Blogging for Democracy?

If more blog writing–good, bad and other–contributes to the further democratization of America, I am for that. I am not, though, for a debasement or deflation of literary values and aesthetic understanding. That would be a mistake–one that pits popularization as the most accurate synonym of democratizing, one where populism is the only valid expression of democracy. That would be in gross error. Populism and democracy cannot be the same thing, even if populism is managed by popularity. Whatever is popular is presumably the will of the people, the populus, but popularity has more to do today with publicity, that which is always a managing and organizing of the public and not the people. Publicity is a form of press release, that is, media release, and only what meets with the dogmas of media manipulation and control guide what publicity is disseminated and thus what popularity is managed by the media for the media and of the media. We are so hooked up to the media that we have no idea what is popular unless we first hear it or see it via media publicity. How not so unlike the Soviet Union we have become. Our press is not so different than the Soviet Pravda, not as we like to imagine. The one difference is that I can presumably still say this here–I could never in the Soviet Union. This blog has no allegiance to any media, especially the Christian-Muslim-Jewish-American-European-Israeli-Arab Zionist media. We are aligned with no program of state or corporation or ism. It is what it is whenever it is: The Falling Leaf Review.