South by Southwest: Blogging as Catharsis

Digging up stuff -
This post was drafted on April 17 of this year. It has languished ever since. But it still has meaning for me, so here goes the actual publication, just as I wrote it that day. Today comes the catharsis:
The first thing I do after going online very early every morning is to read my e-mails from three different boxes. Nothing much there except an ever-increasing volume of spam with titles from which I avert my eyes and immediately dump.
My online sequence then leaves me at one of my homepages, a neat little aggregator named Newsgator.
The site has a list of headlines, which included this one with a link toThe Washington Post: "The Left, Online and Outraged." Well, that is me! Who could it be about, but me? It turns out that it is about thousands and thousands of us, epitomized by the subject of the profile, fellow blogger, Maryscott O'Connor, author of My Left Wing. Quoting from the 5-page story by David Finkel,

What's notable about this isn't only the level of anger but the direction from which it is coming. Not that long ago, it was the right that was angry and the left that was, at least comparatively, polite. But after years of being the targets of inflammatory rhetoric, not only from fringe groups but also from such mainstream conservative politicians as Newt Gingrich, the left has gone on the attack. And with Republicans in control of Washington, they have much more to be angry about.
"Powerlessness" is O'Connor's explanation. "This is born of powerlessness."
To what, effect, though? Do the hundreds of thousands of daily visitors to Daily Kos, who sign their comments with phrases such as "Anger is energy," accomplish anything other than talking among themselves? The founder of Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas, may have a wide enough reputation at this point to consult regularly with Democrats on Capitol Hill, but what about the heart and soul of Daily Kos, the other visitors, whose presence extends no further than what they read and write on the site?
How about the 125,000 or so daily visitors to Eschaton? Or the thousands who visit Rude Pundit, the Smirking Chimp or My Left Wing, which is O'Connor's Web site?
Put another way, can one person sitting alone in a living room, typing her fingertips numb on a keyboard, make a difference?
"Rage, rage against the Lying of the Right" is the subtitle of O'Connor's Web site.
"If I can't rant, I don't want to be part of your revolution" is how she signs her comments, in the place other people might write "Sincerely."
"I was not like this before," she says. "I was riddled with empathy for everyone suffering in the world. Classic bleeding-heart liberal."
. . . Then George W. Bush was elected. Then came 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, the Patriot Act, secret prisons, domestic eavesdropping, the revamping of the Supreme Court, and the thought "It has come
to the point where the worst people on Earth are running the Earth." And now, "I have become one of those people with all the bumper stickers on their car," she says. "I am this close to being one of those muttering people pushing a cart.
"I'm insane with rage and grief.
"But I also feel more connected than I ever have."
. . . And on Daily Kos and My Left Wing, the responses keep rolling in.
"Thank you, Maryscott."
"Thank you for the kick in the [expletive]."
"I wrote to my [expletive] so-called representatives."
"I also wrote to my [expletive] congressman to get off his [expletive] [expletive]
and do the right [expletive] thing."
"You know what?" O'Connor says. "I did a good thing today." And for a moment, anyway, she isn't angry at all.

To be truthful, my blog South by Southwest cannot hold a candle to My Left Wing. O'Connor writes with a great deal more vigor than I do, and she is a wonderful wordsmith. She seems to be able to perfectly match in words and tone the level of anger our here among us. And she understands why we are so angry. It is not only about who (Right Wing Republicans), but about what (they do). The behaviors of the administration are concrete and observable. We attribute motivation and character traits to what goes on, but it is what those leaders DO that is so upsetting. And for this she deservedly attracts a large number of comments.
The fascination with this story took me to O'Connor's own site, My Left Wing, where she has posted her response the the WaPo story, ending with these paragraphs (and over 100 comments at the time I am writing this). To quote,

Among the hundreds of emails I received yesterday (the good outnumbering the bad by a large ratio) was a short note from a 76 year old woman in Virginia. I could almost see her hands shaking as she typed her missive to a complete stranger she'd just read about in her morning paper. She explained that she had only ever used the computer her children got for her to send and receive emails. But she read the story about me in the Post and was almost overwhelmed with gratitude and relief. She lives alone. She doesn't talk much to her children anymore, and she watches a lot of television.
Over the past 5 years, she has turned into an angry, despairing woman whose sense of powerlessness over the state of the world has almost overtaken her sensibilities. She got on the computer and found my blog, the one she read about in the Washington Post; as she read the diaries and front page stories and comments, she was alternately amazed and overjoyed to have found a community of people who thought and felt as she did. Her email to me was not just to thank me and tell me her story; she wanted me to help her to register, as none of the instructions made much sense to her.
I responded to this woman, whom I cannot help imagining as a classic, archetypal Little Old Lady, because her emails sound so much like the archetype; I gave her detailed instructions about links and mouse clicking and scrolling. I registered her and told her how to change her password. She is now a member of My Left Wing, a liberal community comprised of people just like her: left wing, liberal, progressive, religious, irreligious, profane, politically aware, interpersonally connected, loving and supportive people who gather at the same website to discuss whatever they're thinking about at any given moment.
It is my privilege to be the titular head of such a community, though, as I said
to someone earlier today, it is much more like a commune, a collective, than any
other arrangement to which I can think to compare it. For whatever reason, I
seem to have attracted to the community of My Left Wing a wide assortment of
intelligent, compassionate, savvy, hilarious, generous and supportive people who
can write beautifully, succinctly, audaciously and exquisitely about an infinite
number of subjects. If being myself has brought me to this place, if my flawed,
infuriating, eccentric, pathetic and bathetic personality is in any measure
responsible for the existence of this community, then I have achieved far more
than I ever imagined possible.
One little old lady sitting at her kitchen table alone in Virginia stopped feeling so alone yesterday because of something I did; that is enough.