The past year on Daily Kos has been interesting, from a sociological and personal perspective. I have long considered DKos a mirror of sorts for the Democratic party. Not for the ordinary members, because ordinary members of political parties tend very strongly to apathy and 'letting the other guys do the heavy lifting', but of the leadership of the party. The activists. The ones who care. The ones who actually do the heavy lifting. And, for those of us with a history here, what has happened has not been good.
While writing this diary, I wrestled (and continue to wrestle) with metaphors, allegories and similes. Some of that wrestling will be apparent, as I have really not been happy with any of the examples I've come up with, but I think (for the moment) that I'll stick with the 'big tent' metaphor for what I am going to say.
We like to think of the party as 'the big tent' - the inviting group that allows a broad variety of viewpoints and perspectives and ideals in - while the other side (and the polarization has gotten even more pronounced over the past year than it has even in the past few decades, on almost a logarithmic scale) is pictured as having the small tent.
Is that true?
Of late, I think both sides have big ... somethings. Our side (the Democrats, if you're not paying attention) have a giant circus tent. Capable of holding a three ring circus with acrobats, clowns, elephants, a band, cotton candy, and so on and so forth, almost ad infinitum. Picture that tent - high, brightly lit, crowded, with a big stage in the middle that is basically a gigantic soap box for people to speak from. The walls of the tent are pierced with many entrances and exits, so that anyone who wants can come and go as desired. And around the edges of the tent are an almost infinite number of tables. each for a different perspective to hand out fliers and tracts and literature (and maybe bumper stickers and T-shirts) espousing that particular perspective. And between the stage and the tables is a throng of ordinary people, wandering from table to table, occasionally stopping to hear whoever happens to be occupying the soap box.
Across the way, we have a stadium. It is just as large as the Tent, and has a seat for each visitor. At the smallish entrance there are only three tables - God, Guns, and Guy stuff (ATV'ing, sports, booze, 'chicks', etc) that have to be checked into when entering, but are taken at varied levels of seriousness on the inside, but must be bowed to in public - and once you get into the stadium, you take your seat, and listen to whoever is on the playing field, whether that is speechifying, preachifying, gladiatorial combat... whatever. And you cheer and 'do the wave' and eat hot dogs and drink beer and make sure that everyone sees you doing it, because to be 'the other' gets you shunned, or worse.
Yes, it is a simplistic example, but that's what writers use - examples that have been boiled down to the essences.
But both edifices are about the same size, and are surrounded by hordes who are really not enthralled by either tent.
Can you see the tents?
Can you see the ideological landscape?
The problem I have been seeing more and more is that... the tables around the edge of the tent are in a circle (remember the tent is round), and people have been noticing that when they look across the tent, they see [gasp!] people whose opinions are the opposite of theirs! Oh, noes! They claim to be with us, and are in our tent, but they do not agree with me!!! Only my answer is correct!
And the people in the tent are increasingly not walking around and talking to others and sharing ideas, they are staking our their tables and building walls between tables (where they used to say "I'm not sure about that - why don't you see who has a good idea on that" the now say "Table 14 is the right answer on that - the only one that counts") and pounding on those tables to make sure that only people they agree with are getting access to the soap box. A whole lot of “My idea counts, and if you don’t give my idea a very high priority, you’re bad!” instead of “Let’s put all of the good ideas in a box and give each the attention you are capable of”.
Does any of that help bring people in from outside? Who wants to go into a tent when they just see argument and infighting and one-upsmanship from outside? And the outside is much larger than the inside.
It's like Comic-Con. I went for 40 years (the last 20 working there), and it started out as a bunch of people with common interests and a lot of other things in common just sharing books and ideas and finding out that they knew the same people and shared a lot of ideology and then grew to be an insiders club controlled by the moneyed interests, with the actual core of comic collectors ending up in a little room over on the periphery that is so crowded that you can never talk to people or see the panels you want, to the point where the majority of people actively avoid it now.
Is this what we want to be?
Not me. I came here for the community, the sharing of ideas, the attempt to build something bigger than me, to build the country and world I want to live in.
And, to be ahead of the curve, those who reply with "Yeah, but..." and then make up excuses... just don't bother. Excuses are for avoiding things. The problems are clear - we don't need excuses or infighting, we need plans on how to make things better. To open up the circulation of the people in the tent and make it inviting to the people outside, before it turns into just another stadium, like the one across the way.