Last week I pointed out that this community has a problem--we are being treated more and more like cult members, especially since Markos has risen more to national prominence. I suggested that it might be helpful if we could (ask Markos to) rename the site, and while there was a range of responses, the general sentiment in both the poll and the comments was negative, so as promised, I am shutting up about the site name change.
I was originally going to just leave it there, but David Brooks insulted all of us in his latest column by calling us "rabid lambs" who blindly follow orders from the "Keyboard Kingpin". This needs some sort of response.
So here's my question: how do we fight back against the cult charge?
Here are some good non-solutions which some of you might be tempted to offer:
1) Do nothing, because politics is all about name-calling and it wont change True, but politics is also all about group identification and persuasion. We can be personally thick-skinned, but that doesn't obviate the need for us to develop a coherent, responsible community image to attract people who are considering progressive politics but don't want to be groupies.
2) Flame David Brooks and anyone like him Sorry, but this will just convince them that they are right to label us "rabid lambs."
3) Don't like being identified with Kos? Go start your own blog This would have made a lot of sense a couple years ago; now it doesn't. Yes, DailyKos is a private site which belongs to Markos. But by now it has acquired such dominance that it can't be ignored and it can't be duplicated--like it or not, and despite Markos's financial and editorial control, this blog is now a public institution which is firmly a part of the American political scene, with far greater readership than any other political site. No matter what any individual does, this site will be the far-and-away dominant progressive blog for the foreseeable future, just like eBay will dominate online auctions, craigslist will dominate online classifieds, etc.--and as such, it will be considered the representative voice of progressivism.
So: what should we do? What should we ask Markos to do? I am out of ideas, but I think we need someone to come up with a good one.
