Ok, here's my notice to you. If you believe that post-election you can start in on here making unfounded and speculative attacks on our President's character and be protected by your long DKos history or low subscriber number, you're sadly mistaken. You will not go away into your safe little world of bloggery unscarred and unchallenged. More below.
There are valid ways to debate policy within a site devoted to the furthering of Democratic and progressive values and candidates, and making UNBALANCED attacks against the leader of our party is nothing but divisional, hurts our goals, empowers the right, and invites suspicions of true motives.
Let's make one thing absolutely clear from the outset of this rant. It is my 100% belief that outrage on this site against the President over policies and insinuations about his malicious intent will not cause him or his staff to change one thing in the way he conducts business anymore than posts on Redstate or the comments of any media pundit do. Your post or diary though may have the effect of turning away supporters, bringing on doom and gloom feelings among members, suppressing voters, and advancing an incorrect and certainly incomplete big picture.
I don't care if you voted for him in 2008 or 2012. I don't care if you have put in countless hours making political phone calls in a previous life or marched with MLK in your youth. I don't give a flying fuck if you personally were nanny to JFK Jr. If you're spouting speculative bullshit about Obama's sinister intentions with all we've seen, showing him to be a man of exemplary character and leadership, if you include no balance of all the incredible progressive actions he's made during his embattled first term, then you're going to be confronted every time you type a sentence on here.
Whatever condemnations of intent and character assassination you subtly toss out in your text will be thrown right back at you and I'll ensure that the spotlight of the entire site is aimed at you. I could care less how it reflects back on me. I welcome the look by Kos and site administrators. The future of our nation is a lot more important to me than whether some purist on here stands behind his freedom of speech advocating anarchy over the common sense of working within our very fragile political framework.
I've about had it seeing the concern diaries about the use of drones, Obama's supposed attack on Social Security and Medicare, his war on drugs, his lack of spine, his sellouts to Wall Street, his compromising before negotiations start, his attack on whistle-blowers, his complicity in not prosecuting the war crimes of the past administration. Not only do those diaries show up but this same handful of people flock to them in mass to rec them up, spout cloned and derisive comments and keep them atop our diary lists. I see the sane people in here go in and try to talk reason but they're attacked by this group as if they were posting on Redstate or Fox News.
Of course this bunch is being propelled and inspired by sites like Firedoglake, fiery and anarchist commentators like Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, often people like Amy Goodman and Ed Schulz who delight in their own self-importance and skill at armchair quarterbacking. I adore the financial philosophy of Paul Krugman. He's exactly right in laying out the perfect solutions to our economic woes but not once has that man ever had to negotiate a deal with hostile Congressmen in a smoke filled room, facing down the huge sums of corporate cash and shutdowns of government, the most hostile media of our lifetimes. The passion of all of these people on individual issues is commendable but their solutions almost always leads to burning down the system and starting over which is fine if you're lucky enough not to end up in the cross hairs of the revolutionaries from both sides and are willing to accept that the good guys don't always win.
If we're going to debate on issues let's do it but fairly and sans the nasty speculation about the guy we just put in office. Some of the brightest people in the nation comment on and contribute to this site. Some of the writing on here has brought me to tears and inspired me to work even harder. We attract the best of the world because we're not the other side. We research, we lead with our hearts and compassion. We over-analyze and seek the truth. But we'd all better be on the same side when it comes to fighting the true enemies. A hint. It's not Barack Obama. If he feels like your enemy - Bring it on.