Post on 20-Jan-2016
description
Blogs and the battle for
ideas: personalities and issues
Blogs and the battle for
ideas: personalities and issues
Me = UsMe = Us
You = ThemYou = Them
Personality = Issue
Personality = Issue
Leaders = FollowersLeaders = Followers
• Bully Pulpit
• Propaganda Bullhorn
• Democracy Wall
• Think Tank Sandbox
• Witness Stand
Political Purposes
To sum it up, the Revolution failed because it was badly led; because its leader won his post by reprehensible rather than meritorious acts; because instead of supporting the men most useful to the people, he made them useless
out of jealousy. Identifying the aggrandizement of the people with his own, he
judged the worth of men not by their ability, character and patriotism but rather by their degree of friendship and kinship with him... —Apolinario Mabini, La Revolucion Filipina
Bully Pulpit
—Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! How horrible. How ugly! He looks like a fur seal... Yes, yes, a fur seal
with a mustache!Let us describe the fur seal... I mean, the
friar...He seemed meek; but after he had been
ordained and sang his first Mass, after five years in the country, eating bananas and
papayas and after his appointment as parish priest... he has become so smart that he is
now very rich...—Graciano Lopez Jaena
Fray Botod (Encarnación Alzona’s translation)
Propaganda Bullhorn
Anybody can stand up on a street corner and call the President of the Philippines an
incompetent old fogey, a power-mad oligarch, the assassin of Philippine democracy, the defender and protector of corrupt officials.
People say it every day. They shout it loud... in modes and styles of infinite variation. Some are scholarly and discreet; others are coarse
and brutal; some descend to vulgar personalities; others soar to constitutional heights. but they all have the freedom to
denounce and ridicule...—Claro M. Recto
Democracy Wall
Everybody engages in business in our country except ourselves. It is sufficient that the
foreigners praise to us imported merchandise and run down the native products for us to hasten to change without reflecting, that
everything has its weak side and the most sensible custom is ridiculous in the eyes of those who do not follow it. If this practice is
continued, we shall be a people without character; everything in us will be borrowed,
even our very defects. —Jose Rizal
Think-Tank Sandbox
I beg you to accept that there is no people on earth who wouldn't prefer their own bad
government to the good government of an alien power.
—Mahatma Gandhi, 1933, after the massacre at Amritsar
Witness Stand
Political Roles
• Observer
• Explainer
• Proposer
• Exposer
• Attacker/Defender
My Rights
• I am the master of my standards.
• I am the arbiter of my content.
• I can be as opinionated and as biased as I wish.
• I can limit my reading.
Your Expectations
• You should explain your standards to me.
• Arbitration needn’t be arbitrarily handled.
• Your opinions and biases shouldn’t pretend to be objective.
• You should link to what you praise or denounce.
Where You and I Meet
• Bandwidth is for everyone.
• All blogs are created equal.
• Not you, or I, but everyone else decides who to read.
• No blog is an island.
• At the end of the battle, both sides must rebuild.
Perils of Groupthink
• Arriving at consensus “through suppressing dissent, doubts, or searches for alternatives once certain decisions grounded in overriding attitudes have been made.” (Robert Pois and Philip Langer, Command Failure in War: Psychology and Leadership, p. 177-78)