After reading some of the posts over the past few days regarding the FISA bill and the huge outrage over Obama's "lack of leadership" on the issue, a thought occurred to me.
Do we have posters and diarists on here that are "sleeper cells", Republican plants lying in wait pretending to be on the liberal and progressive side of issues but merely a hair trigger away from creating hate and disconnect when the ideal issue comes along that could fracture the party?
Of course much of the outrage is legitimate and leadership in the Democratic Party has often been described as "herding cats" because of the open-minded trait of liberalism but it sure seemed like this one thing brought out names I was not accustomed to seeing in the replies.
Now I make it a point when I see a post from someone that is a bit suspicious in the way they approach an issue to go back into their posting history and see where they've stood on other issues. Up until the last few days I've always felt very smug in that approach to ensuring validity of message but I took a pause this time.
I put myself into the mind of the Karl Roves of the world and thought, "If I were directing a losing campaign and one of the reasons for it was this huge groundswell of support from internet blogs such as this one, where would be my primary focus?". I also considered how I would attack a site such as this one that is so well-designed, one that had checks and balances built in that did a very good job of spotting and isolating obvious trolls.
The answer I'm afraid is to insert trusted plants into the mix and to do that you'd need eloquent people that were willing to play the role of liberals and progressives for quite some time before they were unleashed to create chaos, a "Manchurian Candidate" blogger as such.
Today, I am very worried that some successful posters and diarists on DK that were so quick to condemn Barack Obama did so for less than ethical reasons and may have also created unnecessary fervor over other divisive issues.
Now the frustrating part. How do you take the next step and identify someone like this. If my theory is right, their trail is well-hidden especially if there's a degree of anonymity to their account. What more could we put into the user interface that could help us to cast doubt on someone that at key times in the campaign added unnecessary fuel to the fire especially if the issue was a legitimately contested one?
I'm afraid the answer is that no computer programming can stop this infiltration. The answer is clearly in educating readers that the possibility exists and maybe just a plea to everyone to take a few deep breaths before diving in and throwing recommends onto some impassioned post or diary before we've had time to truly digest things.
And above all, don't make any assumptions about anyone else on here (me included) just because they've been successful in the past. You can celebrate their writing style or eloquence but hero worship on any scale is simply wrong.
Obama is doing well in this campaign because he's not allowing unfettered emotion to cloud his vision. We shouldn't either.