Ok — this is me pushing away the pie. I don’t need the calories anyway. I don’t even really like pie — I’m a cake man myself.
2016 was scarring. After a long period of inactivity I was pulled back to being active on DKos by what I saw as a staggering amount of Hillary hatred from Bernie supporters. My first diary back was along the lines of “Gee Bernie seems like a good guy — if he wins he’s got my vote. Will his supporters vote for Hillary if she wins?” and man did it go nowhere. Like 800 comments and 20 recs nowhere (I exaggerate but still).
With Bernie re-entering the race it’s clear that the wounds from 2016 have not healed for a lot of people, myself included. I got a 3 day rating time out for recommending a comment that ended with “F Bernie and his bots”. I agreed with the criticisms of Bernie but I see that the “and his bots” part was directed at his supporters here, and while that wasn’t the sentiment foremost in my mind I should have recognized it wasn’t helpful and not recced.
Having learned my lesson from that initial 2016 diary, I’m not going to ask any one else to join me in this — but I’m going to try and keep criticisms focused on the candidates and their campaigns and not on their supporters. I might slip up, but I’m making a conscious effort to not fall back into the warring camps period. It was counterproductive in 2016, and in 2012, and to be honest I’ve been here a long time for a reason — way back in the early days of Dubya, long before I registered, DKos was an island of sanity in an insane world. I want to do my part to keep it that way. I hope you’ll join me.
Mea Culpa.
PS. I do feel safe in saying “Fuck Trump and his bots”. I hope you’ll join me in that too.