What if the blogosphere hadn't come into existence only shortly after the Bush Gang takeover? Imagine having to face down Rove/Cheney/Frist/DeLay/Abramoff/Scaife/Murdoch with nothing but Z Magazine, a few tattered Chomsky books, and Lexis-Nexis (or for the unaffiliated, shudder, microfiche at the public library). Now everyone's Chomsky. I didn't see the "My Pet Goat" footage until mid-2003, and at the time it was secret knowledge; now "no one anticipated the breach of the levees" is available for anyone on Crooks & Liars to expose Bush's lies after Brownie's attempted self-rehabilitation. How did Bush spend 9/11? On 9/11 we learned that he was cowering, then on 9/13 reality changed and he was heroic for a few years. These days, you can't get away with strumming a guitar and cutting a cake while a city is destroyed. I worried publicly prior to the 2004 election that if Bush kept power, he'd destroy Social Security and that would be game over; Josh Marshall and others kept all over individual legislators and humiliated Bush. The Plame outing was going to be yet another silent but deadly Roving; bloggers locked their teeth into a few paragraphs on A17, now maybe Rove is going down, and at least he's distracted. Why did public opinion turn against the Iraq war so much faster and more decisively than against the Vietnam war? Because the blogosphere is constantly humming with reality-based information and analysis to counter the constant propaganda from the GOP and traditional media.
UPDATE: on a more gloomy note, this post is a stark reminder of the forces on the other side.
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