Social Networking for Conservatives 101

As mentioned earlier, the position of this web site is that fiscal conservatives should support each other's efforts as liberally as the Old Left used to do. The lefty loyalty of the twentieth century was a beautiful thing and the only way the Old Left was ever able to represent itself as a majority in the news media.

During the weeks since then I've been delighted that some other "conservative" sites have been reaching out to this one. Ipatriot.com seems more radical right-wing, and Heritageaction.com seems more Old Right, than I ever was or will be. Not a problem. Although this site has only one actual editor, it is supposed to have other active consultants, of whom: Adayahi is more radical; Grandma Bonnie Peters and Yona are, and Oogesti was, more Old Right; and Lisiwayu and Gena Greene are more liberal, than I am. And of course our correspondents in the offices of our elected officials are party-line Republicans or Democrats.

However...I am seeing some additional problems, other than unwillingness. Ipatriot is a new, fresh, young site, apparently written by and certainly managed by young men who don't realize that their site needs to work with and for devices that may be much older and/or lower-memory than this 2010 laptop. Heritage Action is a well established conventional organization, with an office, official policies, and all that twentieth century sort of thing; apparently the nice ladies there don't realize that people who aren't being paid to fit into an official policy don't, can't, and never will fit into it.

Heritage Action, Eagle Forum, and Concerned Women are nice groups. I've supported some, not all, of their Old Right campaigns for many years. I perceive them, perhaps stereotyping them unfairly, as organizations of and for women who are both older and more bourgeois-mannered (more like the women Deborah Tannen seems to consider typical of womankind) than I am; organizations into which GBP might conceivably be able to fit, but...That doesn't mean I have nothing to learn from them, or may not, at times, have causes in common with them. (I learned from and have occasionally even agreed with the Black Panthers, too.) So I even signed up to receive the benefits of free online coaching from any of these nice ladies who can spare the time to offer it.



Then I received an e-mail that made me wonder whether the coaching could ever possibly happen. They reached out, and I reached back, but we're not within handshaking range yet.

Here's my reply. I'm sharing it anonymously, not to complain about the organization, but to help fiscal conservatives connect with one another. Twentieth century Republicans are going to meet other free-lance conservatives and/or libertarians out there, and if they're using "no reply" e-mail, they're going to lose us.

"
Thanks for the e-mail below; it's pointing up some of the problems that have kept me out of touch with your organization:

1. As noted in the form I sent you, there is no phone line on which I'm available for conversation. If you insist on live conversation, you'll have to pay for it in advance. E-mail is better.

2. I used to read e-mails from "no reply" addresses, but filing them as spam was my New Year's resolution. If you don't read my e-mail, why should I read yours?

3. I'm seriously beginning to think that I'm the only person in cyberspace who is actually listening to anything anyone else has to say, as distinct from screaming for everyone else to listen to me, me, me, all the time. My online time is limited; I'm trying to minimize the amount of it that's taken up by the blatant non-listeners.

If your organization wants to treat people like employees, it needs to pay them salaries. If it wants to network with e-friends, you need to read what those e-friends say as attentively as you want them to read what you say.
"

(Am I really the only person in cyberspace who reads other people's blogs, tweets, and newsletters as attentively as I want them to read mine? I don't know. On sites that pay per interaction, several people did that well. On sites that don't...I really have no idea.

And another thought...There are Old Left types who've toned down their socialist fervor as they've watched socialist systems fail and confirmed that the U.S. federal budget is indeed on the verge of going Broke. As regular readers know, I was led into the blogosphere by some of them. Could other fiscal conservatives benefit from their examples?)