I had been toying, this morning, with taking a long break from Daily Kos, perhaps skipping out and not returning until some time early next year. But I’ve been a regular member here for ten years, have posted diaries (some of which hit the Rec List) and comments steadily, and am also too much of a news junkie and politics junkie to just walk away. I’m a Kossack, at the end of the day, and I’m staying put.
But, for the sake of my sanity, I’m done with the thing that has been the essence of Daily Kos for this entire year, and that is, the Hillary vs. Bernie diaries. For a long time, I could not resist these, nor should I or anyone have, as there was, indeed, a contest to be had. But that contest has been had, and Hillary won. And I acknowledged that, saying that I wanted her to win and that a Trump presidency would indeed be a disaster. Various parties (Kos himself included) then called for unity. But the sniping continued. And in the meantime, Bernie inched closer and closer to a full fledged endorsement of Hillary, but he did not, apparently, do it quickly enough for some. And so the sniping at Sanders, examples like calling him “delusional,” “irrelevant,” and a “mean SOB” kicked up again. And many of us got caught up in the heat of argument — defending Hillary by attacking Bernie or defending Bernie by going after Hillary. Truth be told, I have some serious qualms, still, about Hillary, her candidacy, her campaign, her politics, and how she is widely perceived by the general public. But its very hard now to raise this without being accused of CT or right wing talking points and then having your comments blocked by overly zealous supporters of her. I have concluded that it’s pointless to even bother raising any such points as the reactions are now very predictable.
Anyway, I am basically going to avoid — and I am going to hold myself to this — dealing with a variety of people whom I never noticed until this year (some only arrived here this year) by avoiding the places where they hang out, namely pro-Hillary diaries or anti-Sanders diaries (as well news oriented diaries that will inevitably focus ion Hillary, such as reactions to her email use, as I know whet to expect in the comments). They can speak to one another, but I’ll just ignore them and hope that they eventually get bored and go away. And to be clear, I’m not talking about all or even most Hillary supporter here. Some of the folks whom I follow here are pro-Hillary and also intelligent, thoughtful, and interesting writers with much to say. We may not always agree, but there has always been disagreement within the Democratic left, and that is probably as it should be. Healthy disagreement feels more natural to me than a desire for uniformity leading to such things as actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints or by isolating themselves from outside influences. Too much of the latter of this seems to be happening.
I’ll continue to check in with the BNR diaries of course. But I’m done with the Daily Kos civil war, and I look forward to seeing how the elections play out and seeing what can be learned from them.