Monday, August 13, 2007

Perrin and Silber

I have to ask myself, wtf is up with Dennis Perrin and Arthur Silber?

They're calling for people to be radicalized. They're pressuring, one way or another, fence-sitting cooperation-ists such as digby to realize that the Democratic party is on the other side and stop enabling them. That the problem with the war in Iraq is not that it was entered into or conducted incompetently, but that it's a deep moral crime.

Well, I've been writing about these themes for quite some time now. But do I get a link? A mention? Nope. I get kicked off of Silber's blogroll for daring to criticize a Black person. Now I'm just one very minor, Z-list amateur in the blogosphere. I have no illusion that I deserve any links, mention, or even one second of the attention of people far more skillful, knowledgable and eloquent than I could ever be.

But here I am, actually convinced by what these guys have to say, convinced they're substantially correct, and saying it. If I were trying to actually build some sort of consensus in the real world, I wouldn't ignore any of my supporters, however minor.

It's not really about me personally; if either Perrin or Silber referenced any of the other minor blogs that agree with them, I wouldn't feel left out. But they don't. They reference a handful of high-profile blogs (many of which I read), but we hoi polloi toil in obscurity, without even a word of acknowledgment or encouragement.

So, Dennis and Artur, I charge you this: Find the obscure blogs—the under 1000 hits per day blogs, the blogs languishing in the ten or hundred thousand Technorati ratings, the Flappy Birds and Lowly Insects—find these blogs who agree with you, throw them a link, and say, "Good on ya, mate! You've got the right idea." Skip my blog, though, I'm not doing this for self-promotion.

Arthur Silber's early encouragement helped me considerably, both in terms of generating traffic and, more importantly, psychologically and helping my morale. I'm sad that he's withdrawn his support, but that's his right. Like I said, I'm not doing this for myself, and I don't even care if they credit or mention me at all in any way.

If you're going to hold yourself out as a leader, then lead, damn you.

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