As I write, there's a diary on the Rec List literally threatening to abandon support for Obama's 2012 campaign unless bloggers who happen to support Obama change their behavior. Because that isn't wholly divorced from the sane world. There's another diary with the vapors that the delusional Fred Phelps cult wants to keep a list of atheists--something impossible for the Phelpsies, given their still relatively modest resources. A recent, popular diary suggested the Virginia earthquake was due to human construction.
Other than the fact that this is about the equivalent of diarying that the homeless lady on the corner wants to demolish the local elementary and turn it into a flying saucer landing strip, I have no problem with one's claim to "freedom of speech" per se. However, I am embarrassed to be a part of a site that is so exceedingly caught up in the hypothetical and the irrelevant.
It's like this site has lost its damn mind. And maybe it has. Perhaps Kos' move to flood the Rec List with some editors' diaries wasn't such a bad one. It beats the hell out of some of what we see.
My online friend Meteor Blades wrote, "Don't tell me what you believe. Tell me what you do and I'll tell you what you believe." I work in conservation; I protect and nurture federally-listed endangered species; I have held them in these hands. I plant native plants. I go to school in the hope of improving my mind. In a country that praises ignorance and short-sightedness, the act of pursuing an increasingly out-of-reach, full education is civic and sanctified.
These are what I believe.
I prospect a two-pronged attack: that on our educational system, and the sustained, devastating attacks by GOP on public lands spending and science. If National Park Service and Forest Service didn't have so many visitors as of late, the idea of public lands itself would probably be a goner.
What I want has been explained before. I want every American citizen to have guaranteed annual income. I want every American to be a citizen: to be a voter, cared for by single payer, and fed. As I am not a capitalist, I reject the notion of unemployment being acceptable reality for American citizens. I want a complete end to the War on Drugs. In fact I'm not a fan of this "war" racket, literal or figurative. I want American Indians and all oppressed peoples to be allowed basic dignity as human beings.
Now, it is true that partisans need a place to gather and vent. It is true that citizens disagree about something as personal as politics. But does this site have much to do with progressivism or leftism anymore? My certainty in this world does not include whether Daily Kos meets its own expectations. I know what the community claims to be. The two may differ.