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Edited on Wed Sep-03-08 05:39 PM by Crisco
A little over four years ago, I wrote a GD: P post when Howard Dean dropped out of the race, laying out the principles discussed in a book called Finite and Infinite Games, by James Carse, and how one could have predicted his candidacy's demise based on those principles.
You can find it at the very beginning of my DU journal. I still had a bit of afterglow from my HoHo love, so will beg your forgiveness on that, but generally, still stand by the gist of what I wrote then which was that when you understood the differences between the games, you could see why Dean's campaign would fail.
The reason Barack Obama's campaign succeeded where Dean's failed is that Obama was (and so far, is) successfully playing both games; the infinite game for the internet where play isn't serious and anyone can hop on board, and the finite game for the greater public; he willingly engages in certain acts of scripted political theatre, thus demonstrating the seriousness of his campaign.
I wrote this in 2004 (quotes are from Carse):
“While finite games are externally defined, infinite games are internally defined. The time of an infinite game is not world time, but time created within the play itself. Since each play of an infinite game eliminates boundaries, it opens to players a new horizon of time.”
Every campaign needs a media from which to project its message. Traditional media is defined by its boundaries. Licenses are needed to broadcast on radio and TV, large amounts of money are necessary to buy advertising. Newspapers need to have enough advertisers to pay for printing its content, and enough content to fill the spaces where there is no advertising. Leaflets are confined to the spaces where they are left (and the cost and availability of resources).
The internet, however, is an infinite resource where there the only boundaries are the basic cost of bandwidth and the spatial allocation of an IP address. The rest is all horizon. The internet was a game board just waiting for (a campaign like Dean's that brought spontaneity to the table
We, the people who make the internet, are to a political campaign as spectators in the bleachers are to a football game.
The football teams are playing a finite game: they play by externally defined rules, with present boundaries, each player has a specific role. The purpose of play is to come to a conclusion, with a winner and a loser.
When we, the people in the bleachers, make noise and cheer on our team, we become the infinite game. Anyone can join in. We set and agree to our own rules of play. No one wins or loses. It is culture and it comes from the bottom up and, if we make enough of the right noise at the right times, our game spills over into the Finite arena and we help our team conclude and win.
What the Obama campaign needs from us - the liberal netroots - is to keep the game in play and keep it spilling over into the Finite.
Here's the trouble:
When someone who is a part of the finite game climbs into the bleachers and disguises himself as a regular spectator it sows confusion and hostility. While most of us are here to keep the game in play, he is here to direct our infinite game, and attempt to bring the game on the field to a conclusion that may or may not be the one we want. In all games, the players must agree to play, and must agree to the rules - even in Infinite games.
That's why things get so hostile during the primaries. A small number of people who use GD: P to campaign for the Finite game forces everyone else to take sides and dig in. When these Finite players drop in and try to control the bleachers, they play by rules we - in the regular course of our use of DU - never agreed to. Everytime a long-time, non-troll poster consciously flamed out this primary season, they did so because they refused to play by these newly-imposed rules they never had a chance to agree to.
There are four groups of people who hide in the bleachers and do this on DU and KoS and, probably, the lesser sites: party activists, plain old trolls (some call them "griefers" now), and Republicans.
Party activists: operate under the belief that everyone on DU agrees we are here as a tool for the party or, during primary season, their candidate. Thinks they can convert those who aren't.
I don't need to say much about trolls. They get their lulz. Whatever.
Self-promoters: people who use DU posts to drive clicks to their own sites. Not that big a deal, but sometimes intellectually dishonest.
And the Republicans? The netroots of the left scare Republicans shitless for the amounts of money we can raise for Democrats. There is nothing they'd like better than to see a wedge driven straight through.
John McCain knew that he was going to lose this election. The only way Republicans could possibly win this November is by fixing it. My first impression Friday morning on hearing the news about Palin was that he was throwing it. When I logged into DU and saw rumors being pushed alleging Palin's 2007/2008 pregnancy was a fake, I understood why. When I saw users who'd been here for four years or more with post counts of under 800 writing posts telling people to spread that story all over the news outlets, that confirmed my suspicion.
I've been told I'm giving Republicans too much credit for that strategy but here we are four days later and they're crying sexism - and why shouldn't they when little known posters are pushing Photoshopped .jpgs of Sarah Palin as a Bikini Woman With a Machine Gun, telling us to spread it everywhere.
Right now I'm breathing a sigh of relief; the Rasmussen poll out today shows Palin is tanking with women, so there's less motive on any Democratic party operative's part to play the games here that were played against Hillary Clinton last spring. Those attacks WILL backfire if they happen - Republicans know it. They're counting on it. Please don't help them. Some of us on DU haven't agreed to those particular rules, where attacking women on the basis of their gender is A-okay.
I'd hate to see more good people go. I'd hate to go, myself, but I'm already preparing the way, just in case.
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