November 09, 2002

Tuesday's Election was a Mandate for Warbloggers
As someone who has barely gotten up from my chair at this computer for the last 7 months because I was here blogging, I have to say this:
I think the blogosphere, and more specifically we "warbloggers" or bloggers on the Right definitely contributed to the GOP victory on Tuesday.
I don't know how much, maybe it wasn't very much.
Then again, maybe it was.
Almost all of us Conservo-bloggers perceived and even predicted the Dimocrat loss on Tuesday and we knew precisely why it was coming.
As it turns out, we were expressing the thoughts, ideas and perceptions of many of our fellow non-blogging Americans.
Then the people spoke on Tuesday and there was a sea change in the national consciousness.
Like the political and cultural incrementalism so dear to the Dims, we Rightist bloggers may have won "hearts and minds" with thousands, even millions of posts that have gone up day after day for months, and in some cases years, with our comments, analyses, and informed thoughts about bills pending in Congress, terrorist attacks, legal decisions and the facts about the landscape of the vast theatre of geopolitics in which current events take place.
I, like most warbloggers, turned to writing a blog after 9/11 because television and print media presented "news and views" in such a way, with their Liberal agenda and their application of of Moral Equivalence to Islamist terrorism, that it amounted to sheer propaganda and worse, mendacities.
We decided that there had to be a way for the Truth to get out and while we know that you certainly can't believe everything you read on the Internet, much of what was being said on blogs began to have the ring of Truth and singularly bloggers have been able to put things together in such a way that this post 9-11 world of daily mayhem and insanity started to make real, undeniable SENSE.
Most of us use tracking mechanisms and it seems from even an aggregate of our "hits" that we are only reaching a small part of the American populace, even though some of the "Big Boys" are getting hundreds of thousands and even millions of hits.
Yet ideas, especially true, sane and sensical ideas have a unique and wonderful way of getting a life of their own and spreading like wildfire (The old "They told 2 friends and they told 2 friends and so on and so on...").
The Zeitgeist is tapped, chronicled, and spread abroad.
TV and print media went into an almost complete DISCONNECT after 9/11 [which, of course, they were guilty of doing years before 9/11, but it became egregious after 9/11's clarity.]
However, the world--America's world, certainly--really did change on 9/11.
No longer could we afford to hold the decadent political views of an isolated nation and culture in a world where many of us assumed that there was no more war and enough money to redistribute our vast wealth to any and all, thinking it would solve the world's problems.
9/11 was a rude awakening to the reality that America as the world's only hyperpower and democratic, capitalistic republic must lead the world, could lead it and now is leading it, especially the more backward, tyrannical states where our institutions and values are so desperately needed, which not coincidentally were those same countries in the Middle East that were the homes of the 9/11 hijackers.
9/11 and its aftermath reawakened us to the fact that America had gotten away from its roots and from everything about our country that had made it worth fighting for in the past and that made it worth fighting and dying for now.
This was no small awakening. At least not for myself.
Since I'm too old and basically the wrong sex (although we do have many fine lady soldiers) to go into battle for my country, I chose blogging.
Laugh if you must, but it's my contribution to the War Effort.
In the dark days of WWII, our parents had the radio and the "wireless."
Today, we have blogs and the Web, but blogs and the 'Net are better, because we can have a conversation and an exchange freely and openly (even though some Leftists accuse John Ashcroft of putting Stalinist-like FBI filters on the computers in public libraries--Good work!) with its ease of use, accessability and 24/7 availability: Desktop publishing really exists!
In this respect, the blogosphere is the 21st Century equivalent of the Village Tavern, the Pamphlet and the Town Crier so cherished by our Founding Fathers and patriot ancestors in the days when the American Revolution was being born and waged.
Our motto should be "Come, let us reason together." as it was for them.
And often, we also rage together and othertimes, we laugh together because the Truth has literally made us Free and our normal reactions run the whole gamut.
Right now, the traditional Media outlets, for the most part, are trying to give American voters a verbal tongue-lashing for the outcome of Tuesday's election.
They feel, in their Leftist embrace of Liberalist values, that too many of us chose the "wrong" candidates (of the GOP) and they're berating the public to not make that "mistake" again in 2004...already.
They are still in Disconnnect and Propaganda mode.
Meanwhile, our GOP President, with his party having control of both houses of the Legislative branch, just got a UNANIMOUS vote from the U.N. Security Council [When was the last time that happened in UN history?] on a resolution to disarm Saddam Hussein, with the implied use of military force should he not comply.
This came 3 days after that "wrong" election here, although 4 years have passed since the last UN attempt to deal with the WMD amassed by Saddam Hussein.
This same "wrong-headed" President has also taken a hard line against Arafat's PLO régime of terror and a strong stance for the sovereignity of the state of Israel and even though the Intifida hasn't yet ended there, Arafat's power has dwindled considerably and the "Palestinian" effort has been exposed to even its own supporters as a miserable, murdering failure.
What's changed? Hearts and minds.
And once the Truth of a situation is confronted, things must change.
They cannot remain the same.
Saddam Hussein hadn't changed his ways in his entire reign of terror and certainly not in the last 11 years and in the face of military defeat and 16 UN resolutions.
Now, the Saddam problem is front and center in the global arena and America and her friends and allies are mobilizing to put an end to him forcefully once and for all.
This is a good thing.
The PLO and Arafat are becoming more impotent and the "peace process" has been revealed for the travesty it was;
the blogosphere has been instrumental in getting the message out that Jihadi Muslims mean nothing less than the extinction of Jews and the nation of Israel, no matter how much lip service they pay to "peace."
This has also exposed the true fallacy and the "root cause" of the "cycle of violence" that has existed ever since Israel's founding in 1948.
The "Enemy" has been revealed--again, largely only in the blogosphere, although I have to give CNN's Lou Dobbs credit for stating on the air that it was Islamists--to be IslamoFascism.
Concurrently, terror attacks by Islamists have occurred all over the world in the past year since 9/11: in Moscow, in Bali, in Indonesia, in Pakistan, in South America, certainly in America, in Kashmir.
When Islamists aren't staging bomb blasts and hijackings, their less dramatic, more pedestrian face of Anti-Semitism has been seen in almost too many places to count as incidents of murder, vandalism, and assault both verbal and physical against Jews.
News of these realities, however horrifying, has gotten out largely due to the blogosphere, with the help of a few "legitimate" "dead tree" columnists, Fox News on TV [sometimes, not all the time!] and Conservative radio talk shows like Rush Limbaugh's.
Of course, there is also the resource of books, but with the rapid and simultaneous pace of current events, books and print media, even TV cannot give the immediacy of the blogosphere.
This "necessity of the moment" is key: nothing about the 9/11 attacks could wait for editors, printing presses, and release dates.
I saw this proven in a big way with the Moscow theatre siege by Chechen Islamist terrorists: my site got lots of hits--even from Russia itself--because even though I was blogging events in Moscow as they happened, ALL American TV cable news was enmired in the arrests of the Beltway sniper suspects...for the entire 3 days of the seige.
Not only were the networks focused on this domestic "story," running the same film of police standing outside a roadside McDonald's over and over, but it became clear that several of the networks had no correspondent on the scene in Moscow, even though it is one of the world's major capitals.
This lack of coverage was also evident in the TV reporting of the Bali blast on October 12: even though 200 Australians and citizens from many other countries including a couple of Americans were killed or badly injured, the cable news networks didn't deem it to be "newsworthy" because Americans weren't really "involved"...(and is was "too far away" to effect us, they thought).
Worse still, in their worst, continuing and most persistent Disconnect of all, there was little of no mention of the murders of innocents, either those in Moscow or in Bali, as being the product of radical Islamist terrorism.
Only reluctantly and with "proof" will the TV pundits note an Al Queda or Jihadi IslamoFascist link.
It is early days in the blogosphere.
The War's not going to be over anytime soon and even though the GOP triumphed on Tuesday, it was often by small margins, signalling that our work as "pro-war" or pro-Defense, Conservative bloggers isn't over by a long shot.
But as so many of us have noted in the months just past, this is as much a War of Hearts and Minds as it is of guns, bombs and radical Islam.
It is a War of Ideas, as all wars are, but with the 21st Century twist of being a war of "Memes" now, too.
Maybe we're wasting our time here blogging...and maybe, just maybe, we're not.
The world changed this week.
America's national consciousness changed this week.
And it was for the better. It was positive.
It was towards Peace and away from Strife, even amidst War overseas and at home.
Maybe, just maybe, we "warbloggers" are getting our message out and through.
I think so.
I like to think so when my head hurts and my back hurts and I haven't slept.
We're all in this together, my friends.
The Front is here on your screen. Battle has been joined on many fronts.
Never forget that we will win--on the battlefield and here in the blogosphere, because as Rudy Guiliani succintly said, "We're right and the Islamist terrorists [and their apologists, which are legion] are wrong."
Until I see proof to the contrary, I am going to keep warblogging for Truth, Liberty, Justice and the American Way.
Those killers and their enablers will have to take my keyboard from my cold, dead hand.
Thank you for reading, commenting and blogging--this is a synergistic thing and your thoughtful comments, good wishes, email communications and prayers keep me and the rest of us, as well as yourself!, moving "onward and upward."
God Bless America and all those who love, fight and write for the American Spirit!
The results of Tuesday's election were a mandate for warbloggers, too, as well as the President Bush and the GOP.