We look at the changes in our government, the erosion of civil and political liberties, the dying of reasoned and reasonable discourse. We want to stop these things; we work to stop these things. In the end, doing so means bringing others to believe as we do. It means, to recycle an abused phrase, winning hearts and minds. And that task is a hard one -- it takes more than just knowing not to resort to violence. One frequent theme here, and elsewhere in the liberal blogosphere, is a lack of understanding for why "they" would support such onerous measures. We've been ill-equipped to understand, to empathize, to realize why the ideas we deride would appeal to anyone, anyone at all.
Until now.
Some people are probably going to be offended by the analogies here. First and foremost, I
know that recent events haven't caused the deaths of anyone. They haven't destroyed buildings, shattered cities, or caused wars. One blogger retiring from the cause is not a catastrophe of historic proportions, no matter his skill or influence. But understanding conservative talking points and how to work against them means, at least to some degree, working with their metaphors and comparions. So, with that in mind...
Armando was attacked, and the DKos community responded instantly. Not everyone here has supported him, not everyone has liked him. But most of the early comments were expressions of support. Then calls for vengeance. And, as it became evident that the sort of thing that happened to Armando could happen again -- and was still happening, thanks to some persistent trolls -- suggestions arose about how to stop it from reoccuring.
The community has, from the start, boggled at the willingness of Congress and the nation to back the Patriot Act after 9-11. After all, didn't Benjamin Franklin caution about those who would trade liberty for safety? But within hours of Armando's diary and the actions of one associated troll (and possibly a second), there was a recommended diary urging for more power to control debate and discussion to be given to TUs. The two-troll limit isn't enough to stop a real attack, it was said. Maybe there should even be a special kind of TU who could delete diaries that crossed the line.
We were attacked. And more than a few of us called for a response in kind. Attack back! Find the people responsible, dig up their past, out their identities. Do the same to the sites and blogs that support them. Those we can't identify, or who seem immune to the touch of that sort of publicity, we could hit in other ways. We could blogswarm. We could spamwar. We could, above all else, make them pay.
The attack on Armando's life and career isn't the same as 9-11. He's not dead; no one is. But it is similar in very important ways. It hit him, and by extension us, where we feel safe: in our homes and at our jobs, in the real life that we have thought comfortably insulated from all the bad things we type and blog about. And second, a substantial number of us responded in exactly the same way that the government and the nation responded to the attack on the towers.
Except for the scale involved, there's no difference between the Patriot Act or the NSA's hijinks and vaunted superusers who can silence diaries. Both of them, in ideal and on paper, keep their respective communities (the US, and DKos) safer, more secure. Both of them raise the spectres of abuse and temptation. And neither, really, reduces the threats they claim to stop.
And responding in kind? The only way that is different from Abu Ghraib, or the Iraq invasion in general is how badly people are hurt. Its true, pixels don't kill or torture or maim ... but if we didn't think that this sort of thing did hurt (and it does), it wouldn't have caused this outcry in the first place.
That's how easy it is. That's how quickly the tide can turn and how appealing ideas that we deride daily can seem when they appear to be on our side. And that's something we all should learn from.
In Part II, I'll explain ways we can turn this experience into a strength as we try to bring about real, meaningful changes to the world beyond the backlit computer screen.