Tea Bagger," a less-than-flattering term for Tea Party activists.

Almost right. So close. Except FireDogLake is not a liberal blog. It's a Pseudo-Left-Libertarian extremist ideologue blog. But other than that, on the money. Why, yes, Sherlock, Firebagger is a term that combines FDL's hair-on-fire ridiculousness with Teabaggers (for example, opposing things just because President Obama supports them) - whom the FDL rah-rah types act like, only from the Left. It's a characterization that fits them perfectly - they are more interested in tearing things down than building a country up, more interested in ideological podium-pounding than pragmatic solutions. The bagger (both tea and fire) mentality is the reason our politics is in a rut. If one side was busy spreading hatred and propaganda to increase wingnut turnout, the other (firebaggers) side was busy spreading hatred and propaganda to subdue Democratic turnout. Oh, also, as John Cole points out, it's a name the Firebaggers gave themselves.

As if that weren't enough, he goes on to hurl his own incendiary brand of blog-insult by asserting:

Speaking of Firebaggers, her Majesty the Highness of FDL, Jane Hamsher, picked up on Terkel's article and went nuts with it. You know, the usual.

By the way, Ms. Terkel, you seem very upset about the OFA state director in New Mexico sending out an email pointing out the political and policy merits of the debt ceiling deal, an article that also calls out the firebaggers, but for some reason I cannot find our outrage article about Jane Hamsher - the Firebagger in Chief - calling Obama supporters the "dumbest motherfuckers in the world." Am I missing something or is your reporting just not objective?

Ou. Nasty. Meanwhile, the there's this throw-down to complete the sequence:

Let me send a message to Huffington Post, FDL, and all the ideologue havens in the Firebagger Lefty Blogosphere (that's right, I said it again): You have been propagating your anti-progressive, pro-dysfunction political message without accountability for too long. In President Obama's words, Enough! Count on us in the pragmatic progressive blogosphere to stand up and fight back. You do not represent progressivism or liberalism, and we are done letting you hijack it. You wanted a fight, didn't you? Well, you got one.

Eek. Scary.

All the supposedly lefty blogs have exploded in OUTRAGE!!!!!™ at this blogospheric INSULT!!!!™ from the OFA. They have DEMANDED!!!!!™ the immediate termination of Ray Sandoval, and the abject groveling and submissive apology to all the "Firebaggers" and their ilk who were DISSED!!!!™ by this no-account OFA apparatchik in fucking New Mexico, for chrissake. Doesn't he know who he is messing with?

God. The chins are pushed out, and RAGE!!!!!™ has gripped the entire Left-o-sphere. Everyone -- just everyone -- is posting on it, and at dKos (where Jane is not popular at all) there are at least four or five posts right now stirring the pot and intensifying inchoate rage at OFA, Obama, Ray Sandoval, and anyone who dares to support Obama (May you DIAF!!!!™) and defending Blog-Daughter Jane (misguided though she may be) -- and practically everything else on the face of the earth, such as the California Democratic Party's efforts to purge its Progressive Caucus for getting uppity, is being ignored.

I've posted on the Blogswarm phenom before, and I don't like it. Blogswarms tend to be ugly, vicious, and largely useless exercises in group affinity and mindless loyalty. Compared to the "tribalism" that many of the swarmers typically denounce -- as they are expressing their mindless loyalty to an individual or a blog that has been WRONGED!!!!™ -- swarmers are demonstrating the exact behavior they are so eager to denounce and condemn in others. The glaring hypocrisy of it all of course never, ever enters the consciousness of the swarmers until after their RAGE!!!!!™ is spent, and even then, the idea that they might have behaved inappropriately (heh) is often set aside in order to press some other demand elsewhere.

Oddly enough, it is from behavior like this that many on the "left" are considered to be tantrum throwing children who can be safely ignored. But I would venture to say that very few of those who participate in Blogswarms are leftists by any rational definition of the term.

They are, for the most part, "Internet Leftists and/or Progressives" -- which all too often means some variety of Libertarian.

And I note with interest that Deaniac83 calls out Jane and others for being exactly that.

On the other hand, I've made quite a stink over the California Democratic Party's apparent decision to purge the Progressive Caucus from its midst, and I do it in part because I know Karen Bernal, Chair of the Caucus quite well (though I haven't been in contact with her directly over this issue) and I know she is a genuine Progressive, not some variety of Libertarian trying to pass as "Progressive". She is deeply involved in labor and social justice issues, civil liberties, healthcare for all, gender equality, immigration reform, peace activism and on and on, as she has always been as long as I have known her. None of these issues are casual interests to her, not has she developed an interest recently. This is who she is. Her speeches have electrified the Party at their State Conventions, and she has built a very strong Progressive activist base within the Party that has successfully recruited and elected Progressive candidates and has pressed inclusion of Progressive agenda items in the California Democratic Party Platform.

And the Big Wigs apparently want to get rid of her and disband the Progressive Caucus (again, apparently) because they resolved to explore supporting a primary challenge to Obama -- for cause.

To me, this is a far more important and pressing issue than insults and dissing of "Firebaggers" from a blogger.

Priorities, people!



Sigh....
----------------------------------

My my my. All of a sudden, literally within an hour or so of Deaniac83's throw down challenge, the Swarm stopped.

This is a good thing in my humble estimation as there are far more important things to concern oneself about than the perceived insults to whomever on the internet.

Really.

How Can Progressives Take Back the Party They Were Purged From? Or Do They Even Want To?

Karen Bernal, Chair of the California Democratic Party Progressive Caucus, in limbo

I've gone on at some length about the false notion that Progressives have yet to organize and either take over or extinguish the Democratic Party.

There are Progressives. And then there are "progressives" -- also known as "faux-gressives" or Libertarians who you find all over the internet masquerading or pretending to be Teh Left and claiming to be "The Real Progressives." Well, no. They aren't.

Progressives have a long and occasionally noble history in this country, starting as an anti-Populist technocratic force in the Republican Party, and shifting over time into the Democratic fold as the Republican Party became more and more rigidly ideologically Rightist. Progressives have always been -- whether Republican or Democrat -- technologically advanced (progressive, get it?), socially moderately liberal, and economically conservative. Progressivism became the Standard Operating System for Governments in the United States and throughout the world during the heyday of the Progressive Movement, from about 1910 to the advent of Ronald Reagan's terms in the White House in 1981, when he institutionalized the dismantlement of the Progressive Operating System, substituting a kind of ad hoc Nouveau Aristocracy in its stead. It hasn't turned out well.

Progressivism is not an ideology. It's a systematic method of dealing with public interest issues and problems to come up with a viable solution. Somewhat like Science. In operation, Progressivism has been highly authoritarian, counter-Democratic, and it once was extraordinarily racist. But because it is a systematic method it is amenable to change.

And so today's remnant Progressivism (there are only remnants left) is quite a different animal, almost a different species, from its high-minded, often high-handed and flawed ancestors. Authoritarianism has been diminished, democracy has been enhanced, and racism has been almost entirely eliminated from today's Progressive system of thought and action. It is still a highly technocratic system, however, and Progressives still like to think of themselves as a Natural Elite. Nevertheless, genuine Progressives tend to be much more closely aligned with the Working Class and minorities, with Community, and with much more broad-based and positive economic policies than they are with the Corporate Interests who have captured government and seek to permanently institutionalize a New Aristocratic Model of society and everything. The Gods Who Walk Among Us® as I put it.

The "faux-gressive" Libertarians are quite different animals altogether, basically predatory, with very different needs and objectives than the genuine Progressives who still exist. In far too many cases, they are trying to defraud well-meaning and credulous liberals and Progressives into supporting a Libertarian political agenda that would lead to the extinction of genuine Progressives. But there is considerable push-back, even from the most credulous, and I tend not to be too concerned about "faux-gressive" advances. They aren't doing so well, and they are more and more easily exposed for the conmen -- and women -- they are.

In California today, as reported by David Swanson over at FDL, the expulsion of Real Progressives from the California Democratic Party -- where they have had a fairly welcoming home since at least 2005 -- looks to be only a matter of time.

The Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party did a Bad Bad Thing: they passed a resolution in honor of Barack Obama's 50th birthday calling for the exploration of a 2012 presidential primary challenge to him. Haw.

The bill of particulars reads almost like the list of grievances against King George in the Declaration of Independence, to wit:

RESOLUTION in SUPPORT of a POSSIBLE 2012 DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY CHALLENGE:

• His unilateral closed-door budget offer to slash Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which endangers the New Deal and War on Poverty safety nets.
• His determination to escalate U.S. militarism through illegal secret CIA drone attacks and unauthorized wars.
• His willingness to extend the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and bail out big banks without ending the foreclosure crisis that displaces American working families.
• His insistence on pushing a health insurance bill which enriches private insurance companies while ignoring growing support for single-payer health care or robust public options.
• His continuance of President Bush’s assault on civil liberties with an extension of the repressive Patriot Act.
• His failure to restore due process, including the protection of whistleblowers and habeas corpus.
• His numerous failures to adhere to international law.
• The continuing practice of nationwide FBI raids of anti-war progressive protestors.
• His decision to increase the arrests and deportations of undocumented workers.
• His facilitation of the privatizing of the public sphere, which includes education and housing, among others.
• His disregard of his promises to the Labor movement.
• His failure to adequately protect the environment and adequately address climate change.

Oh. Dear. This is bound to get them in trouble with the Party Higher Ups, won't it? Sure enough.

Listen to the interview with Karen Bernal, Chair of the Progressive Caucus, for some indication of what kind of trouble they're in.

Basically, the caucus is suspended in limbo, neither expelled nor recertified. While "matters are considered."

We keep hearing and reading all this chatter on the internets about how the "progressives" must organize and work and slave and make a noise to get noticed in the Democratic Party, and they must get involved with the Party and elections and so on and so forth, and eventually, maybe, if they're organized enough and they work hard enough, they might be able to "take over the Party," as if none of this has already been done -- by Real Progressives, by people like Karen Bernal -- who have already been purged or are in the process of being purged from the self-same Democratic Party.

And we need to think about that a little bit.

With a thought process that is closely related to the need for realism (h/t pws in comments) regarding the actual results in Wisconsin's recalls, rather than the Happy Talkin' Happy Talk we get all the time from the Parties and Our Rulers.

No, Real Progressives are being defeated and expelled (actually, most of them already have been), and "faux-gressives" who think the field is now (or soon will be) wide open for their entrance into and subsequent poisoning of the Democratic Party are in for the shock of their lives.

What's happened is that with the stunning electoral successes Real Progressives actually managed to generate for Democrats, the highest levels of the Party Apparat decided they didn't need Progressives -- of any sort -- any more, and got rid of them, starting with Howard Dean and the 50 State Project, which had been the engine enabling such stunning electoral victories. The remnant Progressive Caucus in California helped provide an anomalous reversal of the Republican Wave election of 2010. Whereas Progressives essentially turned their backs on the Democrats everywhere else in the country (for many of the reasons cited in the resolution above), in California Progressives continued to work for Democratic candidates, and the result was that every single statewide office was won by a Democrat, and Democrats continued far and away in the majority in the statehouse and California congressional delegation. Rs got nowhere, but because of California's requirement that tax increases be approved by 2/3rds of the legislature (there is just shy of 2/3rds Democratic control in the Assembly and Senate), it was impossible to pass a budget that didn't include severe cuts to education and social programs (while of course protecting prison budgets, than which nothing is more important to the state powers that be).

It now appears that fixing this Democratic/Progressive anomaly in California was made a priority by the Power Players in California's Democratic Party -- no doubt under orders from DeeCee.

That's what happens when you mess with the Big Guys.

Karen knows that full well, and I wouldn't be surprised if the resolution to explore supporting a primary challenge to Barack Obama in 2012 was passed as a deliberate provocation.

The fall out could be quite a bit more than The Powers That Be anticipate. Karen is a tiger.