You of course know that famous Abraham Lincoln quote:
"You can fool all the people some of the time, and
some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all
the time."
To this we must add the George W. Bush corollary:
"If you fool half of the people once in a while that’s good enough."
Bush didn’t really give us that second quote. That’s just the lesson his Administration taught us. And it’s a lesson the Right has been systematically teaching for decades now. It’s the dark heart of the Nixon Thesis.
Reporters are actually easy to fool. If it’s a thick report with a cover page we’ll generally repeat what’s on the cover page. Easier still, if the boss says "do it this way" that’s how it’s done. Or they’ll find someone else.
The policy debates of this entire last generation were turned into kabuki dances this way. Corporate-funded think tanks replaced independent universities informing Congress. The whole game is so institutionalized now no one even remarks upon it. In fact one of the main goals of the Netroots is to get "our own" think tanks, which will say what we want to hear.
The result is everything becomes Astroturf, and no one really knows anything. The think tanks do as they’re told, the policy makers do as the think tanks tell them, and the people funding it all may just be acting on rank prejudice — or self-interest.
It’s the last which is most dangerous to the medium you’re now reading, because this process has been adopted by major corporations, and by no corporation so much as the new AT&T.
It is no coincidence that the "new" AT&T is based in San Antonio, rather than New York. It’s easier to avoid scrutiny there.
But, as Bruce Kushnick has written in exhaustive detail, no company in the history of the world has based its strategy so much on Bush’s Corollary as AT&T. Under Bush himself it’s been fairly straightforward. AT&T spies on the people, Bush gives AT&T a monopoly. There is no subtlety necessary.
But under the Clinton AntiThesis things were different. At the heart of the Third Way was the idea that Clinton officials were relatively disinterested, ready to be persuaded by evidence, and skeptical of ideological moorings. Thus Sam Simon created a welter of Astroturf groups on AT&T’s behalf — black groups, brown groups, female groups, handicapped groups, think tanks — all of which sang the same pro-AT&T tune, in harmony.
It worked. AT&T during the late 1990s (when it was called SBC, Ameritech, BellSouth, Bell Atlantic, etc.) was able to destroy the CLEC and independent ISP industries, undermining the facilities sharing which was at the heart of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. And as part of the Bush pro quo, this requirement was eliminated. Thus AT&T was able to pocket $200 billion in unmet promises, which it used to buy the other Bells and reap monopoly profits, as it does to this day.
With the Bush era ending AT&T is returning to the strategy it started with, Astroturf. Its goals now are different. Its monopoly over telephony and wireless is won. It is now trying to extend its control to the medium you’re now using.
In the AT&T vision, it’s AT&T which decides what Internet sites you go to, what content you access, and what protocols you use. It has the technical means to enforce all this, and the public policy excuses (terrorism, media theft, child porn) with which to defend it all.
But, as with Bush and terrorism, it must scare you to get what it wants. And that’s the thrust of its newest Astroturf effort. It wants to scare you into thinking the Internet is about to collapse unless "something" is done — and that "something" is what AT&T wants to do. Here’s the argument, in black and white.
Don’t believe the big boys? Maybe you’ll believe this, an "independent" study from a new think tank which says the exact same thing. When questioned, the author issues a careful "non-denial denial," claiming that the study in question was done independently, failing to acknowledge where the money which gave him the time to do this study actually came from.
All sorts of reporters, from the BBC to USA Today, The Washington Post and PC World, simply ran this nonsense without seriously questioning it, and without looking to alternative points of view.
In fact, as Techdirt notes, the Internet is not in danger of collapse. There are plenty of market incentives to expand capacity. This is a political argument, not a business or technical argument.
I have noted here, several times, how the 2008 election will bring with it a new Thesis, a new set of myths and values based on the Internet and how it has developed. AT&T is trying to shortstop this, by controlling the center of the Internet, by defining for itself how the Internet will act, and by preventing anyone from challenging its control.
That’s why the Internet has become a partisan issue. Not because I sought to make it one. Because AT&T chose to make it one.
