Reading the diaries and comments in advance of the President's speech this evening, I'm struck by the intensity coming from all of us about what we know will be a troop escalation in Afghanistan.
Already tempers and emotions are running so high that even otherwise reasonable Kossacks are hurling ad homs at each other. I feel as strongly as any of you about this decision and (inspired mostly by Turkana's work on this issue) have been blasting this likely move by the President for weeks now.
But, we need to be careful tonight or we're all going to participate in an ugly split in the community -- not just from disagreement over the President's new strategy (for we ARE going to split on that), but a split of fellow Progressives personally.
We need to avoid the latter as we disagree over the policy and we need to bear in mind tonight one comment from someone for whom I believe we all feel some personal and political affection -- Meteor Blades. I found this comment from MB in an afternoon diary and, without his permission, I'm posting it here in the hope that posting it is OK with MB and that we will ALL take his advice as we plow through the pre-post discussions on the speech. We're Progressives and Democrats (most of us) and we should be able to disagree on policy without engaging in personal attacks on fellow partisans. I hope you read MB's comment carefully and do what you can to help tonight. Kumbayah, my friends?
I can't moderate all the discussions...
...that have happened or will happen as a result of the President's decision. That will mostly have to be done by the community itself.
The best thing people who really want to moderate discussion can do is as follows, and IN THIS ORDER. (The "you" is generic, not personal):
- Start by moderating your own behavior. Civility begins at home.
- Then moderate the behavior of those whom you most agree with. It's easy to challenge the name-calling and other uncivil bullshit of those you disagree with.
- Then moderate the behavior of those you disagree with. But do it civilly. Tensions are high. Everybody is on edge.
- And always object to the cliches from whomever. "Obamabots" and "Obama-haters" are unimaginative slurs that mean nothing more than that the speaker has already lost the argument but still requires getting in a dig.
Don't tell me what you believe. Tell me what you do and I will tell you what you believe.
by Meteor Blades on Tue Dec 01, 2009 at 04:56:23 PM EST