The Internet is beginning to take shape. By that I mean that there are enough relevant people, enough internal Internet institutions and sufficient structure for a national conversation to take place on the Internet.
While some information on the Internet is generated on YouTube and Facebook the bulk of it is still news portals and blogs. My estimate is that most people who are regular users of the Internet are reading upwards of 8 to 12 written news or commentary sites daily. With an average of 10. With connection between 10 people you rapidly get orders of magnitude of connection that are exponents of 10. So that would mean in less than six levels of connection you would have over 1 million Internet users passing around information.
This means that if eight people used ten overlapping sources you would have over 30 million people involved.
Eight overlapping people are certainly not needed since most interesting and thoughtful points of view have no more than a dozen significant points of difference. The conversation becomes broad and inclusive very quickly.
The Internet has become the primary source of information for nearly all people active in our society. More people read Politico than read any newspaper including the largest newspaper in America the Wall Street Journal.
Politico is a synthesis of a vast network of Internet writers who read each other daily. The same is true for many other news portals. The conservative community is reached through radio talk shows that each synthesize the Internet material that they read daily. Altogether tens of millions are involved In the American Internet discussion. So are many foreigners.
I bring this up because I have seen in the past six months dramatic changes in the American public views.
The first change in views was provoked by the President's interference in the Martin-Zimmerman trial. When the trial was over and the conversation died down, the bulk of Americans had come to the conclusion that: America now has a permanent Black underclass of illiterate, innumerate and predominantly criminal members. This is a permanent underclass that is not amenable to any change.
My personal estimate is that the size of this underclass is roughly 10,000,000.
The second national conversation which is not yet over, again began with the President’s behavior. He dithered on Syria and sarin gas. At this point the Internet conversation, underway, Americans have reached a point of agreement that the Arabs, Persians and Turks are living in some barbaric Middle Ages and they should be left to themselves to murder each other at will.
It is further understood that America's only Middle Eastern concern should be to defend and protect Israel.
Both of these Internet conversations are the first real national conversation that America has had since the post Civil War Reconstruction era.