Mine. This one.
It's a comment I wrote yesterday in typically overly-long, self-important, arrogant and rude manner. It was motivated by 2 things: (1) an unusually powerful comment to me, and (2) a more practical matter: I was tired of seeing my last previous diary staring at me those occasional times when I am checking my Comments for latest HRs. In particular, it is a visually offensive assault on my senses to see Pelosi's face, even in cartoon form, bugging out at me. (She is my U.S. Congressional Representative and I don't have any respect for her because she does not represent my liberal philosophy).
Thus, a replacement was overdue.
by oklahoma cherokee on Wed Jan 20, 2010 at 04:10:39 AM PST
I'm very willing to believe you are (5+ / 0-)
one heck of a progressive activist, with enough reasoning power to present an outstanding critique of why Howard Dean should be Democratic Party chair, but you seem so wrought you are no longer making constructive comments. I thank you for all your hard work and dedication. I wish you reasonable outlets for your anger and disappointment. Please take care of yourself, fellow progressive. We need you.
That was such a decent piece of constructive criticism, without countering my tone; rather just being generous and kind that it struck a deep note in me which generated this reply. I just wanted to capture it here.
by rhfactor on Thu Jan 21, 2010 at 03:08:57 AM PST in reply to oklahoma cherokee:
wow, an unexpected heartfelt comment. thank you (0+ / 0-)
you are no longer making constructive comments.
The truth is, I cannot remember when I last made a constructive comment at DailyKos. That's nothing to be proud of. Your critique is exactly right, and my bluster here is a very very selfish entertainment vessel for me. It's very shitty for me to dole out comments to people i've never 'met' here, and I am ashamed of only 1 -- the original comment made to the author of the diary.
the cato kid was right when he responded to her saying i had no rhyme or reason where to drop my firebomb comment in her thread, and that I was just going to find any old spot. I'm ashamed because the author is no doubt a good-hearted and dedicated agent for moving forward in America, and no doubt her Mom has sweated her entire adult life fighting good fights, and working her butt off for Democratic candidates.
Nothing above changes though my comment somewhere in this thread about what drew me to her diary: it was simply the title. There's no way anyone could come author this particular diary in the context of the Senate seat election in MA if she wasn't pushing back against a bunch of criticism about Obama's weakness to the Democratic Party, and about the overall degradation of the Dem Party since he took office.
I can understand for those who, for whatever reason, truly believe the man is leading this nation well on the domestic front, that they would want to defend the man from what they feel are unjustifiable attacks. The reason I was drawn, though, to her thread is this:
I'd not been on any blogs at all about the fallout from this election.. I had just been looking at my phone and seeing Twitter updates from Greg Sergeant (Plum Line) and John Aravosis (AmericaBlog) and a couple of other really smart, really progressive analysts. Their views were very sympatico, which was to say, the Dem Party has so disintegrated thanks to Obama's weakhanded method of seeking Republican Americans to love him (oblivious to the reality that it doesn;'t matter who he is, he's not Republican, end of story), and thanks to the worst Democratic Congress in memory, squandering everything handed to them by strong persistent progressive activism and GITV over the past 5 years+ .... and they have the nerve to place corporate lobbyists above those who got as lot of them into office?
So, in that frame of mind I was curious to drop by DKos, just to see how the story was playing here. It was so predictable I didn't even have to guess. I knew that 2, 3, 4 maybe all Rec Diaries would be about "stop the circular firing squad!!" or "stop enabling Republicans in 2010, 2012!!" and of course "STOP BLAMING OBAMA for this loss!" .... And sure enough, the diary "My Mom is a Democratic machine operative in Boston - here's her explanation" was a version of that sentiment.
It wasn't so much anger, as "oh, Jesus, this site is totally super-saturated by centrists -- who have destroyed every ember of spirit from the 02-03-04 period, as Dean single handedly changed the political spectrum by speaking out without fear of consequence about the colossal failure of Dems voting for us to invade Iraq. It was a great site back then. But 90% of current posters would never know this. All they calibrate DailyKos by is the past 3 years, when most of them arrived late to the party, jumpin' on the already out of vogue blogging wagon, and then spinning their wheels 7 days a week yak yak yakking about why it was okay to water down healthcare, why it was not okay to criticize the President, why things were going so well for America when you look at it statistically. Some guy in this thread last night posted some link to a WashPost article a week ago singing the praises of all the wonderful things Obama's accomplished this past year, his first in office.
Why should any of that matter though when he;s wrecking our military yet again like Bush, remilitarizing, putting more Americans into harm's way for more to do with his corporate MIC lobbyists and courting of Republican love than any sound pollicy reasons. And of course reversed his health care positions from campaign and then more or less said, when called on it, 'who me? I never said that"... But one of the most, I don't know, let's just say annoying, though really annoying to the 10th power -- is here is this gifted charismatic man, smart as a whip, amazing rhetorical skills, excellent bridge-building skills, a potential cross-over uniter --- and with all these amazing skills -- far greater than Bill Clinton by a longshot -- he chooses to ignore his bully pulpit, or even inspiration pulpit if people prefer, and lets healthcare reform languish and degrade and degrade and degrade and seems justhappy as a clam about it... and you just wonder, what is WITH this guy? all this skill and he won;t step up?...
And so lists of all the great things he's done don't move me at all, when he's squandered this incredible opportunity which the late Senator from MA was working his ass off to help pull off, for decades... And he comes to office with all this skill and crossover appeal, and then sells this effort out? why?
Anyway, that's why i was inspired to take a dump on this thread. It's honestly way past any feelings of anger... I think the Dem Party is unrecoverable. I think we hit PEAK AMERICA around 2006, and we hit another threshhold in Oct 2007 when on the very same day the two leaders of the Dem House and Senate both turned their back on progressives in their own party, and betrayed the honor of hard working colleagues -- just to mollify the Republicans.
What was this?
In the Senate, the FISA reauthorization was in full swing, but thanks to just a tiny handful of decent Democrats, vs the overwhelming majority of woos marshmellow Dems, an effort was in place to stroke down Obama's desire to allow retroactive immunity for federal law-breakers AT&T for their initiative of illegal domestic spying on all Americans, eminating from Folsom Street in downtown San Francisco at the ATT Switching center that tapped into the fiber optic backbone of the entire internet and telephone communications system in this country and the world.... Chris Dodd had proposed legislation that would strike the retroactive immunity from any bill reauthorizing FISA... But Harry Reid was playing games -- god if only people here could stay the least bit consistent about this jerkoff Reid -- instead they're all over the map. One day he's "Soft spoken Harry", next day a traitor to Dem party, caving again and again and again to Republicans, and worse than that, CREATING opportunitties for Republicans to get what hey want -- a very sick slick man who I hope loses his primary challenge. But one day Harry did some small lityle gesture about "the Public Option" and oh my god to read this site that day and the week after: Harry Reid was a progressive god... that was the time when this site smacked down Jane Hamsher for the first of what would be many to come -- why this time?
becaue Jane said "the public option is dead".. So did Lawrence O'Dponnell... Oh to see the fury of these Chia Pet Centrists on this highly excitable site: Down with Jane! Up with Harry. Harry came through for us! what a great man! we're going to get the Public Option folks!
I dare anyone to go read all that crap. Yeah, where's that public option fellas and gals?
Anyway, 2-faced Harry screwed Dodd over that day... Harry favored some PRO-retroactive immunity legislation from some pussy Dem and even from his buddy Republicans. And Dodd placed a HOLD on that Harry-preferred legislation. I remember KagroX, or other experienced DC operating rules poster, calling out what a remarkable step this was -- i think, i could be wrong, that this was one of the first times in the history of the Senate, in either party, that a Senator's hold was not respected, as it always had been in the past. HARRY OVERRODE IT, screwed Dodd, and screwed all of us.
That was on the Senate side.
On the House side, the very same day, Madame Decider Pelosi turned in an equally outragoeusly backstabbing performance. See, our buddy Bush was still in office some may recall, and he was continuing his escalation of war in middle east, and the death toll of Americans was so offf the charts, with no discernable care in the world from Bush, who loved to cite how "I might not be popular" (and he wasn't by then -- he was unpopular with a major majority of Americans, who were also now against his dumbass war in Iraq, finally!) "but I gotta do what I think is right".... And thankfully a tough progressive Democrat in Northern California, Peter Stark, lambasted Bush with an armour-piercing round of artillery saying something like "Bush is playing toy soldier with our American men and women, it's all a game to him while these Americans die for his game"....
Oh my god, it was as if someone had called Christians in America "unhuman"... because the wrath of God was unleashed on Stark... Yes, from Republicans, that's their gig.. But the worst of it all came from Madame Speaker, publicly chastsing the right-on comments by a courageous progressive fighter who was telling the truth... and humiliating him into giving an apology to Bush for his heartless comments.
There are things that are symbolic only, and there are things that signal complete and utter collapse of the Democratic Party. That day told me that the Democratic Party was so broken it was pretty likely beyond mending. And from that day forward, my anger at the Dem party, and all its apologists and cheerleaders here at DailyKos began to give way to not so much despair, but rather a recognitiopn that this country was not likely to turn around. Not when oiur own leaders were stabbing us in the back.
Then Obama promised change we can believe in and road into town with Rham as his Enforcer, and then began to show us the difference between a perfectly run marketing campaign to win the Presidency -- absolutely brillaint job by Axelrod and Plouffe, and Obama -- and what rhetoric started to look like when applied to policymaking.
That was it. All the confirmation that was necessary. First the Senate, then the House, and now the Presdient, all coddling Republicans, especially now, when they were at an all time low -- so bad that most Media Analysts were predicting the END of the Republican Party as we knew it.
NOT TODAY! anybody have another reality check on consistency? pssssst! The Republicans stopped being dead from the day the Bluedogs started selling out Democrats and all middle class and lower class America... and Obama just nodded and grinned, didn't do a goddamn thing to wrestle those assholes to the ground. But crybabies here said "what COULD he do?? He couldn;'t fire them! Stop being mean to Obama".
But a few of the smarter people here -- aka progressoives -- were as clear as day: "He has huge authority and discretion to PULL CRITICAL FEDERAL FUNDING from their states if they didn't shape up ASAP"... yeah, Politics is Local Allright... yet he did nothing, and the Politics is Local crowd here were just fine and dandy... We can't do the circular firing squad. How dare Jane & others try to Primary seated Democrats!
So you see, oklahoma cherokee, i have reason to think the vast majority on this site are inconsistent little timid morons, who have no clue how to read tealeaves... they're just obsessed with their stupid conventional wisdom, which is always wrong, always wrong, they are never right, they are always proven wrong, but we end up losing power back to Republicans as the proof... while they never learn. They are thrilled as jumping beans that Rham is in power, and all the old Clinton clan. Couldn't be more tickled.
And so, yes, of course I knew what I would see the moment i clicked to dailykos.com. And here was this diary, which to me had a subtext the size of a Las Vegas billboard, "Don't pick on Obama, it wasn't him, it was LOCAL POLITICS and I can prove it"... And that subtext was enough to confirm my thoughts:
Stupid ass centrists. They will never learn. Failure is in their DNA. And they will always strike out at Progressives, the very people who are the actual change agents that get valuable things done in America, always have, always will
.
And that's my story.
yes, I am an ass. But I wasn't always one. And I'm not an ass in "real life", But this, this circus show site, is not real life. It's a melodramatic theatrical parody of real life, unintentionally. And this parody makes me laugh at how stupid they are. They really are. yes, it;s an assholy thing to say, but they're stupid, and i lost all inhibition to just say so, and be as rude as I could be while saying it.
Why not? when I was polite and stuck to rational arguments years ago, the growing stench of the Return to Centrism just marched on, replicating like fruit flies: "Lakoff's an asshole!" "We should use facts and logic and give people data, FUCK LAKOFF".. "I am sick of these marketing phrases; we are DEMOCRATS! We speak the truth!" .... that's just one example of many. You'd educate them about framing and emotional-associative messaging and they'd shit you down with their ignorant, dumbass, stuck in the past closed minds.
So why try to use politness with such idiots? It doesn't work. So i gave it up. and yeah., i only come here to (a) see what is in the news currently, and (b) to see what the dumbass chorus has to say today.
And as i have posted many times, i like the HRs. give me more of them. And i love all the "if you don't like it, why don't you leave!", or the very original "don't let the door hit you in the ass"... I just laugh at that. But I don't share the inclination of progressive people who have left this site who write their GBCW diaries. I find them rather pathetic... Who cares what people here think? Unless you're sleeping with them or living with them, who are any of these people to worry about in terms of what opinion they hold of you? Why give them a statement if someone wants to leave here.
I just don't have that inclination at all. There's still great value from this site as a news filter, and so why should I give that up? When there are incredible minds and spirits like mcjoan's and Meteor Blades, why should I give that up? (They are decent people, they don't condone my assholiness, so I know the view is not reciprocal; but that's okay. i love them. They've worked hard to keep this site great as it has been disintegrating these past 4 years. When the rescue rangers are a daily fixure and probably the greatest asset to this site in discerning real quality, vs popularity on these "Recommended Lists", why give that up? Answer. I don't have to. Until, that is, someone decides
"we're puling the plug on that asshole".
I'm waiting to see if that happens. If so, fine, won't bother me. Until then, I will use the site for its value to me, and assail the dumbasses who are destroyimg any hope of recovery of the USA by tripping up those with actual convictions and agendas to use the legislative power invested in them in Congress to do something good for this country.
So, thanks again for your post. I'm hoping you read this. Most won't, but that's largely due to the bad information design of this site -- if it's 48 hours old, it may as well be 8 years old; it will never be revisited by anyone other than those replying to a lingering comment or two generated by the original thread. I really only care if you read it. But don't worry, I'm fine in real life -- i'm just very late for bed becasue of my stream of consciousness. Other than that, all is well. I work my progressive drives in totally different ways now. Do a search if you ever feel like it for my commnents here on "para-government" and i-org .
Good night! And you keep up the good fight.