On Politicoholic, I came across a post on 25 Ways to use your blog and social media to create change.

I was struck by the weakly Liberal tone of many of the suggestions. Perhaps it's just the self-congratulatory attitude of self-importance permeating it that annoys me. The whole list reeks of "Look at me! I'm making a big change in the world! And I'm telling you all about it!"

While educating people has value, it isn't the same as actually effecting change with sweat and physical action. Most blogs are the equivalent of parlor pontification.

I started to wonder what a more radical version might look like, a version that put more emphasis on doing things in the world rather than just blogging about doing things. So here is my first attempt at such a list. It's repetitious in places but it's intended to mirror the original list linked above. I just re-wrote each numbered point as I came to it. It's not perfect but it's mine.

1. Start simple: Steal from large corporations.

2. Join an activist group, a group that performs direct action.

3. Or if there isn't a group with politics or an activist philosophy you agree with, create your own. Form a small group of trusted people and collectively decide on goals and actions.

4. Videoblog an interview with someone with radical political views. Ask them about strategies to transform society.

5. Share a meal with a stranger, someone not like you.

6. Has someone you love been affected by class warfare or capitalism's indifference to individual suffering?? Share your story and raise awareness.

7. Demand change from government and corporations. Be specific.

8. Petitions are rarely effective at changing institutions or governments. Do not delude yourself that they are useful.

9. Vlog a political demonstration. If there is a strong police presence, show it.

10. Twitter is a distraction. Don't mistake it for action.

11. Write about your experiences and concrete methods for transforming society, not in the future but now, today.

12. Instead of writing on how global human rights issues can be alleviated, volunteer at a soup kitchen, a homeless shelter, a free medical clinic. Find out how human rights are being violated in your neighborhood.

13. Participate in a political demonstration or protest. Get arrested.

14. Invite someone who is a political radical to mentor you.

15. Discuss how direct action can change society more than blogging.

16. Instead of correcting injustice through the proxies of non-profit and advocacy organizations, see if there is anything you can do in person. Be a participant, not a donor.

17. Highlight grassroots organizations.

18. Be involved in social justice/human rights efforts.

19. Create an effective means to implement social justice.

20. Discuss how school curricula stifles and suppresses citizen responsibility in students. Start independent student-led and student-run organizations. Empower students, don't patronize them.

21. Find out who profits from wars. Develop an analysis of imperialism and how it relates to colonialism. Apply it to the United States foreign policy over the last century.

22. Ask your readers to create a revolution, even a small one.

23. Spend less time blogging and reading blogs. Spend more time acting, deliberately and radically.

24. Participate.

25. Blogging has limited influence, on you and others. Acting transforms you and society deeply. Never mistake theory for practice. Do it. Do it now.

Labels: blogging, blogs, direct action, lists, political, politics

I'm once again entering one of my periodic phases of wondering what point or goal I'm pursuing with this blog. While I'm moderately entertained by crafting some of my individual posts, it remains rather random in scope and intent. One post will be relatively serious analysis with original synthesis of sources and the next might be a complete piece of fluff.

I've never really defined DemiOrator other than orienting it generally toward political subjects with some social commentary. Even that has often gone by the wayside in the last couple of years, with long stretches of very shallow content or no content at all.

My participation in the wider blogging community has also been completely non-existent for many months, leading to a reduction in my site traffic from other forums. While fame or a wide readership has never been my primary reason for blogging, I admit that my current traffic stats are a discouraging factor in continuing the project.

So I'm thinking of either abandoning this blog entirely in favor of one of my other online venues or seriously focusing and retooling it. The effort of such an overhaul seems daunting to me. I'm not that thrilled with Blogger anymore but I'm really not skilled enough at HTML to easily redesign it for another blogging site.

Truthfully, the name "DemiOrator" has begun to feel like a drag on me. It's a created word that feels awkward and difficult to use. I long to have some easily understandable blog name like "The Culture Ghost" or "Dark Wraith". OK, maybe those aren't the best examples but you probably get what I'm saying.

So I'm wondering and thinking about these things.

Labels: blogging, DemiOrator, personal reflection

Wired has an Op-ed piece that basically says essay-type blogging is an outdated form. for common people. Really, you should be doing the Twitter and Flickr. Ain'tcha burning with Web 4.0 passion to haiku-ize your life in microbursts?

My amusement is showing. And radio killed newspapers and TV killed radio and the internet killed all of them. (Well there's a little truth in the last one.)

While haiku-like 160 character messages are fine for some purposes if your main communication tool is the cell phone, it's hardly a nuanced or complete source.

I think this is a reaction to the information overload many people feel from all the myriad sources out there competing for their attention. Instead of learning to evaluate sources and carefully pick which to follow, we now have short notes of dubious value and probably subject to misinterpretation.

This strikes me as a solution for people who don't like to read. Perhaps they feel intimidated by reading. All those different words all strung together in long sentences. It's a lot easier to write or read "im gr8 hw r u?"

I'm still waiting for grunts of pleasure and displeasure to come into the public discourse as debating points.

Labels: blogging

When I first started blogging, I settled into Blogger because it was easy and fast to set up.

That was over four years ago and 1,100 posts ago.

Since then, I've added a few customizations to the code, sitemeters and such. Then I began noticing that DemiOrator was throwing up pop-ups when it loaded. I ignored it for a long time but I just figured out it was one of the site statistics scripts so I've deleted it from the code. This seems to have solved the annoying problem. And I'm kind of pissed about it. I should have known that they would take the opportunity to make some money but I still don't like it and particularly not the use of pop-up ads.

This brings me to the current rub: I've made noises before about switching to different blogging software and I think the time is ripe now. You know, get a domain and host it myself.

My web host has Wordpress as an automatic install. It seems like a good platform but if anyone has input, I'd love to hear from you.

I've only the most rudimentary of HTML coding skills and still have trouble keeping CSS coding straight. I need to get better sometime so why not now? Hardly a resounding carpe diem but that's life.

Labels: blogging, blogs, writing

I've come full circle: It was over four years ago, during the Democratic National Convention of 2004, that I began this erratic blog called DemiOrator. I've slacked off blogging here during the last year or so, my attention focused elsewhere. Still, I have affection for this tatty and ratty personal expression of mine despite the recent neglect.

I started this blog with a cynical eye but with hope that things could be improved. This seems less and less likely, despite Obama's nomination. Superficially, Obama seems like a sign of progress, his nomination by a major party to run for president practically unimaginable just a generation ago. Yet I have seen little evidence of substantial change coming if he is elected. Oh, his administration will probably be head and shoulders above the current administration or McCain's but these are exceptionally low bars to clear.

I've always had little confidence in the US political system above the very local level of participation. Democracy does not thrive well beyond the local representative level where you can actually talk with your rep or attend meetings with them. At a national level, the corruption of power, money and ruling class values dominates discussion and influence. Lobbyists write legislation to benefit their clients/special interests and money talks louder than the voices of constituents.

This is Labor Day weekend and I suspect large numbers of people under 30 have little clear idea what it originally represented. Today, unions have been losing members for decades and the percentage of unionized US workers is at its lowest ebb. The idea of banding together with other workers even seems bizarre to many because we're now acclimated to the idea that we're competing with everyone else.

"Collective bargaining? Solidarity? Aren't those commie ideas? Commies are bad, right? We won the Cold war and I don't want no truck with commies."

So politicians continue to pull our strings to get votes. There are no guarantees that the promises made before the election will be kept after the election. They'll claim new facts and a fuller understanding/briefing on the situation means that there are other factors in the balance.

I'm willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt but I also expect nothing more from him than I expect from any politician: reversals of positions, inaction on many pre-election promises, and equivications when confronted on this pattern.

I never believe slogans or promises; I only believe in actions. I recommend you do as well.

Labels: blogging, cynicism, labor, Obama, politics, unions

I came upon a small box on Culture Ghost. Following the link, I generated the following for DemiOrator:



Now admittedly I have done little to reap any money from my blog. I briefly tried Google's AdSense program but disliked the ads it supplied to the blog. I'm also a bit of a control freak. Or at least enough that I'm leery about having ad content on my blog that I don't explicitly approve. Perhaps that's my problem.

Would I put more effort into this blog if I were getting money from it? Sure. But that would also make blogging into a job in the negative sense. I would then start to resent it. Anyway, I really doubt DemiOrator is actually worth $9,000.

As a point of comparison, the Ghost is apparently worth $28,227.00. It all feels a bit like just numbers on the page. I feel completely unable to evaluate the accuracy or realism of these estimates.

And yet I'm reminded of a line from a music review on Spandau Ballet many years ago: "How can you accuse them of 'selling out' when all they ever wanted to do was buy in?" Integrity can sometimes hinge more on the state of your belly and monthly rent than your high moral fiber.

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Listening to: "Natural's Not in It" by Gang of Four

Labels: advertising, blogging, selling out