Short premise:
Evaluate: "You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, DUMBASS!"
Helpful? Useful?
What are we doing here? What's the Point?
The Point seems to have become the aggressive promotion and defense of our own egos against others who are dehumanized by Internet masking. This Suxx and really should stop. If it's going to stop in time to re-coalesce for 2012, that time is probably now.
Most every day there's a diary and counterdiary on the Rec List from the two camps arguing about Obama. Sometimes I agree more with one; sometimes the other. Personally I can't identify with a position so strong on one side that the other isn't present, but that shouldn't keep me from allowing for the existence of such thinking in others.
Thus begins a call for Peace. I have no expectations of it working, but that's no reason to avoid speaking up. We should say what must be said.
What seems to be on the rise is a willingness for ostensibly progressive people--and by that I mean every sincere Kossack--to suspect the motives and values of other Kossacks when there is a disagreement, and, even worse, to lump people together for group judgment based on some similarities. That is called Prejudice, and it is not a progressive value. We are ourselves guilty of failing to draw distinctions about our Republican foes at times as well, and we should do better there, but in terms of the urgent need for community coherence, I want to focus on ourselves first.
Our Diversity is supposedly our Strength, but we ought to be aware that our ancient tribal origins disagree. In our tribal days, diversity often represented a threat, either in the form of a challenge to tribal culture from within, or in the form of a different tribe challenging for natural resource control. This attitude is much more prevalent among social conservatives, but we are human as they are, and we are not immune. We would all be more comfortable with a progressive community in which we were all on all the same pages, but this will never be so. What we CAN realistically hope for, and work for, and achieve, is one where we have our disagreements on strategy, tactics, the value of our elected representatives and other officials, but where we have come to accept common driving morals and values, and where we have joined together in the act of imagining the better world we all wish to co-create.
Even there, there will be problems. Some see a place for capitalism; some don't. Some will want a revolutionary upheaval; some will insist on incremental change. And this diversity of opinion will put us at a political disadvantage against a much more easily united conservative base, who only needs to be told by their puppetmasters which kind of NO to exclaim in the culture war and the elections contained therein.
We have a choice to make every time we engage with a fellow progressive with whom we disagree. We have our own egos who fear being wrong, who will lash out with the most unprogressive personal insults when threatened. That ego sense is massively enabled by the Internet, where we are real individuals confronting a number of others who don't have faces or bodies. It's so easy to act as if other Kossacks aren't people with their own feelings, thoughts, upbringings, strengths, weaknesses, life challenges, etc.
That's why the personal stories are such a strength of this site, and why we should make a great effort to read as many as time allows. When I was quite new to this site, I read a very personal tale of struggle and growth from BoiseBlue. I've never met her, and may never, but I can say I care about and even love her, because of how she revealed her real self. The real Self is always beautiful and lovable. That was my first tale of a full sense of another Kossack's humanity, but there have been plenty of others since, and there are many others of you I care deeply about without having met. And ideally, that's how we'd all view all of us, even the paid shills.
Back to that choice I mentioned: we can still debate, even argue. We can get mad at each other like we sometimes do with those in our 3D lives. But we should first and foremost give each other the benefit of the doubt when it comes to these real issues and their potential to divide our small (despite the 300,000+ UIDs) community. If we are progressive, liberal, Good, then we should first value care and respect for each other above any and all disagreements, even serious ones. And when we get mad--even justifiably--we should be ready to come back and forgive and forget, instead of harboring a mistrust of someone's motives. When we find ourselves feeling we are more alone; that an online community isn't realistic; that anyone who disagrees with us is more than differently thinking, they must be paid opposition; that only a small number of us are Right and the rest must be corrected... we have bigger problems.
You probably have an idea which diary is propelling this. It pissed me off last night, but I'm gonna take my own advice and give that diarist benefit of the doubt. Writing a really good diary is hard, and some concepts, extended metaphors, and frameworks have unintended hidden pitfalls. That diary's pitfall is the assumption of the persona of Karl Rove. This is like putting on the One Ring. It's got potential and power, but that power cannot be fully grasped and controlled. When it comes to ego problems, Rove is certainly up there, and I felt that was transmitted to the diarist through the concept of a Rove email. It manifested in an implication that all criticism of Obama was roughly equally designed to demotivate, when this is certainly not the case, and that all criticism is thus suspect in origin, aka from paid shills. Such an implication would perform the exact same function as Rove would desire: fragmentation in the more active portion of the base.
And! And and and: the reality of the shill situation shouldn't be ignored, but I really think that we need to love our shills. I do believe in loving our enemies; that we need to bring them not to their knees but to their senses, and that includes our shills. If you think someone is a shill, what does it really accomplish to call them on it without real evidence IDing them in 3D? I'm totally good with research accomplishing that task, but what is absolutely not OK is designating even one sincere and innocent Kossack a shill absent proof. Punish no innocent in the pursuit of Justice, aka First Do No Harm. We want no innocent person found guilty; we should want no Kossack judged unfairly. Let 'em shill! We can choose to respond lovingly instead, and that frees us from even worrying about who they really are. And of course, shills are mere employees of the real sources of danger. Just think about all those FOX News employees and interns: you think they ALL subscribe? How many are there just because it's all they had, and are privately counting the days until they are free?
I hope that at least a few people can re-humanize the electronic manifestations of other Kossacks. I hope we will try as best we can to meet each other in 3D for drinks, meals, laughs, stories, activism, and GOTV. I hope we can look each other in the eyes more often, so that when we get into it about Obama, we'll see that disagreements comes from a sincere place, and that's what's really important. It may seem unlikely that FireDogLake and The People's View might get together and shake hands, but it shouldn't be written off, either. Yes We Can shake free from the glorified egoism of our Internet personas and re-engage in the humanity of others who share the same struggles and the same existence. The political situation is a mere reflection of what's going on down here. If we fix ourselves first, we'll fix that.
Let's first be Kind to, and then be Useful for, each other.