Futurama: Online Progressive Congress

02:00 PM Jan 15, 2006

That the Internets are changing communications and organizing strategies devolved below the level of cliche sometime around the Iowa caucuses two years ago. But even if mass e-mailing and write-to-Congress pages are now standard-issue kits on the NGO toolbelt, the continuing fecundation at the edges offers startling glimpses of the altered world in which corn farmers two years hence will assume their doubtful prerogative of annointing front-runners to palliate the lacerations of the Bush presidency.

DemocracyInAction is lucky enough to count among its members a communard salon's worth of truly brilliant initiatives to redefine the ways people meet and combine to shape their political world.

The Online Progressive Congress' vote this past week to formally oppose the Alito nomination will regrettably do nothing to nothing to hinder the elevation of a man whose hearings broadcast the depth of his ideological enmity to most any cause progressives hold dear.

But call it an early milepost in the gestation of a new online political phenomenon.

OPC -- how can I explain it? "The Online Progressive Congress is a prototype of what political parties can become in the age of the Internet," says its About Us page. It's an online community, still in beta mode, "with accountable leadership and an engaged general membership" in which to define and refine progressive strategies.

If that sounds at once ambiguous and ambitious, surely it is. But it's rooted in a clear vision of the untapped power of online interaction to achieve formal political strength without forfeiting -- indeed, through the exercise of -- the fluidity and decentralization that form the primary themes of cyberspace's romantics. To what end? Will it really remake politics as we know? Who knows? But to paraphrase Dogma, you don't need a belief -- you just need a good idea. Heaven knows it could scarcely be worse, or less effectual, than the existing Progressive (sic) Congress.

One thing at least is certain: there's no Joe Biden in the Online Progressive Congress.

Get a glimpse of the future at www.progressivecongress.org.

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Мастер и маргарита

master — 07:10 AM May 01, 2010

Экранизация культового романа Михаила Булгакова «Мастер и Маргарита».

business

podvall — 09:29 PM Dec 18, 2009

I've learned how to be a better person for sure. The desire to grow community is a strong motivator to staying ethical and honest at every turn. :)