In all the flame-out post mortems, including the ones in the recommended diaries area, I still have yet to see anyone point out the obvious: the flame-out yesterday had nothing to do with Ohio. Instead, it only had to do with flames. The great flameouts of the past were exactly the same. SYFPH had nothing to do with criticism of Kerry. The various Clark-Dean flame wars had nothing to do with Clark and Dean. The Nader flame wars had nothing to do with Nader. In every case, a flame war is only about flames, not about an actual subject matter.
Flame wars happen not because people disagree with each other, but because of flames. People on "both sides" have been pissed off because a small and, until yesterday, shrinking number of people, are highly insulting to those on the "other side." I have personally had many civil conversations on the subject with many other dkos posters. Disagreement isn't the problem--insults and flames from both sides are the problem.
Almost everyone on "both sides" of the Ohio "debate" holds the following positions:
- Vote irregularities occurred, including suppression of the minority vote.
- We must point out these flaws and work toward achieving election reform.
- Without election reform, our electoral chances are dimished.
- John Kerry is not going to be the next President of the United States.
Nearly everyone on both sides of the flame wars held these principles, but for one evening we chose to ignore them. That is extremely dangerous, and could destroy us all.
I suspect that there are more than a few people on dailykos who, like me, contain many of the following personality flaws:
- An inability to let go of a grudge. I'm still pissed at TocqueDeville for his Blogger Blackout diary. Heck, I'm even still a little pissed at RonK for a flame he sent my way back in the summer of 2003 during a Dean-Clark discussion. This is because, like a lot of people here, I am often immature.
- Frustration. We all work hard to help progressives and Democrats, and we want our work to succeed. Specifically, we wanted our work to succeed among the voters. However, when that did not happen, we came to desire the new projects we were working on, most of which have a seemingly far lower chance of success than did the election, to be recognized as important by other Democrats and progressives so that they have a better chance of succeeding. We grow to resent those who do not give us that recognition, and we grow frustrated at our lack of success.
- Depression. Depression is not really a personality flaw, but let's face it--we have been depressed for some time, and that is not going to make us the most agreeable people around.
- Projection. When everything seems to be going wrong, even the most introspective person will start to blame outside forces. Many of us, myself included, often find it easier to blame our current state of affairs on others rather than looking internally, or accepting that things just plain stink.
- Selfishness and elitism. The vast majority of posters here are very well-informed about contemporary politics and current events. We have spent a lot of time reading, analyzing and discussing the topics discussed here. Within our family or circle of friends, we might even be considered the resident expert on these topics. When we run into people here who disagree with us, it might be hard for us to imagine that we are running into other people who know just as much as we do. Thus, we might be prone to look down on them or consider their disagreement to be entirely a result of being uninformed. I find myself doing this often, and it is because, like a lot of people here, I can be an egomaniac when it comes to discussions of politics.
- Intolerance. A lot of us here, including myself, are really political neophytes who have little experience managing a large coalition. Further, many of us have an unfortunate habit of assuming that there are a lot more people who agree with our various positions than actually do. This leads to assumptions of identity that are nonsensical, such as "Ohio people" vs. "non-Ohio people," and a mini clash of civilizations among those who happily assume reductive identities. We do this because we are frequently unable to accept our radical and bewildering interdependence, and because such reductive identities are always reassuring to the people who assume them. All too often, we would rather look for differences rather than coalition building similarities. We like to think that we can assume a reductive identity, and that identity will become a coalition of one.
Among a large group, the repeated interaction of people with some or all of these personality traits is going to result in flames no matter how much they agree with each other. The important thing to remember is that the flame wars have nothing to do with the topics they are ostensibly about, but rather are simply about insults. As time goes on, these wars can either become worse, and result in the breaking of a coalition (and thus both sides losing), or they can slowly dissipate as similarities are found, and the coalition can become stronger (as it did during the Kerry campaign after the primaries).
Above all, no matter what we are discussing, it is important to remember that our coalition is Dailykos, and that dailykos is always more important than any topic we discuss here. Maintaining and strengthening that coalition is always the highest priority. If the flame wars were to cause the blog to dissolve then none of what we are working on, Ohio and non-Ohio projects alike, would all disappear into the ether. There would be no more recommended diaries, front-page stories, mutual research, activism or discussion on any topic. The blog is always more important than anything being discussed on the blog. Without the blog, our work dies.