I am posting the diary below the fold as a favor to a friend and ideological ally. As with any ideological ally....on the Left....where we don't march in lockstep with like the Republicans....I do not agree with everything Tocq has ever said or done. I do not endorse every position Tocq has ever stated. I do not speak for Tocq and he does not speak for me. We are wholly separate individuals.
By publishing this diary, I am not commenting on his banning. I am not condemning Markos. I am not claiming he doesn't have the right to ban who he wants.
If you don't like what I am doing, by all means say so. Though I doubt I will answer you. I am not here to defend Tocq. He can do that on his own.
Oh wait, that's right, he can't. So go ahead and be as nasty as you want, he can't fight back. Anymore.
And I don't plan on wasting my time defending him to the haters. Sorry haters, I know you thrive on that!
I know of no rule saying this is forbidden, so I am not willfully breaking the rules. I am doing a favor for a friend.
I want to thank everyone who supported my reinstatement - be it out of friendship or on principle. I really do appreciate it. But alas, I will not be seeking reinstatement. It is Kos's website, all his own, and so it is his decision. So I just wanted to say bye, and clear up some misunderstandings, some misinformation, and some outright lies. I spent part of the day yesterday reading through the 2000 plus comments to the petition diary and I suddenly got the strong sensation I was witnessing my own persecution (or funeral) but was unable to testify or mount a defense.
Let me say up front that I was wrong. In my diary, "The Conspiracy Theory Label"The Conspiracy Theory Label", I argued that the greatest threat to our national security was the secrecy of the national security state. In fact, I am now forced to reconsider: the greatest threat to our national security is, as Al Gore put it, the assault on reason.
I posted that diary in large part as a response to comments in a diary by Inky99 titled Official story of 9/11 almost entirely untrue. In that diary he jumped through hoops to make clear this was not a conspiracy theory diary but an assessment by one of the actual members of the 911 Commission staff, John Farmer Jr. who, incidentally, is the dean of Rutgers University's law school. Whatever he may have said in the comments that got him banned I don't know. But the diary was not remotely a CT diary.
But like Pavlov's dogs, people heard "911" and immediately their CT glands started watering. Then they attacked with utter contempt for reason and logic. It was straight out of an Arthur Miller play.
So I wrote a diary to make the point that people need to quit throwing around the conspiracy theory label every time someone has the audacity to question their government. It seemed pretty straight forward to me. But despite the fact that a super-majority of people got it, my good friend Meteor Blades said that my diary could have been more clear to it's precise meaning, especially in the sentence cited by Kos for my banning. I have nothing but respect for MB so let me be clear now.
Over the years I have seen the terms "conspiracy theory" and "conspiracy theorists" used as a pejorative to insult and condemn those who merely question their government. Some times it is well deserved, as is in the case of most of the 911 truth movement, people who think we didn't go to the moon, or people who believe that there's some Illuminati running the world from some mahogany paneled room somewhere.
But all too often, it is used prejudicially. Far too often, people see someone questioning their government, especially when those questions deal with the secretive national security state, and it just sounds like CT-iness. They don't attempt to define why. They don't make an objective assessment of the facts. They apparently think it just doesn't sound like something you would hear on TV so we shouldn't be talking about it.
This is a disturbing trend. We live in a world that is ruled by powerful interests who use subversive means to skirt the rule of law, control our once democratic institutions, and manipulate public opinion through an army of PR operatives, lobbyists, faux journalists, and talk show hosts. These people despise the spotlight and operate almost entirely behind the scenes. They form think tanks, lobbying groups and a host of other organizations to foster their various ideologies and agendas. They are not part of any monolithic group. They have many different groups whose interests sometime intersect, and often conflict. But they are all part of a class. The ruling class. Or, what David Rothkopf likes to call the superclass.
These powerful interests do not want us seeing what they're up to. But what they're up to has profound consequences for our world and our country. It is essential that we track them, politicize them, fight them.
Do they conspire, collude and connive? Of course they do. Constantly. Is it some big conspiracy. Of course not.
As I have written repeatedly, the way to understand the structure of the ruling class is pluralism. As Wikipedia accurately defines pluralism:
The political theory of pluralism holds that political power in society does not lie with the electorate, nor with a small concentrated elite, but is distributed between a wide number of groups. These groups may be trade unions, interest groups, business organizations, and any of a multitude of formal and informal coalitions.
Lots of interest groups. That's your big conspiracy. I've tried to convey this so many times, in so many ways, I can't even count. And always, a certain, small, segment of readers will hear what they want to hear. It has been my experience that whenever the term conspiracy theory is uttered, everyone's IQ magically drops 20 points. Whether it be to condemn, or to propose.
In the children's history of America, we have politicians who run our government. I have been around politics for my entire adult life. I've known for a long time who really runs our government. And it isn't politicians.
These various interests are where all the power is. That's why I focus on them so much. The bottom line, and the essential point of that diary, is I want to see citizens investigate their government and the powerful interests that control it. And I want them to be good at it. I want them to use empirical standards of objectivity that we expect from any good journalist. I want verifiable sources, hard evidence, and only the most stringent analysis. But I want them to go wherever the facts lead. Without fear of being labeled a conspiracy theorist.
I believe this is essential for our Democracy, especially since the corporate controlled media has so utterly failed to do the job.
Now, as for the line that Kos cited that he said violated the rules:
I just want people to understand they let it happen. Because that is the proven truth, so far. Whether they let it happen on purpose is a legitimate line of investigation. But because of the left's phobia with 911, we can't even get the message out that Bushco let 911 happen through incompetence. And that pisses me off.
To be clear, when I wrote that I did not believe I was in violation of the FAQ.
The point of contention is the use of the phrase "on purpose." In truther world, and in the Daily Kos FAQ, allowing 911 to happen on purpose apparently equates to providing "assistance."
But I am not a truther and that is not at all what I meant. In fact, what I meant requires no conspiracy at all. Just willful, deliberate neglect. This is the definition, as I understand it, of gross negligence:
Gross negligence is a conscious and voluntary disregard of the need to use reasonable care, which is likely to cause foreseeable grave injury or harm to persons, property, or both.
Not "assistance", as the FAQ defines it. Conscious and voluntary neglect. On numerous occasions, members of the Bush administration have expressed the sentiment that a big terrorist event would be beneficial to their agenda. This doesn't mean they conspired to cause 911 to happen. Or that they conspired to allow it to happen. It means they had a mindset that precluded them from caring if it happened. That is gross negligence.
So no, I didn't violate the FAQ. And the assumption that I did is merely a projection of truther nonsense on to me. It is a perfect example of the very point I was trying to make in that diary. Why would I, in a diary where I explicitly expressed my support for the ban on 911 CTs, then turn around and propose a 911 CT? I have seen an invasion of truthers and controlled demolition people at one of my physics forums and I would not wish that on anyone.
SO that's where I was coming from. Of course there is an abundance of people at Daily Kos who know my true intentions better than I do. They will say that I am really a "truther" and I just used this diary to test the limits of the rules to advance my secret truther agenda.
They know this because they have a super secret machine that can read my inner thoughts. They also posses great powers of perception and can decipher the secret code in my writing that really proves that I think the Jews blew up the Twin Towers.
No, I will not miss Daily Kos. For all the people here that I love and admire, there are far too many allowed to troll the site with bullying, character smears, and just outright lies.
Smears
I have butted heads with this same cast for years. My opposition to the way the establishment Democrats have sold out our party and my opposition to most of Obama's most critical policies - the bank bailout, civil rights, torture prosecutions, and prosecutions for other Bush crimes just to name a few - has put me at odds with a lot of people. But they've been gunning at me for years, employing the most disgraceful attacks and smears on my character I have ever endured. Like a little band of Karl Roves, they lie and misrepresent my words, even after they have been called out on it repeatedly, and will stoop to any low to try and discredit me.
So let's take a quick trip to the gutter and see what a smear looks like.
I wrote a diary called House Negro. I deleted it from Daily Kos and archived it to my blog as I do many of my diaries. But it is still available on my blog.
In this diary, I clearly and indisputably argued that the power elite and big money interests saw Barack Obama as their "house negro". Someone they can control.
I also said I think they might be surprised because I believed that Obama was smarter than they are. You can read the whole thing here.
The vultures are circling in on Obama now. And the levers of power are all busy positioning themselves for the big seat at the new table. And more importantly, they are exerting their considerable influence to shape Obama's cabinet and his presidency.
I had always suspected that Obama received so much establishment support because they believed he would be their house negro - weak, pliable, and under control. I've never been more convinced of it than now. I think they might be surprised.
I even went on to express how we should cut Obama some slack on his appointments because of the labyrinth of interests he was having to navigate.
Obama has his work cut out for him. Navigating the labyrinth of interests, and chess like maneuvers that they will and are pulling will be harder than anything he's ever tried before. And all this talk about a new bipartisan spirit is for public posturing and consumption. The vultures are circling. That's what they know how to do. And there are literally trillions of dollars at stake.
People should try to keep all this in mind when judging Obama's moves - his cabinet appointments etc. We've heard in the idiot press a lot about Lincoln's bipartisan cabinet appointments. What they don't talk about is why he did this - not for some kumbaya spirit of cooperation. He did it to, as the old saying goes - keep his enemies closer.
That was back in the days when I was still hopeful. I was actually trying to defend Obama's disturbing appointments of Geithner and Summers. Yet for days, my enemies have been spreading the lie that this was an "Obama hitpiece" and that I myself called "Obama the house negro" because I'm really a big "racist".
This is the kind of raw sophistry and blatant, intentional lying that led to Al Gore creating the internet. This is a level of political hackery that Daily Kos should reject outright. But there's no ban on deliberately smearing a fellow Kossak with lies I guess.
But now that you've seen first hand what my diary really said, take a look at the last couple days comments (If this link doesn't work, search the comments for house negro). What you will see is an anatomy of a smear. Then you'll start to get a picture of who you cannot trust to tell the truth.
Community
Lastly, a lot of people have been suggesting that I must have been warned. Let me be clear: I was never warned. I was just suddenly locked out.
If Markos had simply asked me I would have been more than happy to clarify my position on the record. I would have explained my true intent and the whole bit about gross negligence and put all this conspiracy business aside. But instead I was just locked out. That is a lot of power for one individual to have over another. And that's one of the reasons I haven't asked to be reinstated and would not accept it if it was offered. I will never allow someone to have that kind of power over me again.
This point offers a nice segue to something I've been wanting to say at Daily Kos for a long time though: Don't call this a community.
Imagine if everyone were to have gotten together 6 years ago and said, we need a community website for progressive Democrats that we can use to organize, raise money for our candidates, and spread our message. How do we want to do it?
Now imagine someone stood up and said, "I have an idea. Why don't we create this website. I will run it and provide the servers. For doing so, I will run ads and get all the ad revenue. Sound fair?"
"We're still listening", someone replies.
"I would also, of course, have complete and absolute authority over who can come, and who can stay. I will set the terms of the site, and I will set the rules. If someone breaks my rules, or even if I just get the sense that someone has broken the rules, I will banish them into the aether, never to be seen again. Still listening?"
[Silence]
"And most importantly, I will decide what gets printed on the home page. It will be my sole discretion who gets to speak and who does not. And to top it all off, since I will be the owner of the site, the site will be named after me - "Daily Me"."
What do you think the response would have been? I'm pretty sure that people would reject that proposal and secondly, I'm pretty sure that this individual would be excluded from any future meetings of the steering committee.
That is what Daily Kos turned out to be. It is a disturbing model for a progressive community. I've always had a problem with it. But my abrupt banning draws it into focus for me again. At some point, progressives need to think about a truly open source model for online community organization. One that reflects the values and principles of democracy and fairness that all progressives share.
DISCLAIMER: I asked Buhdy to post this for me so I could say farewell and clear up some things. I am immensely grateful for him doing so. The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the diarist. :)
From now on I will be posting at Docudharma. I'm also going to do some writing for ePluribus Media, a site that I've long admired as just the kind of citizen journalism advocated for in this post. And of course, I will be posting to my own blog, Almost Speechless.
