When I find myself writing something like this in a comment here...
Something new is emerging for me watching dailykos lately. I'm starting to perceive at least this segment of "the left" as very much like the rigid self-referential "we have our special landscape that is internally consistent and we are principled and right by definition" fundie-fueled right wing. It's starting to feel that ugly to me.
it is time for me to step away from this site.
An edited [for relevance] version of the longer comment is below the fold.
I am more interested in the left/activism
because of my 2 decade history of involvement with various movement organizations and groups.
Electoral politics has never particularly interested me, not in comparison to movement stuff.
But. I stepped away from serious movement involvement about two years ago. Because of what I am, and its relationship this pattern, something I have seen (and not wanted to see) over and over and OVER again in US social movements claiming to want social change (or however anyone specifically phrases that):
Resistance to any real critical scrutiny of our actions and our work.
[snip]
This thing with Obama, I am still trying to figure out. It's shallow as hell for me compared to the movement stuff. That is deep inside my experience and landscape and has been since I was in my mid teens.
[snip]
Something new is emerging for me watching dailykos lately. I'm starting to perceive at least this segment of "the left" as very much like the rigid self-referential "we have our special landscape that is internally consistent and we are principled and right by definition" fundie-fueled right wing.
It's starting to feel that ugly to me. Which I never ever expected, even with all my previous critiques and observations to this point.
Earlier this evening, my girlfriend was sitting next to me trying to understand why I am reading stuff on this site and commenting.
And I have been trying to understand what specifically it is that feels so dissonant to me on this site lately. So I was deliberately reading stuff that felt dissonant to me (which is not at all hard to find, it's very very thick on the ground lately), and trying to see underneath.
And my girlfriend had to leave the room because the rhetoric and energy reminded her of the Christian fundamentalist context she grew up in.
She didn't tell me that til later but - ugh.
There is so much dissonance here. I have barely touched the surface of the dissonance in my understanding.
So. Enough.
Enough for me, enough of me trying to cognitively understand WTF is moving underneath the glorious sounding word-claims of special leftie political ideology and principles.
Enough already.