¡Adios, Mundo Cruel!
Thu Oct 04, 2007 at 08:11:57 PM PDT
I discovered Daily Kos just a few weeks before the 2004 general election, and found it a sanity saver in the dark days following the election. But I had missed the contentious period during the primaries and before, when Kerry, Edwards and Dean supporters had duked it out in the diaries and comments. I saw references, from time to time, to that period, but I didn't experience it.
I'm beginning to get a sense of what I missed. And I'm not sure, if I had first found Daily Kos during that period, that I would have stayed.
I'm find myself avoiding more and more those diaries that appear, from their titles, to be touting one candidate or another. It's not that I am uninterested in why my fellow Kossacks support Obama, or Edwards, or Clinton, or Richardson, or Dodd. I am very interested. Even though, at this stage, I am a Clinton supporter, there are things she's done or said in the past that I don't entirely agree with. No candidate being perfect, I don't expect to agree with everything a candidate says or does, and Clinton possesses other qualities that I very much admire. That said, I am open to changing my mind. Most of the Democratic candidates have many qualities I admire (actually, all of them except for Gravel, who alternately amuses and terrifies me). All of them (except for Gravel, who alternately amuses and terrifies me) would have my enthusiastic support in a general election, because all of them (except Gravel) would be an exponentially better president than any of the Republican contenders. Jeez, even Gravel would be a somewhat better president than any of the Republican contenders. (You have to worry, though, that Gravel will just decide that if the deficit gets too big, he'll just put the government in bankruptcy and stiff our creditors.)
As a litigator, advocacy is my profession. I literally live to argue, and argue to live. I live to sift through huge piles of complicated facts and build a persuasive story. I live to read through piles of cases and explain why no one has read them correctly until now. I love a good fight, I really do. And I'm good at it.
But the increasingly ad hominem nature of the attacks on Daily Kos are exhausting me. "Why I Support Joe Blow for President" quickly devolves, if not in the diaries in the comments, into "why John Doe and Mary Roe and Bill Schmoe suck, and their supporters too!" If Bill Schmoe gets the nomination, I won't vote Democratic. John Doe is Bush Lite. Mary Roe is an empty [pant]suit. How can you write a diary supporting Joe Blow when he said X in 2002?
Now, hardly any of these attacks have been directed at me. I'm only an occasional diarist, and I often wrap my commentary in snark. But I see others attack, and be attacked. And I feel bad, but I don't want to engage. I'm too busy trying to wrap my mind around Today's Revelation of War Crimes and Other Impeachable Acts That Will Never Be the Basis of A Bill of Impeachment. I'm too busy trying to reassure my daughter that she will get into a great college, even though she's part of the single biggest pool of college applicants EVER, and a girl to boot (the odds favor boys, for reasons I won't bore you with). I'm too busy deciding whether I want to stay in private practice, as my early fifties slowly turn into my mid-fifties, and I come to grips with the fact that I am no longer young. I'm too busy worrying about my father, who is busy concealing (unsuccessfully) from his children that he's about to go on dialysis.
Most of all, I am too busy worrying about what will happen to this country in the next fifteen months before George W. Bush finally leaves office. I am too busy worrying about what will happen to this country, if his successor should not be a Democrat. ANY DEMOCRAT. EVEN MIKE FUCKING GRAVEL.
I have watched for nearly seven years as our president has systematically tried to destroy the Constitution, the most (as amended) brilliant, exquisite, remarkable functioning blueprint for government ever written. I've watched as lawyers, members of my own profession, have broken every vow of ethics and professional responsibility to enable Bush to crap on our greatest legacy to our children. I have watched our public officials lie to us in order to send other peoples' sons and daughters to die or be maimed for oil. I have watched cover-ups that make Nixon's stonewall and modified limited hangout look like childs' play.
And it keeps breaking my heart. I can't believe that this is where we are, in 2007. I can't believe that there is actually a possibility that my daughters will not live out their lives in a functioning democracy. I can't believe that they stand in danger of losing control over their own bodies, their own autonomy, their privacy, their right to challenge their government when it encroaches on their inalienable rights as American citizens.
I don't want to spend my time witnessing (or being a part of) circular firing squads. I don't want to constantly resist the temptation to react harshly to the harsh. I have too much hostility for George W. Bush and his Merry Band of Thieves, and I don't want to cheapen it by directing it at anyone but them. I want it to stay pure, and clean, and strong.
So I will be taking a break. I may lurk, but not log in. It's the only way I can avoid being drawn into the circle. When I am feeling better, I may poke my toe back in the water.
Thanks for listening. Hasta la proxima.
