I have been told I hate dailykos. I have been told if people that if they don't like something, they don't go there. But I do like reading dailykos. I also like being honest. Part of that is being reality based, and please hold me to that, and the other part of that is being truthful about how you feel.
All the times I have criticized markos' decisions, or some dailykos policy, never has kos made a complaint, he has come and said he was interested in my opinion once, and replied on issues, but never complained. I am sure kos has a pretty thick skin. Kos and I do not have a problem understanding one another. I have bought Kos and his wife a beer, I would again.
Granted, sometimes you give criticism that someone just cannot take, if you are in the mood to speak your mind honestly. They just can't take it. They end the relationship. Marisacat has done this with me, and if you don't know who that is, I'm not talking to you I guess. When it comes to politics, I like to retain whatever common ground I do have with someone.
Loyalists and partisan fighters don't think that way, there is always some threshold for how much you disagree before fuck it, who cares you agree on XYZ they are the enemy.
I understand that in some things, like, who you barbecue with, but politically I'm interested in common ground, always always identify it. Loyalists constantly refuse to see any. It's not there anymore to them, even though the common position remains.
People that think I hate dailykos don't encounter me in all my diaries or all theirs, this is generally getting a cross section of my attitude from my community and meta positions. They only see that. One user only once ever noticed a MetaDkos I did for a series of fridays, good fun, and said I was all pots and pans... funny compared to the usual complain of all surreal and wtf. I was no Sterling Newberry, he said (hi!). Which I knew already.
In meta I conflict with a certain set of fine people here at dailykos and it is basically the framing of community. It is my belief that the problem stems from something that can be explained in terms of people that adopt a "community is a village" model of community.
That model includes:
- village elders (and respected elite)
- commonfolk
- village idiots (and whipping boys)
- enemies
- pariahs/outcasts
Among other things. This is evidenced when we invent rules like, "think twice about troll rating 'respected community members'" or they discuss getting "elders" together. I've been there, I have applied the village model, it can work, any model can work if people compensate for the flaws in the system forever and never rest.
The conflict is that I don't really prefer that model of community. Of course it has a few warm spots, even the Spartans had a few warm spots in their community model too, I'd bet, communities have that. I don't like the xenophobia of the village.
I like the metaphor of community as a body. You be the liver, or not, I'll be the liver. I'll be the symbiotic individual that's it. But really, we'll all be the brain in the body of the nation, but the point is we specialize and distribute when the model of the community is a body, and organic body.
Someone indeed may be the spine, and someone the purification system (I can't really be the liver folks, but I'll like, deliver you hemoglobin or whatever). When I advocate along the principles of community as the body, I'm told I hate the village.
PS: The late (virtually, not actually) DelawareDem (that first "a" is for you buddy) liked to claim to be my arch enemy, it wasn't so much about me but a rivalry for head asshole he used to have with this guy named Armando, but anyway, RIP DD, but what I really was going to say was that good old clone clone is actually my arch enemy. To you cloneclone I want to say this:
Cloneclone, come into my dairy and have a seat, here, have a cup of milk. We need to have a little chat.
I know you've been here a long time, since the start of scoop-time. I know you helped build dailykos from the ground up. I understand that you provided a stream of content which attracts readers, which attracts advertisers, who fund our use of the site for free. Because of people like you dailykos is a raging success, and not just ad sales, there is also Mike Stark and Bill In Portland Maine. You get an A+ for effort.
Now to the problem at hand. It seems that you have confused ownership with the total value, ownership with freedom from criticism. It sounds like the rapt amazement an ayn rand fan has while gazing at the wealth that businessmen "create" out of thin air, wondering why for some reason (the good in their heart perhaps) they share it with other people like their employees, or volunteers.
PS: Pyrrho's Pledge: "I value those parts of the community with which I disagree."
UPDATE: Ok, one more thing. This idea that I must hate dailykos follows the same model used to claim liberals "hate America"... why don't you just leave if you don't like it. People say we are a community but have that perspective about criticizing decisions, basically, against critical opinion, which is to say, all critical analysis. I think you should see the similarity, borrow a trick from relativists, and realize that "love it or leave it" is never a liberal principle, and no matter how difficult it seems to you, as liberals you have to live without it.
Not as humans, the final choice is up to you, but "love it or leave it" is not liberal, reality-based, thinking.