I didn't think this day would ever come. I never thought that I would find a place that amongst all of the pontification and useless prognostication would shelter me for so long, only to reveal itself to be as bigoted and mean-spirited as FreeRepublic.
I decided to leave at 10:36 PM, November 6th.
It all began with Kos on The Ed Schultz Show. I came into the clip wanting to see Tom Tancredo - racist that he is - get a verbal beatdown. What I saw instead was Markos grinning like a jackass as he demeaned people who suffered from depression. He smiled wide as he showed a lack of understanding and decency I've never seen before, even if the person he was insulting was Tom Tancredo. What shocked me more than that was the way the clip was portrayed: "Tancredo leaves after Markos schools him on VA issues". Even though the clip shows that Tancredo left after Markos wouldn't apologize for a low-blow about Tancredo's bout with depression.
I may not have been around for the Vietnam War, but I can tell you with the utmost certainty that no teenager in the 70s would spend five years on anti-depressants (especially when anti-depressants were in such a nascent stage of pharmacological development) simply to dodge the Vietnam War. And to hear Kos say something as off-the-charts offensive as he did about the mentally ill in this country made my blood boil.
Because I've been there. I've had people dismiss my depression as something that I'm faking to game the system. People think I have some ulterior motive simply by being candid about the fact that I do suffer. I've had people minimize how I'm feeling by claiming that I just need to "think positively". I just never thought it'd be Kos of all people - someone who claims rationality and empathy as things to live by - that would portray on national TV everything that's wrong with the way America conceptualizes mental illness.
Kos, just because someone has a mental illness does not mean they're trying to game the system. Thanks for being that narrow-minded. It made my decision easy. It's simple enough to claim to be reality-based, but to me - as someone who suffers from depression on a day-to-day basis - what Kos did was wrong. And instead of sitting idly by while others cheered him on for bashing the mentally ill in this country, I decided to post how I felt in a diary. I asked Kos to apologize.
Instead of comments saying that they understood my opinion but politely disagreed, I was greeted with pure vitriol. I won't stay in a community where I feel like I'm going to be attacked rather than be a part of the discussion.
So, at long last, goodbye.