McCain vs. The Blogs

Back in April, my first entry in The 1966 Game was to equate Hubert Humphrey, the eventual 1968 Democratic nominee, to Republican Sen. John McCain.

Since it was my first entry, and I mainly wanted to lay out ground rules, I didn't spend as much time as I should have explaining my reasoning, and instead moved on to the question of Richard Nixon.

My point, back then, was that McCain is the "designated successor" to George W. Bush, the man charged with extending the Nixon-Reagan-Bush Thesis of Conflict even beyond its 40 year limit, and a man destined to fail.

I think the fact McCain has now offered a bill to kill blogs (in the name of protecting us from child predators of course) is just another proof. It came just a week after Newt Gingrich, supposedly a rival for Republican affections in 2008, called for an Internet Sedition Law (to protect us from terrorists, of course). (For those who wish to read the "legislation," here's a PDF version.)

This is what inevitably happens when a Thesis expires, and it always occurs after the Thesis is first rejected in a Congressional election. Its proponents decide to take it to extremes. In the 1960s we had hippies and Black Panthers, LSD and anti-war violence. Today we have fascism in all its forms -- religious, cultural, and now literal.

This bill is nonsense and McCain, who once made some sense on Internet issues, knows it. He carefully introduced it just before the 109th Congress adjourned. Assuming Sen. Tim Johnson recovers, it is unlikely to get any hearing whatsoever from the 110th Congress. It will be just another chip on the stack McCain has been building the last two years, a stack of fealty to the Bush Prerogative and the Extreme Right. (The picture, by the way, is from a Brazilian blog.)

What McCain hopes is this will grease his way to the 2008 nomination, that the Republican Party (and his position as unassailable in the corporate media) will win him election, and that he can then do what he wants.  It's cynicism, pure and simple, quite the opposite of the Happy Warrior image Humphrey offered. But this is the Nixon Thesis we're talking about -- the only possible extension to it at this point is Americanism.

But it's not going to work. As of this writing there are already 65 entries under "John-McCain war-on-blogs" at Google Blogsearch. Bloggers don't forget. The usually don't forgive, either.

Gloating would be premature, however. McCain will have supporters. Bush still has supporters (although most aren't talking to pollsters these days). Rabid ones. We had one move into a home down my street a few months ago. First he tried to put up a "hate fence" in the front yard, then he parked SUVs next to the "no parking" sign in front of the house, then he put a huge American flag on his front porch (doesn't take it down when it rains, and doesn't shine a light on it at night -- it's pure flag desecration.)

There are millions of such people around the U.S., and they are just as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than the Far Left groups of 40 years ago. Folks like that will love this John McCain. In other words it's still going to be a bumpy ride to freedom, boys and girls. Victory is not foreordained.

UPDATE: Another important point regarding my open source thesis is that, on issues regarding the Internet, left and right blogistan unite. So read this from Instapundit and this from RedState. These are conservative blogs, and their readers are angrier than they are.

Comments

[Jesse Kopelman]

In my Star Wars variation of your 1966 game, McCain is clearly Anakin. Bush is Jar Jar Binks (remember what happened when he became an acting Senator). The real question , though, is who is Palpatine/Darth Sidious?