Well, let me amend that slightly - the "rec list" is a fucking train wreck.
I discovered the Daily Kos website during the run up to the last election. At the time, I had not seen any site like it - I liked the diversity of opinion, of people and backgrounds, the sometimes high-octane disagreements, the cliques and even the occasional low user id snobbery. A visit here could be entertaining, edifying, informative, funny, and/or energizing, even among folks of differing opinions or perspectives.
But now, I find the place...I don't know...mainly stomach-turning. I never expected everyone to love President Obama, or agree with each of his decisions or his approach or style or what else have you. This is a big country -- there are a lot of perspectives out there. But I was not (am not) prepared for the level of vitriol, contempt, and yes, hatred, that just relentlessly seeps out of some people here.
Today, at the top of the rec list was a diary called "The Whiner-in-Chief." Not that long ago, there was "The Caver-in-Chief." One user peddled a sig line for months that called the President "an ethical sewer." The same user said in a recent post that the President had "a knife to the throat" of Social Security and Medicare.
He's a Wall Street stooge, a kind of Manchurian candidate that the left believes was sent by big banks. (A lot like the other folks who say he's a Manchurian candidate sent by Socialists.)
He's a dick, a pussy, a eunuch. He doesn't have brass balls, big enough balls, any balls at all. He's a groveling, beaten lump. And that's just scratching the surface. Every day, it seems, someone ups the previous level of poisonous rhetoric.
It's hard to know how you can honestly engage anyone who talks like that. Policy disagreements? Disagreements about tactics? Not this stuff. The belittling, the name-calling, the bullying -- all in the name of what? Finding common ground? Understanding the people you're hoping to bring to your point of view? For the life of me, I cannot see the upside.
Yes, I know. The President is not all you want him to be. And perhaps he will never be. But he, of all the presidents of the last fifty years, does not deserve this execrable treatment. There is no virtue in it. It is, in my view, destructive.
And I know what will follow in the comments. But fuck it. I'm finding something better to do. I'm going to spend time in the real world working to make my corner of it better. I'm going to work to re-elect the President, and elect more Democrats in 2012.
Have at it.
Wed Aug 10, 2011 at 5:00 AM PT:
UPDATE: Well, hoocoodanode? (h/t someone on the internets.) This caused a real stir.
To the folks who let me know that I need a GBCW tag to be banned; who said anything about GBCW? In fact, some of the comments have inspired me to write my very second diary. It's just that I'll be spending much more of my time doing something more constructive in real life - the space that really matters, and in which I believe I help can achieve the things this site says it cares about.
To the few who questioned my use of the word "f@cking" in the title, I sincerely want to say, "f@ck off." Sorry, couldn't resist. ;) Seriously, though, I don't know what you thought of the dear departed fishgrease's diaries, or if you've caught John Stewart's occasional use of the word and had the same response. I used it as an intensifier for train wreck, and if anything, I would have said those two words were far stronger.
Everyone else, thanks for responses. I appreciate all of them...well, most. ;)