Paralysis of the Mind

I preface everything I am about to say with a major admission: I have a MySpace page and visit it on a regular basis. So I can hardly climb upon a high horse to mock those who use MySpace, because I'm generally not in the business of public self-mocking.

That said, having used MySpace for a little over three months, it's possibly the most terrifying phenomeon I've seen in my lifetime.

MySpace, if you've been hiding out for the past few years, is an online networking site that allows people to create a profile page, featuring pictures, lists of likes and dislikes, some personal information and a chance to start a personal blog. It was recently purchased by evil madman Rupert Murdoch, although he's yet to bring his
own spin of hellacious nastiness to the site. Yet, anyway.

Media coverage, so far, has been a fine Colombian blend of astonishment and hysteria. The astonishment has been over the fact that in a fairly short amount of time, the site publically lists over 70 million profiles (and has many, many more unlisted -- estimated at over 100 million). The hysteria has been over how sex predators see MySpace as a candy store, with kids willingly giving up their personal information online.

Both of those things are worthy stories. It *is* amazing what the web can do when people really take to something, and it's almost nice to see that we're no so jaded in the age of mass-mass-mass media that we can realize 70 million people doing anything at once is a hell of a story. And yeah, predators are going after kids online -- because kids are online. At one point, they went after kids in malt shops. Venues change, the idea stays the same.

But to me, neither one of those things are lasting stories. Everyone on Earth eats every day, they breathe, they exist, they do many other things in big numbers, so that in itself isn't a story. And teens will get savvier, just like they learned not to get into cars with strangers (or leave the malt shop with a weirdo). The predators will move on to the next venue, wherever it will arrive.

What is a story, though, is the massive social problem that the Internet, with MySpace currently leading the way, is probably causing in the next generation.

The icon of early American life, at least to me, is located in Boston. The Boston Common, the oldest public park in America, was more than just a park -- it was a symbol of the idea that despite differences, people had to live together. For instance, cattle were allowed to graze on the common until 1830. Consider it: How do you keep public land in good condition while cows are allowed to chew it up? The answer, of course, was compromise. People learned that getting an extra cow might
be good for them, but it could ruin the common for everyone bought an extra cow. With that lesson in hand, it was a lot easier for people to learn the benefits of compromise and decency.

The Internet has been pitched, many times in many places, as that sort of thing, where everyone is together and ideas are exchanged and everyone improves for the contact. But in reality, once you get to the Web, things are so insulated, the reverse happens. Instead of the Common effect, where you have to learn to compromise, the Internet provides small commons for everyone on their own little island of thought. Don't like liberals? I can tick off 10 sites in a minute for you. Hate the Yankees? You'll be welcomed with open arms. Love punk? Hate punk? There's places to go to get your ideas reinforced.

Instead of learning differences, people -- protected by anonymity and distance -- learn sameness. Popular movie clips spin from inbox to inbox until even the "old" media notices and starts playing them. The chain letters are the same, each and every time. Even the phony mass e-mails are set on a repeat cycle. Rich Nigerian wants my help, your penis is too small, Chase Bank is desperately trying to contact us about our nonexistant account.

What could break that cycle is the freedom of expression that the Internet allows. How else can you broadcast your views around the world in a heartbeat? Forty-three men have been President of the United States, a position that makes their words important enough to be recorded and rebroadcast. But now anyone can top them. We can take in a blog from a Chinese student, flip over to Riverbend to read about Iraq, hit the gearshift for the Daily Kos onramp and make a big finish to a Russian news site. And all of that can be accomplished in an instant.

Some have taken this idea and run with it. Riverbend is breathtaking, when the site is updated. And she's one of a million of other people with interesting and fresh ideas who take the time and are willing to share with the rest of the class.

And I can certainly respect those who enjoy the act of reading these things so much they'd prefer to indulge themselves rather than try to compete. Without an audience, nothing creative could ever flourish -- and some people just know they'd rather enjoy than try to create. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

But it's another group that worries me. I've written about the lack of self-expression *before*, but bringing it all back to MySpace, it's almost scary to see what people do on the site when they choose to put their fingers to a keyboard.

It's not necessarily even the self-indulgent nonsense most people produce that's the shame; it's more about the question of who they're choosing to share it with that concerns me.

Wander into the marshes of MySpace and you'll find profiles with enough information to dizzy you. And then you see the all-important statistic. What homeruns are to baseball, friends are to MySpace; everyone seems to want them, and people with a lot of them are celebrated.

Everyone has a different definition of what a friend is. But even stretching it to its breaking point, nobody outside of Hugh Hefner has 500 friends. Yet search and you'll find random people -- nobodies among nobodies -- who have twice that many and more. Ten thousand friends? It's not unheard of here.

The point of MySpace was to keep up with friends and, perhaps, make new ones. But it doesn't work like that necessarily. Instead we have digital hangers-on. Your posse can find you -- at 1 gigabyte a second.

And that creates a dangerous and weird social mix. It was that old sitcom chestnut, the younger brother steals his sister's diary and reads it to hilarious results. But today, not only would that not be a problem -- there would be 80 or 90 other people able to peruse at the same time. Because on MySpace, if you have no personal filter, nothing stays personal.

To me, that speaks to our society at large. Everyone is out there, on our own opinion island, blasting our thoughts as loudly as we can. And with a generation behind us who will have spent more time talking online with their friends than, perhaps, talking in reality with them... well, listening isn't going to be a strong point (to say the least.)

With listening comes decency, and the ability to find common ground. Why try to find a compromise with someone on an important issue when you can go online and find a thousand people who agree with you -- on anything? And why temper your thinking when you have a platform to reach anyone in the world? You can be a bullheaded open book -- and the world is welcome to take note of that because you're not going to change one iota for anyone.

None of this is going to end the world. But we live in a time where the differences between people -- real or imagined -- lead to extreme behavior. And that is a serious repercussion. I don't expect a group of MySpace users to end up as suicide bombers or anything. But, suicide bombers aren't born; they're made through years of being focused on hatred. Racists, sexists and other bigots are made in the same way. The Internet can very easily influence and reinforce those thoughts.

But it doesn't have to be big things like that. Frankly, when the word friend can mean "person I know vaguely online" -- I don't know what to think. How can you really put your trust in someone if you're willing to broadcast everything widely and trust everyone? What sort of friendships are these? And what kind of friend does that make you?

And lastly, why modify your thinking when you can be swept up in a digital cocoon of similar thoughts? Add it all up and we've got a generation ready to be hardened, friendless, socially inept and completely unable to find a common ground with anyone who doesn't agree with them. MySpace isn't necessarily your space too -- and we might be living with that little fact for a very long time.

Nobody cares when an Iraqi gets killed.

I wish I knew why.

Someday, when historians look back at the odd happenings in American politics post-2001, they will wonder what happened to the opposition party.

It will be discussed in one of two ways. Either the rapturous conservatives will have completely won the war -- and they'll look back on 2002 in the wistful fashion of a highly placed National Socialist looked back on the Beer Hall Putsch in 1939, or else they will be broken in 2008, stripped down and -- perhaps -- beaten back from their tenuous hold on the reins of American society. In which case, historians will wonder exactly what happened to the opposition in America.

I assume that 20 years from now, nothing will have happened to Fox "News." No doubt, CNN will have hired Ann Coulter and Karl Rove to attempt to shed its liberal image. (And, following the trend, MSNBC will hire the less effective Michelle Malkin and George W. Bush. They're not even good at following the trends, MSNBC.) And, surely, newspapers will be dead -- by which I mean they'll still have more readers and impact on the daily news than all other media combined, same as today. (Circulation will be down, though. I hope you're as ready as I am for 20 years of 'OH MY GOD, THE NEWSPAPER IS DYING!!!' headlines every few months.)

So, in other words, I expect America to get a little dumber, a little more easily amused, and probably a tad more conservative after the next terrorist attack.

Which brings me back to the top: What happened to the opposition?

The answer is that 64 million people voted yesterday to decide who the winner of "American Idol" would be. OK, that's sort of a stretch, since there's no limit on how many votes you can cast... aka Karl Rove's dream scenario. And, to nobody's great surprise, Taylor Hicks defeated Katherine McPhee.

Whoop-dee-doo, yes? Well, wrong. Mr. Hicks was hardly more talented than several other contenders who had previously been eliminated. He's definitely NOT got the look: he has gray hair and prances around the stage in the way I'd imagine my grandfather to act in the same situation ... as in very gawky, very uncoordinated.

But it was two magic words, which he yelped out every week when the time came for America to figure out the really important question of who to vote for. Hicks liked to yell, "Soul Patrol," which became a mantra of sorts. Even Saturday Night Live made fun of him for it (speaking of your joke-within-a-joke).

Perhaps you're still wondering why this has anything to do with anything. Without having to delve too deeply into the mind of your garden-variety 12-year-old girl, a lot of people (and not to be totally unfair to 'Tweens here) of all ages really, really get into Idol. This may look, for all intents and purposes, as a stupid amusement, but it generates the same sort of heat as other stupid amusements like baseball or NASCAR do -- yeah, people take Idol very seriously.

Throw in the voting aspect, and, yes, the way each contestant tries to market themselves to the country... Idol is not that far from what politics have become. So while we have an undeserving person as President, we can certainly learn much about what it takes to win the hearts of millions of Americans from Hicks.

Soul patrol, baby.

The Democrats don't have a fun little catchphrase. Ever since President Bush declared a War on Adjectives, they've been fighting a rear-guard action. Never mind that Bush is on pace to be the least popular president in history. The Dems haven't found their inner Taylor Hicks just yet.

Yeah, there have been plans. Several Dems (Russ Feingold, Chuck Schumer and occasionally Barbara Boxer) have been tigers on the national level. Even some of the rank-and-file have done their part, put out great ideas and interesting legislation on the table to try and unmuck the country. Even Hillary Clinton, who I will defend until I die but I don't like very much, says the right thing now and again.

But there's no blaze of desire for their rule because people don't give a crap about plans. Everyone knows Taylor Hicks was not the best singer this year on Idol. And everyone knew George W. Bush couldn't hold Al Gore's mental jockstrap. But these things don't matter anymore (if they ever really did). Reagan probably was out of his mind for most of his second term -- they still call him the Great Communicator. JFK did everything a progressive-minded individual shouldn't -- and he remains revered.

All they had were catchphrases. But the population at-large doesn't really mind a lack of substance. It's the lack of style that gets you joked about on Leno. The 10 percent who really, really get hot about politics... well, you're only going to get half of them anyway. And there's going to be a big subset of people who aren't going to vote, no matter what you offer them, because they're not fans of politics. (The argument that politics isn't the same as other amusements becuase it directly affects everyone is true and makes itself. But not everyone thinks of it like that.)

Right now, the best they've got is "We're not Bush." It's a good message, especially considering how sour the country's turned on him. But it doesn't hold up. Should he drag Osama bin Laden out of a hat in August, or turn back the clock on gas prices, it's not going to be a good message at all.

I don't know what the message ought to be. Progressive-minded people have a hard time boiling down everything we want to get in. We also generally dislike catchphrases because they presume to say everything, when they really say nothing at all. And they can be downright terrifying. I remember, "You're either with us or against us," which took me far too close to Oceania for my liking.

But until there's a simple -- stupidly simple -- message that can carry the torch, Idol voters will keep looking the other way. Like it or not, they're the future. Love them or hate them, they're also most of the now.

We just need to remember that "soul patrol" is already taken.

Give any modern-day church-lovin' fundie-worshipin' hardcore gun-totin' gay-hatin' conservative a chance to run their mouth these days, and a lot of muckity-muck about "moral values" and other such raw sewage will spill from the bloated bile sack located at the back of their throat.

This is all well and good. I, too, believe in having morals. Nothing wrong with that. Most people have morals, too. Sometimes warped, mutliated and spindled, yes, but morals none the less. What most of us have that they don't, however, are principles.

The recent (and, dare I say predictable) sunlight that hit the NSA's spying programs has caused a furor among people with principles. To be honest, this is less of a story than the wiretapping job, but whatever -- Bush is like a pinata with a rip in the middle and the entire country is lined up to grab the broomhandle and take a crack at breaking him open. This is another straw on the camel's back, in other words.

You'd think those big, smart uber-moral conservatives wouldn't condone what is -- for all intents and purposes outside of Planet Cheney -- illegal behavior. But where morality and principles meet, most of these people show us, time and again, that they're missing something.

It isn't the morality, that's for sure. The Magic 30 (the 30% of this country that believes deep down in the goodness of George W. Bush's heart) has morals to spare. Hoo boy. They'd love to talk your ears off about their morals.

No, what they lack is principle.

A fine-hair split? Not at all. Look at the phone number scam. Bush's version of events is that they were conducting this like a crime investigation -- where instead of a few suspects, there were millions. So, OK, morally speaking (to them, at least) so long as you think someone is guilty, it's all right to investigate them. The old "Innocent people have nothing to worry about" canard has been making the rounds.

Which, morally, is a wash. One might even go philosophical, and suggest that innocent people tend to think innocent thoughts of that nature. But the principle of the thing stinks to high heaven.

Firstly, if there are 10 million terror suspects in this country, we're screwed royally. If that's how well our War on Adjectives is going, we might as well settle in for a loss.

But more importantly, it's the point of America that our government isn't spying on its own. Bush long ago lost the Serious Libertarians, the nutty Randians, and the conspiracy theorists, but he's even pushing the selfish libertarians away now too. There's simply a lot of people who don't think the government's nose belongs in their business -- and on their phone lines.

That's a principle. And it's pretty alien to the Magic 30.

Yeah, they'll carry on about their morals. But principles are this never-ending zero sum game for them. They're for love -- love of (their) God, love of family, love of clean fun. Love is a good moral value. But do they understand the principle of love? No -- they hate gays. They hate Muslims. They hate atheists.

It's all a sad comedy, in many ways. They get the moral message, but totally miss the underlying point. Their pal Jesus was all about principles. Do you honestly think someone who can support a war ... even one they don't have to see, pay for or worry about ... would tend to the lepers?

Well, I've got lepers for you: How about the scores of wounded soldiers coming home from our escapades in Iraq and Afghanistan? Bush cuts funding; vets find it hard to get treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Morally, hey, we ought to do something. But the principled among us cry out for more: More funding. More doctors. More basic help for soldiers who come home different people from when they left for overseas.

That's principle for you, always there when you need it. Our leadship has proven they've got none. From "compassionate conservative" to "biggest debt in history and cuts vet benefits to pass another tax cut for the rich."

Morally, though, he's done OK. Still against gays. Still against non-Christians. Still against abortions.

So, when you hear the media bilge start up this year, talking about the "moral" voter and the "moral" politician, remember they're just words backed up by no principle that can't be mortgaged, auctioned to the highest bidder or just outright ignored.

Because "Moral" = against abortion (but pro-war) = discrimination = hatred.

Find me the principle in that equasion.

When a doctor says, "This may pinch a bit," what he or she is really saying is: "This will be extremely painful."

But not everyone knows this. So here's a handy guide to what your health-care provider is saying, and what he or she means.

"This shouldn't hurt at all" = "Prepare to wince"

"You'll feel a tiny prick" = "Have you ever broken a bone? This will be worse"

"This may hurt a bit" = "Prepare for a type of agonizing pain you've never felt before"

"I'm sorry this is painful" = "If you're lucky, you'll pass out from the pain before the procedure is over"

"This will just take a second" = "A pain that will linger for days"

And if a doctor tells you something is easy, just start running. You'll be better off.