I posted this at Balloon Juice, too.
It's funny how time changes things ...
Dating back to around 2004, I regularly followed ~10 -15 blogs a day, a combination of left and right. Over the years, some would come and some would go as I tried to find a good fit. As you can imagine, all of the righty blogs were dumped pretty early on for obvious reasons. Eventually, the number dwindled down to what I considered to be the cream of the crop.
4 years ago, I followed DKos, Firedoglake and Americablog as if they were mandatory weekday reading. I was a junky who had to get a fix every hour from 8 am - 5 pm. I visited Balloon Juice occasionally to check out the "sensible other side".
2 years ago, Firedoglake's over the top PUMA traits finally pushed me over the edge. I still needed my constant DKos fix and even though Americablog was beginning to irritate me, I continued to drop in at least once a day. My traffic at Balloon Juice slowly increased to maybe once a week.
1 year ago, I bit the bullet and had to vacate Americablog. I still can't get over how they turned from pro-Obama to the gay version of the tea party as fast as they did. At the same time, DKos was starting to get on my last nerve and my traffic at Balloon Juice suddenly increased to daily visits.
Although I never thought this day would come, DKos is on the verge of a blacklist entry. If President Obama does anything that isn't considered to be progressive or progressive enough, there is guaranteed to be at least 1 main page post and 3 more recs or other comments bitching about it. Even inside positive or celebratory posts like those after DADT repeal, there is bound to be someone with a "...but he didn't..." comment and the haters come out in full force. It's overwhelming. As a result, I've been frantically searching the blogosphere for a suitable replacement to Dkos but I'm not having much luck. At the same time, my traffic at Balloon Juice has turned into multiple times per day so maybe that's as good as it gets.
These are the blogs I considered to be cream of the crop, for a long time. Now the cream has settled and I'm feeling left out. I knew from day one that Americablog's ultimate agenda was to focus on gay issues more than anything else. Likewise, I knew that Firedoglake had the tendency to go all out PUMA. In both cases, I'm not in the target audience but regardless, both sites used to put out plenty of good information that didn't aim for a target audience. I had no problem bypassing things that did not interest me in order to get to the things that did. Eventually, their target audience topics began to dominate and on top of that, they were MAD target audience topics. My presence no longer made sense.
Until recently, the filtering process was never really necessary at Dkos because I was interested in just about everything posted. That's why I'm having a such a hard time facing reality in this case. I always viewed Dkos as my one stop Democratic shop. The best of the best. It was our melting pot, all of us welcome, no matter how big or small our "d" was.
When the hate / anger towards the President began to boil over, I shrugged it off. I tried to convince myself that the comments were just being temporarily overrun by Republican trolls, PUMAs or maybe even some progressives who have a legitimate beef and need to vent. The air would clear out over time, I was certain. I don't think that's the case anymore. As much as I still love to read posts by Markos and a couple other Dkos contributors, ODS is the dominating tone. The good is being drowned out.
I've been a staunch Democrat since I hit voting age in '92. I am reliably left but definitely not a firebreather. In other words, I'm deep blue but I'm not the darkest shade of blue in the crayon box (California vs. Vermont, for example).
The level of hate towards the President, coming from progressives, has made me wonder if it's me who is changing or is it them. To answer my own question, I know I haven't moved to the center because my views today are the same as or even more liberal than they were back in the day. That only leaves one other option. The firebreathers have moved further to the left, representing our version of the tea party but different.
If they haven't moved, then they've gotten much louder since Obama became President, similar to the deafening volume of the tea party protesters, huh? No, our firebreathers are not acting like a bunch of yahoos because they think the President is from Kenya or because "they want their country back". But they are seeking perfection, in that they want the ultimate progressive President, no ifs ands or buts about it. They don't have that so they are livid and they want everyone to know.
It's one thing to be disappointed or mad at the choices the President has made. Hell, I haven't been too happy with some of his choices and/or actions either. But the display that some folks are putting on is on another level. Unlike anything I've ever seen within a political party.
Yes, the tea partiers took out some of their own but for the most part, their anger and hostility is directed at the President and not the GOP. Our firebreathers are basically ignoring the GOP and are focused on the President almost entirely. Has any other president in modern times ever been attacked as fiercely as Obama by his own party? As horrible as he was, Bush didn't even get this much hatred from the progressive blogs, let alone from other Republicans. At least not until Katrina, after he had already been in office messing things up for almost 5 years. Obama came out the gates getting hammered.
Reading political blogs has been my only real outlet / hobby for many years now. But lately this stuff is wearing me out. I guess that means now might be the time to turn the blogs off. I lost my interest in 24 hour cable news a long time ago. My viewership of the MSNBC evening line-up was identical to my daytime blog attendance so if I was able to fill that void, it shouldn't be that difficult to fill this one too, ie. like being more productive at work ... what a concept!
Hell, I'm 6 months pregnant, anyway ... all this extra stress is so not worth it. That's reason enough to step away from the monitor. I'm going to need some detox for a while though. Trying to go cold turkey is killing me. In addition to Balloon Juice, I guess I'll try to fill up at TPM, Political Wire or Crooks and Liars, but I don't think that's gonna cut it. I'm sure I'll find myself in rehab soon enough because unlike Firedoglake and Americablog, Dkos is irreplaceable.
Alright, for those who actually read this whole thing, let the flaming begin. Everybody else probably already started cussing me out after the first couple paragraphs.