I am really tryting to understand where DiHinMI is coming from,
I really am.
Since I can remember, His posts have always annoyed the shit out of me because whenever I would be readig an OHIO diary that discussed
the possiblity of fraud in the 2004 election, there he would be, chastising those who posted and ridiculing the catalysts of
the discussion, from Bev Harris to Cliff Arnbeck. When it came to Bev Harris, the only word that could be described for his treatment
of her was mockery.
Read on if you don't mind yet one more meta diary
Sure, she has said some wacky things, but she is still out there gathering information, doing the "reality based" work by filing FOI requests and examining the records.
I don't know how this makes her such an evil person, but he's got a right to his opinion, it's just the amount of venom he uses against her and others that I find to be so troubling.
No one is forcing him to listen to her, so why does he care so much?
I know weeding through all that bullshit can't be easy, or even interesting.
Maybe she's made a few bucks for her troubles
but is that so wrong. Even if she were to be completely wrong about everything, I still say she does us more good than harm because she is out there getting people involved. I don't think she has the power to turn people away from the Democratic party, but I do belive she has the ability to dish out some red-meat, inflame some of the base and perhaps attract a few converts on the way, so i say God Bless her. We only hurt ourselves by tearing someone like her down in my opinion.
Since that time, I've come to know DiHinMI as the king of the META diary, the self proffessed arbiter of what should and should not be considered worthy material on Daily Kos.*
To be fair, he does possess a wider range than just writing about
Daily Kos, and I truly do believe he cares about this site.
I guess I just find him to be completely unlikeable.
That is my personal
opinion. It is not based on a five week study by a group of scientists, but it is my gut feeling towrds him/her.
There is just something about much of DiHinMIs' writing that has a holier than thou attitude to it.
I've come out and told him this myself from time to time and he usually comes back with, "Stop being such a martyr", or "Show me proof that the election was rigged, or else you do not belong to the "reality based" community." To this, I once replied, that the burden of proof is not on me, it is with the voting system. That position, DiHinMI replied in a diary was,"stupid.
Yesterday, I wrote a post kind of calling him out and was not really prepared as his defenders came after me dilligently and in the end I kind of backed down because for one, I kind of understand where he's coming from, and two, they all just wore me down. It's exausting to do this stuff sometimes, and sometimes your best comebacks don't come until a day later ( Don't you hate when that happens?)
But today, after reading some more of DiHinMi's works, some directly involving things I've said to him/her, that In fact, it is still my belief that You, nor I, or any average citezen
should not be burdened with proving that elections are not rigged.
I just have to insist that this responsibility lies with the voting system itself. This is speaking for me, myself personally and it has nothing to do with Dkos standard procedures of discourse. I will heartily fight for my right to feel this way.
I mean I think I know where DiHinMI is coming from, if you are coming at this thing from the perspective of using this site as a means of critical analysys only, but I have always believed this site is much more than that.
From my perspective, this site is also a place for the disenfranchised and the discontented to organize and to vent. A place for ordinary people
to raise a big stink about injustice.
The truth is, not all of us have the free time available to us to solve, all by ourselves national conspiracies against the citizenry of the USA. We are just the janitors, the salesmen, the file clerks of the world, and sites like this give us a voice.
Many of us just often feel in our gut that something is not right with
something and we come here to vent, or to organize an LTE campaign or whatnot. It has been argued to me that this approach is invalid. I completely and utterly disagree.
It is and will always be my contention that the government better damn well prove to the people that it's operating on the level. Otherwise, people like me, irrational, reactionary, mistrustful people who are suspicious of the government from the start are going to raise holy hell and they are simply going to have to deal with us, either with teargas or by changing their ways and providing us with some transparency in government.
So my point, if I have one is that I respect DiHinMI and the "reality based"
faction that he belongs to and I support that effort wholeheartedly.
It's when he crosses from that boundary into my realm, the realm of citizens who don't necessarily need absolute, total proof of wrongdoing in order to be outraged. We serve a purpose too, even if you don't understand it, or if it's not your thing. You will never make us go awya by browbeating us, so why don't you just try and find a way to co-exist with us.
Perhaps we should be called the
Anger-Based community, or the Accountability Demanding Community
Maybe if we seperate ourselves from you, then we will stop annoying you so much.
This is our creed:
We want one thing from the government and
that is transparency. If we don't get it, we are going to suspect the worst.
If Cheney holds a closed door energy meeting, I am going to
assume they are hiding something and I am going to assume the worst
possible intention. If Dick Cheney wants me to stop assuming the worst,
then he can easily stop me by proving his intentions with documentation.
I simply do not have the time or the resources to file FOI requests, or whatever it is you "reality based" people do to get to the botoom of
things. I can and do however send a letter to the editor of my newspaper
or congress people demanding accountability. I really don't think
I deserve any less.
So in short, I guess my message to DiHinMi would be that there is more than one
way to skin a cat. He can do things his way and I can do them my way.I just don't understand why he does not
believe that there is room here for everyone. This is after all a free marketplace of ideas.
*Since everytime I have called DiHinMI out on something he has demanded
specific instances where he said what I am accusing him of, I hertofore offfer
the following posts, or diaries that have been written by DiHinMI in
the recent past. The point of this article has been to advance the
thought that perhaps DiHinMI considers himself to be too much of an authority figure around here. To head some things off at the pass, I will say that I do not feel that I am a martyr
( as he likes to accuse people of who disagree with him of being), I do not feel censored by him, I just feel he oversteps his bounds regarding his preaching about what should and should not be written about here.
The following posts by DiHinMI are inculuded as evidence of that fact.
I know he will like that. It's reality based.
In the reality based world,
we don't throw out theories and tell other people
to do the work of presenting evidence and argument,
we do it ourselves, preferably show our work, and
give people a means to refute our reasoning or question our evidence.
Telling people that the burden of proof is on other people
IS stupid.
Whether the people who make such assertions are or
chose[sic] to be stupid is a separate matter.
But claims like that are certainly stupid,
and have no place on a progressive blog.
Is Daily Kos Getting Stupid?
To which I propose the following-
-NO MORE COMMENTS ABOUT THE BASIS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH.
But now, we've got Barbara Boxer stopping by,
and Russ Feingold, and Jim McDermott; hell,
tomorrow it could be Barack Obama, or maybe Carl Levin.
Maybe that Maryland Madman Paul Sarbanes, or Daniel Akaka
could regale us all with stories of those wild nights in Maui.
But it makes me wonder, is Daily Kos becoming too hip?
From: Should Daily Kos Start Checking People at the Door?