I feel really bad for writing a meta diary on a day when meta diaries have completely overwhelmed this site, but I am doing so. I don't want recs for this, I don't deserve them, honestly. I just want people to read my diary and know that it is 1 AM, I can't sleep, and I come to my favorite blog to find that it has been completely overrun by garbage. So I write.
I came to this site in about September of 2008 as a way to keep abreast of the developments in the upcoming election. You guys and fivethirtyeight.com got me through to November, along with OFA and a few other resources. I was able to talk coherently about the issues, volunteer with OFA, and do a few other things despite being in grad school, working, and being a married man with an overworked, underpaid, and overstressed wife. I give this site a lot of credit for helping me process the politics at a time when my personal life was overwhelming.
I've been slow to start contributing to the site because I didn't feel up to the task, at first. The substantive diaries coming out of here - still today - leave me looking woefully inept by comparison. I just don't have the time and energy to do research like some of the diarists on this site, I don't have a directly political occupation that keeps me in diary material, and I am not Fishgrease, who is close to my personal blogger hero right now. :) Fucking proper fucking booming forever. But anyway, recently I have started contributing more comments and the occasional diary, trying to find a spot to fit in and get some name recognition. Unfortunately, after the events of the last few days, in context with the general tenor on this site from the last few months, I am about ready to throw my hat in the ring and quit contributing entirely.
I can't put this delicately, so here goes: YOU PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS.
Seriously, at a time when we are facing unprecedented crises as a nation - Oilpocalypse, climate change, the remains of an economic disaster from which we are desperately trying to recover, continued wars abroad which no one in their right mind should support, etc. - when we are facing these challenges and the need for clarity is dire, what do we get? Stupid, ignorant foolishness from both sides of what is rapidly becoming a petty, awful debate on this site.
For the love of God, quit with the rhetoric on Obama. You people, the ones who posted this dreck and arguably self-righteous responses like this need to shut the fuck up. All of you. And I mean that in the most neighborly, loving way possible.
At this point there are a certain number of people on this site who have proven that they and their personal moments in the spotlight are more important than any issue, than any policy, than any speech. When we have diarists degrading the tireless work of people like Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann on a Democratic/progressive blog, we have lost our center, we have lost our focus, and we are rapidly losing our relevance. When we have people who institute the kind of - and I will agree with slink here and call it what it is - McCarthyist tripe that I have seen on this site lately, we have become what we should arguably hate.
Further, you all fail to understand that criticism of the government is healthy and productive, but that the kind of incessant hand-wringing that goes on around here is neither - ON BOTH SIDES. Seriously, the next time I see someone post a diary or comment about how Obama is exactly the same as McCain would've been, I am going to GBCW so help me God. Because it's stupid and pointless.
I'm not calling out people like slink, nyceve, LaFeminista - even though that response diary was crap, by the way, because you FED THE DAMN TROLL - and others who call out the President on policies and serious points. I'm talking about the real handwringers who bitch and moan in comment threads, write no serious diaries of their own, and expect us to take them seriously. No, you don't get that respect. Handwringing RW-talking-point "criticism" isn't valid, IMO, and you don't even deserve the HRs you've been getting. Attention is all you want, all you are seeking, and you should be denied it.
So seriously, all of you, GROW UP. The Obama-can-do-no-wrong crowd has crossed the line between devoted and fanatical recently, and the handwringers have long ago lost their minds and adopted Luntz and Fixed News talking points for their comments du jour. You are losing my respect, you may have already lost Keith Olbermann's - a man, by the way, who is far better than many of us, including myself, and has proved his bona fides too many times to have to put up with your bullshit - and soon you, DailyKos, will be the Free Republic of the Left. Bring back the substance. Bring back the journalism. Bring back the things that got me started reading this site.
I am mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.