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Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Onward 
The Poet and the Doctor
| | Emerson is credited with creating the American voice in literature, opening the path for Whitman and Thoreau. But he was also the first globalist--a student of Persian verse and Brahmin philosophy, a champion of Goethe and correspondent for many years with Thomas Carlyle in England. Not because he was a multi-culturalist but because he thought the human mind and heart were capable of immense and innumerable expansions. ³There is no outside, no inclosing wall, no circumference to us,² he wrote in the essay: Circles. And now with the Web we understand more nearly what he meant. |
| | The opening paragraphs of Cluetrain spoke to business: |
| | A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter —and getting smarter faster than most companies. |
| | These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked. |
| | Now Cluetrain speaks to politics. I hear it right now, sitting under one of many televisions in an empty conference hall on the day before a trade show. All the tubes are piping a channel through which yet another newsreader fails to make sense of Howard Dean's sweaty and defiant speech to his troops last night in Iowa. Nobody here, other than me, is listening. The monitors yap and shimmer into the yawning din, like the ubiquitous screens in Orwell's 1984. I can only make sense of the scene with the help of Emerson's friend Whitman. |
| | Listen to the poet, then listen again to the doctor. See what you hear... |
| | All forces have been steadily employed
to complete and delight me.
Now I stand on this spot with my soul.
I know that I have the best of time and space.
And that I was never measured, and never will be measured.
I tramp a perpetual journey.
My signs are a rainproof coat, good shoes
and a staff cut from the wood.
Each man and woman of you I lead upon a knoll.
My left hand hooks you about the waist,
My right hand points to landscapes and continents,
and a plain public road.
Not I, nor any one else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it for yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born
and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.
Shoulder your duds, and I will mine,
and let us hasten forth.
If you tire, give me both burdens and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip.
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me.
Long enough have you dreamed contemptible dreams.
Now I wash the gum from your eyes.
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.
Long have you timidly waited,
holding a plank by the shore.
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, and rise again,
and nod to me and shout,
and laughingly dash your hair.
I am the teacher of athletes.
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own
proves the width of my own.
He most honors my style
who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then. I contradict myself.
I am large. I contain multitudes.
I concentrate toward them that are nigh.
I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day's work
and will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me.
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me.
He complains of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed. I too am untranslatable.
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. |
| | Are we ready for barbaric yawp politics? |
| | We won't just see. We'll hear, too. |
New day
| | Shot the sunrise coming through the U.N. building from Queens this morning. Seems appropriate, somehow. |
Hangunder
| | [Later...] Haven't seen the papers this morning, but I've scanned the talk radio dial here in New York, and poor Dr. Dean is getting hammered like an anvil for his "name the states" speech (screech?) to the troops last night, echoing Drudge's huge Dean Goes Nuts headline, which runs under two pictures of Dean in full lather. Jonah Goldberg: Dean reminds me of the Hulk in that interim stage just before Bruce Banner turns green and starts to rip his clothes. In other words, the transmitted wisdom about Dean has gone from bad to worse: from "angry" to "insane." That's the rap Rush Limbaugh was laying on Wesley Clark yesterday. If you want a nut, go with Clark, he said (and wrote, which is, thankfully, why we can link him) comparing the General to Sterling Hayden's character in Dr. Strangelove: |
| | Jack D. Ripper, the cigar smoking, insane general inside some army base, thinking the communists were outside his perimeter, and just launching on everybody. Mark Steyn is making the point that Dean, who is basically pretty boring, is trying to act mad, and act a little nuts, just to fire up the base, and in Wesley Clark you have the real guy. If Democrats want somebody insane they don't need an actor, just elect Wesley Clark. |
| | The spin on Kos looks like one around a bathtub drain: |
| | In Iowa, Gephardt used his boat to repeatedly ram Dean, and in the process raised Dean's negatives in IA higher than any other place in the country |
| | For me, the big winner is Edwards. He's always struck me as a Tony Blair figure - telegenic, personally appealing, centrist. His speech was the best of the bunch last night - and he exudes decency. That's enormously important against Bush because the president's most under-rated political virtue is his general likeability. |
| | The picture isn't pretty, but the story isn't over. In fact, it may have just begun. The best stories are ones in which character is proven by adversity. In that respect, Iowa is a huge gift to Dean. And to his supporters. (Good message from Dave Rogers (not Dave Rogers) on that one.) |
Candy dates
| | Yesterday I said the best looking candidates won in Iowa (also, one reader reminded me, the candidates from the Superbowl team states). |
| | Watching Howard Dean's rousing "speech" (I'm not sure what to call it... rant?) to his troops at the end of the day, it occurred to me that Kerry and Edwards aren't just the best looking candidates, but the best-talking ones as well. They are practiced and excellent public speakers. As message delivery boys, they hit the porch every time. |
| | Dean is an okay speaker. He's not great. I'm told he can be very good, but I haven't seen it yet. But he's also a doctor. Good politicians tell you want you want to hear. Good doctors tell you what you need to hear, whether you want it or not. |
| | Dean's main advantage is his immunity from special interests. That's the real message of his enormous grass roots support. That kind of support is the real sea change in politics. It's true campaign finance reform, from the bottom up. Sooner or later, it will change everything. |
| | Dean needs to run as what he is: nobody's politician, everybody's doctor. That's what everybody's paying him to be. |
Politics are conversations
| | ...here's my instinct. People who are outside the Internet religion resent we who have it and want to peddle it to them. Frankly, our orange hats may have worked against us, making the conversation aboutour movement, not Iowans' interests. Kids brimming with enthusiasm and inexperience can seem irrelevant to graybeards like me and the many people I know in Iowa... |
| | Most of us gauge others by their appearance first and their ideas and skills second. Bush proved that in 2000. We Netizens are confident that the 'Net changes everything. But it's not certain when it changes politics. |
| | I believe we can affect that date. It doesn't have to be 2008: It can be 2004. But changing politics via the Internet isn't easy, and — amazingly — it won't happen online, at least not yet. |
| | Internet politics doesn't happen online? Nope. In the real world, where the votes are, it happens over back fences and at soccer games and water coolers and PTO meetings. It may happen online for 20-somethings, but not for most of us. So how do we use our amazing Swiss Army Knife to inspire and inform and transform those offline conversations? |
| | I'm still working on that. |
| | What I gather about New Hampshire, however, is that there is an awful lot of front porch and back yard fence talking going on. Which is a good thing, no matter who benefits. |
| | Be interesting to see what happens there. |
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