2012 DNC Convention

Don't think this needs anything from me.

Gus Wuz Thinkin' About Political Cyber Stuff

You probably recall that during the 2008 election, the Democratics gloated about how much the Internet had aided the defeat of Hillary and then McCain in the general election.  Although I hadn’t paid much attention then to what kind of organizing can be done online, the notion was intriguing and I decided to look into it. 

The introduction of Windows XP in 2003, soon followed about 2005 by wider access to broadband for the masses released the enormous creative power of millions of very intelligent people.  And after 20-years of software development for PCs, compatibility of a large number of applications became a reality, especially for non-techies.

The technology knowledge had been known within large corporations for several years before the masses began to avail themselves of it.  So, growth and experimentation was sporadic.  As I recall it, the Republicans were largely absent from the cyber world in 2008.  They’ve begun to correct the disparity in this 2012 cycle.

However, the Democratics and their constituencies still show a remarkable devotion to making use of the online environment for a lot of their efforts.  By fairly loosely “friending” people in Facebook, I’ve encountered a few kooks who usually show themselves in a political conversation.   Some of them can quickly come off whatever is passing for their rails.  Dealing with them until they blew me off for not agreeing with their ranting was useful as a means of learning a bit of what makes them tick and gets them motivated.

 A couple of sites they liked to use for their kick-off discussion topics for a thread were Truthout and Common Dreams.  Any attempt I might try to have a rational exchange with them invariably fell into a flood of childish twaddle and bad language I wouldn’t dream of using in this environment. 

If you haven’t paid much attention to this stuff, as I haven’t, you may be surprised how much work has been going into the left’s “occupation” of cyberspace.  Note the image at right that shows a grid of 12 boxes, each containing about 10-12 links to other urls.  Ultimately, the links lead to about 400 (apparently) different web sites.  Some of them are probably substantial, some of them may be run from the same office, others may be a guy in a basement somewhere.  It’s difficult to tell, as you know.  This particular grid come from a site called, “Common Dreams.”

 

The following 4-pages are the names of the sites that are pointed to by the above grid…about 400 of them.

The logos shown at right are from a page calling for help with the Wisconsin recall effort.  Note all the interlinking.  And the list at left of links accompanied some other kind of protest during some of the “occupy” protests a few months back.  The thing to keep in mind is that a web site or blog can be constructed and posted in a very short period of time by someone who knows what they’re doing, so it’s possible that a number of these sites lack substance…others could be quite large in terms of funding and staff.

Conservatives are belatedly beginning to link their sites together, but appear to be pretty far behind.  It appears that the conservatives prefer to stand alone to this point in time.

And finally, here is a program to help keep the various site clearly identified, should you start seeing odd references to supposedly sound sources.  Good luck.