I just got through the first slew of comments in the excellent main page diary
Roy Blunt Money Laundering by
JustWinBaby and I have to say, what a total waste.
The diary, again, is excellent and it's an important story - the House Majority Leader had to step down for accusations of ethical impropriety, and the guy the GOP replaces him with has the same problem. This is where Democrats should be winning, this is an opportunity - most readers of this and other similarly themed sites should rally. Instead, the first 50 or so comments I read were all in relation to a comment saying that the reader (who I won't name and have unnecessarily flamed) wished DeLay and Blount were sent to "federal pound me in the ass" prison - a quote from Office Space, a hilarious comedy everybody should see. There were 50 comments about homophobia and whether the comment was offensive or not.
It's not for me to say whether it's offensive or not - I find it funny, but I'm neither a prisoner nor someone who gets pounded in the ass. I don't want to have a discussion here about what defines humor, and what is insensitive or not. What I do think is worth talking about is how insanely easy it is for people on this site to become utterly derailed by things like this. It's endemic to those of us on the left side of the aisle in general. It is a huge part of our problem and one we are responsible for.
Senator Barack Obama, one of the rising stars of the Democratic Party and someone who has a chance to make even more history than he already has, posted an extremely eloquent diary here last week. Many lashed out at him because he didn't agree with them on every single issue. Open debate is fine, but how can we attempt to act as a unified force in changing the electoral landscape if we bicker and moan like this, if we get derailed in diaries about things that are simply not the point?
The Republican Party has been extremely effective in getting voters who only care about one issue to vote Republican, and they've cornered the market in several of these issues. Sure, they're on the wrong side of all of them, but if someone cares about lower taxes, they vote GOP. If they are an avid gun collector, same thing. If they call themselves pro-life, there you go. They could be in perfect simpatico with the Democratic platform on every other issue, but if they are passionate about something, they forgive the other sins of the candidate.
Democrats seem to act the other way - I'm disgusted with Democratic senators who voted to authorize the Iraq War, but it doesn't mean that none of them have valuable things to say or contribute. Too many times, when someone quotes one of these Senators in Diaries here, there are remarks about how he or she voted on the war, or the bankruptcy bill, etc., none of which have a whit to do with the subject matter of the diary. While it's important for Congressmen and women to be accountable for their votes, it's a complete waste of the process we have here.
We can bitch and moan at so-called Democrats like Joe Lieberman who votes with the GOP in some type of effort to be liked by the popular crowd, but until we do something about it in a united stance, it's just bitching and moaning. The snide references by conservative commentators that Democrats just complain without solutions is off-base, but we don't help things by getting off track so easily. Harry Reid is a prime example - most of us have learned to love and support the pro-life Democrat, because he gets things done. He united the Democrats against Bush's Social Security Debacle®, and that is what gets things done.
All I'm saying, I suppose, is that this site more than almost any other out there, should be a great place to share ideas, to distribute information and align with one another in ways to get these fuckers out of power and get the right people in place to get the country and world back on track. I've learned so much merely by reading diaries here, and I'd hope it could be even more than that. Perhaps I'm overreaching on what kos expects from the site, but I know what it can be when it is at its best.
Respectfully, it very often falls quite short of those lofty heights.