Mr. Greenie is turning blue

After catching myself reading Kos and Atrios again, less than 24 hours after I swore off doing so, I've been forced to rethink a few of the things I ranted about earlier this week. The funny thing is, after all my ranting about the Republicans setting the agenda for the media, I read Kos' column in the Guardian. He touched upon the same topics, and I pretty much agree with everything he has to say.

What is the Rightwing Noise Machine? Conservatives in the United States have spent the last 30 years building a vast infrastructure designed to create ideas, distribute them, and sell them to the American public. It spans multiple think tanks and a well-oiled message machine that has a stranglehold on American discourse. From the Weekly Standard, Rush Limbaugh, Wall Street Journal, Drudge Report and Murdoch's Fox News, to (more recently) the mindless drones in the rightwing blogosphere, the right enjoys the ability to control entire news cycles, holding them hostage for entire elections.

So if I can agree with Kos that the agenda is being set by the right, and this is something that needs to be fought, then how come I'm criticizing him?

I thought about that, and the only answer I came up with is that I'm impatient, and this impatience has led to me being ungrateful of the efforts that people like Kos and Atrios have put into influencing the mainstream media's agenda, and I shouldn't insult people who deserve a thank you.

Why am I impatient? I imagine the underlying reasons for this are the same for why I joined the Green Party in 1999. Democrats are slow, and I want change to happen quickly. I want it now. I want fucking drive-thru change, damnit. And when you buy the Green mindset, you start believing that some people who are of like-mind politically are, instead, you political enemies because they aren't moving fast enough, they don't think progressively enough, and they compromise too much. So therefore, you're right and they're wrong. As you can imagine, somebody with this mindset and impatience is frustrated, and prone throwing hissy fits from time to time.

The thing is that I'm not wrong, but at the same time, I'm dead wrong. A-list bloggers like Kos and Atrios aren't counterproductive, they're just too slow for my impatient tastes. I took the very existence of their blogs forgranted before criticizing them; I didn't take into account that such strong pillars of an actual liberal media didn't exist in 2000, and the fact alone that they exist is a sign of progress. And yeah, many of these sites have become fundraising billboards for the Democratic party, and mouthpieces for the party itself. But when one only gets right wing spin from the mainstream media, I should be kissing some A-list blogger ass instead of criticizing them for not being progressive enough.

Do I still think A-list bloggers have been playing into the mainstream agenda set by the Republicans, which places us on the defensive? Yes, and when somebody falls into following that agenda, it should be noted. However, I went too far. I've always considered Democrats to be too slow for my tastes, that's what drove me into the Green Party. But I'm not a Green anymore, and I have to remember who I'm dealing with now.