UPDATE: And now The Nephew and SwedishJewFish have both been bullied off this site. FUCK THAT! Personally if either of them want to post here, I will eagerly post for them with whatever attribution they want. I hate the number of people who have been bullied off this site or driven to a rage that gets them banned. THERE IS A PROBLEM HERE FOLKS. And we are, to quote a friend of mine, eating our seed corn.
Bullying.
Yeah. Folks we have a problem. And it isn't how many GBCW diaries someone writes. The problem is bullying. And it isn't a new problem and it isn't going away. What IS going away are some of the more important opinions on this site, forced out by bullying.
Right now it seems some of the younger Kossacks are getting bullied both on this site and off. Bullied by Kossacks. Sometimes these younger folks, being young, come off a bit irritating. But when they are they are making the same mistakes we all made when young. And each and every one of these young Kossacks being bullied has contributed to the dialogue on this site in important ways. AND they are the future of this site. If we drive out young, enthusiastic Kossacks, what is the future of this site?
They do not deserve being bullied and those bullying them should be ashamed of themselves. And the community should be ashamed. AND the administrators should be ashamed.
The LGBT community on dKos has also felt bullied at times. There is a long history to homophobia in this country, a history that is disgusting and often turns deadly. I have a friend at work who grew up gay in the rural South. He has described to me running for his life from bullies who might well have beaten him to death for who he was. When LGBT Kossacks are bullied right here on this site, we have to keep in mind that long, disgusting history of homophobia in America. Would it hurt the dKos community to go the extra mile to be welcoming rather than bullying to our LGBT colleagues? No, it wouldn't. Leave the stupid bullying to the teabaggers. I suggest we work on our tolerance rather than follow teabagger examples as bullies.
The black Kossack community has felt bullied. To such a degree they called a strike. Shit, as progressives we should all sit up and take notice when someone calls a strike. Instead too often the black Kossack community was ridiculed for the strike. Racism in America also has a long and disgusting history often ending in violence. Hell I remember when I was a kid a mixed race couple still had to keep secret about it...and that was in a liberal big city with a black mayor. This history of American racism is a backdrop to a great deal of where black Kossacks are going to be coming from when on a political site. Instead of acting like progressives and realizing there was a bullying problem, too many Kossacks took the side of the bullies and laughed at the strike. The progressive movement has been WAY too slow to connect with minority communities. And the reaction of dKos to the strike called by black Kossacks over bullying did NOTHING to help that. All it did was drive away some DAMNED good voices here who were telling us about minority issues. Instead of listening, instead of learning, we let bullying chase them away. I almost went with them I was so disgusted by dKos at that time.
Jewish Kossacks have felt bullied as well. Hell so have many Muslim Kossacks. And since sometimes they bully each other I'm going to lump them together here just to piss off those bullies. Dual loyalty claims, Jews owning the media, Jews controlling all the wealth...ALL of these stereotypes have been used on dKos...sometimes but by no means always rejected by the community as a whole. Same goes for the idiotic and Israel=Nazi comparisons. Same goes for the stereotype of all Muslims being violent extremists and all Palestinians being terrorists. Anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim bigotry in America ALSO leads to acts of violence. Both the Jewish and Muslim communities have been bullied around here and once again THAT should not be happening on a PROGRESSIVE site. Leave that kind of crap to teabaggers and FOX News. We should be better than that.
It is easy for a community to gather around a mainstream, majority opinion and push away all other voices. Homogeneity makes things easier. But also boring and detached from reality. PARTICULARLY for the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party isn't and cannot be homogeneous. We ARE a diverse party and SHOULD be a diverse party and that doesn't work by being intolerant and bullying those who are coming from a minority opinion. Whether we like it or not, the Democratic Party has to take into account opinions that range from almost Joe Lieberman's views to almost Charles Barron's views. And THAT is a pretty huge spectrum. The more we narrow our party along that spectrum, the more we lose. Doesn't mean we have to accept views quite as crackpot as Lieberman and Barron, but we also have to realize that neither of them are that far outside the range the Democratic Party draws its support from.
So to the young Kossacks who are feeling driven off this site I have this to say: don't let the bastards get you down. Whether or not you stay on Daily Kos, DO NOT STOP FIGHTING. Don't let the bullies win. You are not alone. This site has a problem and if it keeps driving away LGBT voices, Jewish voices, Muslim voices, minority voices, and PARTICULARLY young voices, then how is this site different than the Republican Party?
Truth is we ARE different. We are much better than the teabaggers and their frightened Republican allies. But if we don't join with those who feel bullied around here, then we sure don't seem all that different.
Now. All you bullies. You want to rumble, come after me. Not some young kid. If you need to pick on a kid to feel big yourself then I will tell you, and tell you to your face if you are here in NYC, that you are pathetic. Don't believe me? Ask former City Councilman David Yassky if I am willing to confront people to their face. Ask disgraced judge Seddio if I am willing to confront people in public (THAT was even filmed!). Picking on kids doesn't make you tough. Just pathetic.
