Newsweek's upcoming issue:

Obviously an artifact of deep frustration by the left that they haven't been able to manage Obama's image to their liking, but I've been perplexed at their incredulity that this is happening to the Messiah--after all, Messianic messengers tend to end their careers on the run, in a prison or at the hands of executioners--sometimes all three.

What's become clear over the transition between the Bush and Obama administration is that while everyone would like to manipulate public opinion, everyone basically runs into the same problem. You can incite a mob to form, but you can't control it--and its collorary--one mob begets another.

60s anti-war protesters recreated their organizing techniques in the new millenia, using modern communication technologies to great effect, which in turn were the basis for the Tea Party's birth. In both cases, the elite's control of the traditional messaging apparatus was circumvented with the technological equivalent of a jungle telegraph.

Just as the ruling class thought they had co-opted new media with secret collaborations like journolist (among many others...), a true high-tech jungle telegraph emerged in the form of Facebook.

Something happened last week that turned the light-bulb on. An old friend I recently reconnected with on Facebook asked me a simple, but pregnant question: "Where do you get this stuff?"

She had unquestioningly accepted the mainstream media narrative for decades, only to discover an entire alternate universe of reporting and perspective in the minimalistic but regular postings on my Facebook page. What contributed to her awakening was the credibility of my sources (the page A-12 stuff the media prints but hopes you never read...) and the fact that it wasn't necessary to establish trust. Trust is implicit in the nature of our relationship.

Almost everyday, one of my Facebook friends reposts at least one of the articles that I've posted, suggesting an organic process of transmission that mathematically portends a reach far broader than anything the mainstream media could hope to accomplish directly. The great thing about this (depending on your point of view) is that I function as editor--deciding what pages page one, and what doesn't.

The bottom line is that there is virtually no way to hijack this particular jungle telegraph. You may wring your hands that nearly 20% of the public thinks the President is a Muslim, but there is literally nothing you can do about it because Obama has neither the trust or the access to effectively repudiate the claim.

The implications for future administrations are challenging to say the least.

Much is being written these days about the end of a distinction between public and private behavior. Google's CEO went so far as to suggest that a few years hence will see a strong trend towards legal name changes, as young people seek to escape their socially networked misspent youth for professional and political reasons. His larger message is important--technology has erased the traditional expectation of a public and private face. We will now only have one face and in all likelihood, the worse thing we've ever done will be the first thing people learn about us.

There is no reason to expect that this won't also be true for the political sphere as well and we are in fact seeing this in real time. The failure of the global warming hoax can be attributed to the impossibility of controlling information thoroughly enough to see such a monstrosity fully translated into national and international law. The incredibly aggressive effort to ram through Obamacare became a Pyrrhic victory, and a likely temporary Pyrrhic victory at its alleged benefits will be as illusory as the economic rebirth promised by the so-called stimulus.

Politicians may have to do something unprecedented--sell their propositions on the merits.