Great to see the return of fellow prog-blogger Jeran Artery of Cheyenne. For years, Jeran served as the public face of Wyoming Equality, the interviewee you often saw on TV news when LGBTQ rights were being debated in Wyoming. A passionate spokesperson for the gay community, he also is my friend. Is he upset about the impending Trump presidency? Go to Out in Wyoming and find out. You also can find a link to his blog on my sidebar.
What will blogging bring in 2017? Those progressives pissed off about the political turn of events will have plenty of blog fodder. Late-night comedians, bloggers, political junkies all have plenty to joke about. None of the really cool music groups want to perform for the Trump inauguration. Ha, ha. None of Trump's appointments to top cabinet posts have the required experience. LOL. Trump daily shows his ignorance on Twitter. Ho ho ho.
As we discovered during the campaign, none of that matters. We live in a post-factual world now in the U.S. Trump lies, Liberals chortle merrily and point this out, and nothing happens. Trump believes all of the stuff he said to those sign-waving supporters at rallies from Dallas to Detroit. He plans to do it all. That's not funny.
But humor is a weapon. So are words. Will Radio Free Internet survive? Hard to say. Part of Trump's success was the viral spread of fake news and lies and half-truths. Can he shut down the prog-bloggers without shutting down the wingnuts? Will we be forced off the web and into an era of samizdat? Keep those printing presses handy!
Vladimir Bukovsky, one-time Soviet dissident and no liberal (he's a senior fellow at the reactionary Cato Institute in D.C.), summarized it as follows (from Wikipedia): "Samizdat: I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend jail time for it myself."
Self-publishing and self-distribution are all the rage in our DIY society. Perhaps samizdat will catch on in Moscow, Idaho, as it once did in that other Moscow.
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