I need to ask a question of everyone here, what is more important, the work or the community? I think it is a question that gets lost a lot but the banning of Slinkerwink has me thinking about it again.
A lot of ya’ll know me, I am not, by nature a fire-breather, but that does not stop me from getting into it with folks from time to time and being dismissive, mean spirited, and more than a little nasty. That said I don’t generally get involved in the factionalism here because, frankly, I am not nearly as interested in winning a fight on the internet as I am in winning fights in the legislature, ballot box and Congress.
Things get tense in election seasons, but hell, things are tense all the time in politics. If you don’t have passion and willingness to defend your closely held belief that you know what is best for your city, state or the nation, then you are not going to be very effective.
So we can’t really lay the blame of this sad incident at the feet of a spoke in our election cycle.
So, I come back to the question, what is more important here at Daily Kos, the community or the work this site is dedicated too? The community is great, and has done really wonderful things in terms of supporting members who has had really hard knocks in life. We’ve helped people who were about to be on the street, we’ve supported those dealing with there depression or addiction and given advice, time and money to those efforts (even ones that turned out to be scams, to the shame of the scammers and the credit of those who gave).
But one of the things that has arisen is this sense of “my Kos” which has lead to lots of factions who have taken it upon themselves to clear out the “others” who they have decided to dislike. For those of you with UID’s above 150K this is not anything particularly new.
Back when I was a newbie (when we all rode dinosaurs and watched TV by candlelight) there were groups of folks who saw themselves as troll hunters and would ban together to HR (it was even TR back then!) their comments on sight regardless of the merit of the comments.
We’ve seen things like this recently and Marcos has stepped in to try to restore some sanity and keep the Recent Diary List and the Rec List from being a never ending back and forth between the various groups.
What is really sad to me is that way that it all distracts from the nominal goal that we all have, making the United States a better place by pushing policies and candidates that are more interested in what is good for the vast majority rather than the wealthy minority.
For years I had as my sig line something I came up with when I was a kid working for my Mom’s campaign. It was:
“Getting Democrats together and keeping them that way is like herding cats, that are high on meth, through L.A., during rush hour, in the rain.”
It has always been true that being part of the Liberal/Progressive/Democratic alliance means that things are going to be fractious. The only time that we win is those brief moments when we the sun comes out, the earth stops shaking, the traffic clears and the cats run out of meth. Then we move in the direction we all agree on (still having our disagreements, but putting them aside for a moment) and get some stuff done.
Then it the cats find some more meth and it all starts up again. What is missing, to me, what makes this all so hard is that we spend way to much fucking time trying to win against our own fellow travelers than to we do trying to stick it to the Republicans and get change started.
So, while we are all reeling from Slinkerwink’s banning, maybe it is a good time to reassess why it is you hang out here in the first place. Is it to try to enable and force change for the better or is it to hang out with like minded people? Even if the latter means some folks running with their crew and trying to "win" a fight on the internet.
I know what the answer is for me, and you probably think you do for yourself, but it never hurts to look at your actions and make sure they match your intentions. Too often in life we get spun up and lose sight of the larger goals for a few minutes of bright, hot, sweet action, even if that action is detrimental to our goals in the long term.
You don’t have to answer the question of this diary to anyone but yourself, but be sure to ask it and think about it a little bit. Because of our collective factionalism and fractiousness we have lost some great and important voices to bannings. We have certainly driven lurkers away to other sites where they don’t seem to be hammering each other on a regular basis. Is this what you want for Kos, as a community or as a place to do important political work?
The floor is yours.