Yesterday I wrote a diary for people who came from O'Reilly Land to see what DailyKos.com is like. I requested that each of you register immediately so that you could come back today and have a serious chat about what you found here.
Here I am, right on time. This diary is mostly for us to talk back and forth, without rancor or rudeness, about what you've found, and what I know from a couple years here, including YearlyKos2006. Below the dots I'll tell you something of myself, and try to place my opinions and experiences in the larger DailyKos context. I'll warn you now: I am not any sort of caricature of brainless communist freesex anarchist with no connection to the real world.
I have no idea who you are or what you believe, except what you tell me. I don't know your sex, your age, your religion, your politics EVEN if I know you are from O'ReillyLand, and you may find it rather irritating that I actually listen to what you say, and presume nothing except what is directly implied rationally from what you state as your position.
If you don't understand what I say in response to what you said, consider reading again what you think you said. I speak English, not presumption.
For example, I will not presume that if you are against abortion on moral grounds, then you must believe in God. I will not presume that you are also against stem cell research unless you say so.
I won't presume you love or hate smart women, blacks, Israelis, the environment, capital, regulation, Ayn Rand, Karl Marx or Jesus, Buddha or Mohammed. I won't presume you know anything about Eric Hoffer, Leda Cosmides, Richard Dawkins, or whether Jesus ever existed. If I think you aren't familiar with these things, I will merely mention them, and presume you know how to use Google and Wikipedia, because here you are on the Internet, posting on DailyKos.com.
I'll presume you read the FAQ and what a FAQ is, and that you follow site rules when you are on a private site. Since we do have a way for our Trusted Users to make your posts hidden if they think they violate the rules of the site (read that FAQ) I will warn you, and THEM that I intend to function in my usual arrogant and condescending mode, since I'm not interested in sleeping with you, and prefer to keep the conversation productive of (pay attention!) Mutually Agreed Axioms.
That means I'm here to learn, but I have strong evidential standards for facts, so that, if, for instance, you say something about how economics or politics works, I'll insist on some corroboration of your view that we agree on. Not academic standards, not even a link needed, but before we can progress past each point of context, we need to agree. Agreed?
That's how you know I agree. I'll say so. More likely I'll ask another question, or make another statement restating what you said in my own words, and checking back with you for agreement, or another restatement close enough to where I'll accept it.
I'd be pleased to meet someone who does the Jesuitical One Degree Crooked Dance. That's where each statement you make is one degree out of line, and carefully place to keep leaning things one way or another. We pride ourselves here on detecting that crap, and if I don't catch it (I'm 67, degree in Molecular Physics, fifty years of being a picky person with lab experience. Fifty years also of motorcycle driving without a wreck, so I DO pay attention. I'm widely perceived here as a cocky asshole, not so widely perceived as someone who will admit he's wrong, and incorporate the new right idea into the worldview I hold...I've got 42 hidden comments which you can't see because you haven't got TU status yet, and they are all undeserved.) someone else will. We have some fearsome Jesuit types here, and many of them are women. (I have not yet seen a woman O'ReillyLander. Why is that?)
So let's begin. Kossacks, respect the rules. Don't troll rate unless the INTENT is obvious. These are new people from a weird place. Don't make fun of their intellectual accent. We're trying to prove we're not like O'ReillyLand. Maybe they will become good soldiers in the Democratic cause, just because they like coming here to think. I'll post updates as needed.
Ormond Otvos Richmond California