A currently reclisted diary is premised on the following statement:
Some people here want Bernie out… (elipses mine)
I’m not going to address the content of the diary, because this is not about my candidate or your candidate or who said what or who offended who over this or that.
Here are a few facts:
“Some people” think that Bernie Sanders panders to the NRA.
“Some people” say Bernie Sanders panders to minorities but has no intention of representing them if he is elected.
“Some people” think Hillary Clinton should be tried for war crimes based on her responsibility for creating the war in Iraq.
“Some people” say Hillary Clinton should be prosecuted for email crimes.
“Some people” think Ted Cruz is going to drop out of the race because Anonymous.
“Some people” say Hillary is itching to start a war with whoever.
“Some people” think Bernie is a hypocrite because he has well-paid consultants.
I don’t care what “some people” think or what “some people” say. If I did I would read The National Inquirer and Time. I care what movements think, not a handful of commenters on a blog.
Since the beginning of DailyKos we have flogged the news media for using the “some people” crutch as a basis for straw man canards assailing progressives, liberals, and the democratic party. And as Kos and others have repeated pointed out, the media has effectively demonized liberals, and trivialized our positions, by using some people to represent the whole of liberals and progressivism. As liberals, naturally, we hate when the media uses this tactic because it is dishonest and irresponsible, and a departure from what we expect from responsible journalism.
Meanwhile a vast amount of the divisiveness and division that exists at DailyKos originates when diarists and commenters use the “some people” tactic to demonize their opposition and create the impression that such-and-such transgression represents the majority of the opposition here, as opposed to 10, 20, or perhaps 100 commenters out of a community of over a million.
What’s interesting is that I almost never hear democrats in real life use this tactic to represent their political opposition. I live and work in a very liberal college community and never hear Sanders supporters refer to Hillary as an “oligarch,” or Hillary supporters refer to Bernie as a “gun nut” or their supporters as enablers for oligarchs and gun nuts. The language outside our hub is vastly different from that within our isolated little echo chamber.
In real life, supporters of Sanders and Clinton get along just fine, mainly because they are not torn apart by the sanctimoniousness of arguments based on what “some people” say.
Ultimately when some people use “some people” as a rhetorical tactic in any context, some people — ones that respect and expect intellectual honesty — are going to quit reading.
Go forth now and enjoy a more meaningful and enlightening existence.