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Blogs and the
battle for ideas:
personalities and
issues
Me = Us
You = Them
Personality =
Issue
Leaders =
Followers
Political Purposes
• Bully Pulpit
• Propaganda Bullhorn
• Democracy Wall
• Think Tank Sandbox
• Witness Stand
Bully Pulpit
To sum it up, the Revolution failed because it was
badly led; because its leader won his post by
reprehensible rather than meritorious acts; because
instead of supporting the men most useful to the
people, he made them useless out of jealousy.
Identifying the aggrandizement of the people with his
own, he judged the worth of men not by their ability,
character and patriotism but rather by their degree of
friendship and kinship with him...
—Apolinario Mabini, La Revolucion Filipina
Propaganda
Bullhorn
—Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! How horrible. How ugly! He
looks like a fur seal... Yes, yes, a fur seal with a
mustache!
Let us describe the fur seal... I mean, the friar...
He seemed meek; but after he had been ordained
and sang his first Mass, after five years in the
country, eating bananas and papayas and after his
appointment as parish priest... he has become so
smart that he is now very rich...
—Graciano Lopez Jaena
Fray Botod (Encarnación Alzona’s translation)
Democracy
Wall
Anybody can stand up on a street corner and call the
President of the Philippines an incompetent old
fogey, a power-mad oligarch, the assassin of
Philippine democracy, the defender and protector of
corrupt officials. People say it every day. They shout
it loud... in modes and styles of infinite variation.
Some are scholarly and discreet; others are coarse
and brutal; some descend to vulgar personalities;
others soar to constitutional heights. but they all have
the freedom to denounce and ridicule...
—Claro M. Recto
Think-Tank Sandbox
Everybody engages in business in our country
except ourselves. It is sufficient that the foreigners
praise to us imported merchandise and run down the
native products for us to hasten to change without
reflecting, that everything has its weak side and the
most sensible custom is ridiculous in the eyes of
those who do not follow it. If this practice is
continued, we shall be a people without character;
everything in us will be borrowed, even our very
defects.
—Jose Rizal
Witness Stand
I beg you to accept that there is no people on earth
who wouldn't prefer their own bad government to the
good government of an alien power.
—Mahatma Gandhi, 1933, after the massacre at
Amritsar
Political Roles
• Observer
• Explainer
• Proposer
• Exposer
• Attacker/Defender
My Rights
• I am the master of my standards.
• I am the arbiter of my content.
• I can be as opinionated and as biased as I wish.
• I can limit my reading.
Your Expectations
• You should explain your standards to me.
• Arbitration needn’t be arbitrarily handled.
• Your opinions and biases shouldn’t pretend to
be objective.
• You should link to what you praise or denounce.
Where You and I Meet
• Bandwidth is for everyone.
• All blogs are created equal.
• Not you, or I, but everyone else decides who to
read.
• No blog is an island.
• At the end of the battle, both sides must rebuild.
Perils of Groupthink
• Arriving at consensus “through suppressing
dissent, doubts, or searches for alternatives
once certain decisions grounded in overriding
attitudes have been made.” (Robert Pois and
Philip Langer, Command Failure in War:
Psychology and Leadership, p. 177-78)