Green Lisa updates us on Confused Koslings No More. The DailyKos Thought Police have now purged references to antiwar candidate Byron De Lear. Oh yes, they do this sort of thing all the time. How deeply liberal and open minded of them, eh?
From Alex, posted to Green Party LA County forum:
Live and learn!
My Dailykos â┚¬Å“Diaryâ┚¬Â stayed on the front page for barely four hours before it disappeared beneath the waves, forever.
There were just a handful of comments and all but one was strictly negative.
I expected that, but what was shocking is that you could tell from the comments that nobody actually read what I wrote.
It’s a funny feeling when you’ve devoted some time and efort into documenting an argument and the only feedback is a bunch of cliches. my link to the Washington Monthly article about the unintended effects of gerrymandered districts, alone, was deserving of a serious comment.
And of course, they were all completely indifferent to the things I wrote about civil rights and growing up in the South.
Amazing, truly amazing! No Democrat would ever be elected to high office anywhere in this country were it not for those ridiculously lopsided votes by African-Americans and Latino-Americans. And it is clear â┚¬â€ painfully, painfully clear that all that doesn’t mean a damn things to these hyper-partisan Democrats.
The Title is:
â┚¬Å“CA-28: Byron DeLear versus Howard Berman – What is My Duty?â┚¬ÂÂ
and here is the Link:
http://www.dailykos.com/stroyonly/2006/10/31/185258/33I tried to stand the â┚¬Å“wasted voteâ┚¬Â argument on its head by pointing out that for antiwar voters like me in California, running out and voting for some Democratic Party hack who is likely to be reelected with 70% or 80% of the vote is truly a wasted vote.
This demonstrates how shallow and manipulative the Kos world is. They pretend at being antiwar, yet rabidly back the prowar incumbent Democrat Howard Berman over the antiwar Byron De Lear, even to the point of killing the entire post about De Lear, making a mockery of the openness they profess to believe in.
Netroots and the Kos world are antiwar only as far as they think it hurts Republicans. Other than that, they don’t really care about it. Nor, as Alex points out, do they care much about the traditional Democratic constituency of minorities, labor, and the poor. Instead, it’s all about them and how important they are. Their rank classism and patronizing attitudes speaks volumes about their real agenda. They are no different than those they want to displace.
My Dailykos “Diary†stayed on the front page for barely four hours before it disappeared beneath the waves, forever.
I’m not sure if this is what the “purged” refers to, but four hours is a LONG time for a diary to stay on the front page! Daily Kos has thousands of people posting “diaries” each day, depending on the time of day you post one, it can stay up for as little as an hour, being continually bumped to the bottom of the list as new ones are posted.
But then it was deleted. Not just dropped off the home page, but deleted completely.
I commented on Kos for the first time today and was promptly censored. Everyone was swooning over Wes Clark in the ad “Because of Iraq” (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/11/1/11307/1812), endorsing him for president in 2008, yadayadayada–group-think and groupie-think in the 250 comments and counting. I pointed out that Clark had cheered the war in 2003, provided the link to the London Times article in which he called the Iraq invasion “a great victory” and praised Bush and Blair for their “resolve in the face of so much doubt”, and remarked that he wasn’t exactly the best spokesperson for the issue. I deliberately toned down my language since I’d heard about the Kos thought police; on Atrios, commenting on Clark’s ad for Lamont, I called Clark a political opportunist and a hypocrite, but I kept it very mild on Kos. The comment disappeared within a few minutes of posting.
That is one reason why I took them off of my blogroll.
Some blogs are just concerned about ‘certain’ issues,
how many hits they get, & concentrate primarily on the
Democratic party & their issues.
What they fail to understand is that there are so many important
issues out there, (ie:Oaxaca & its effects on the world), & also
that many, like myself, no longer identify with the Democratic
party.
It’s a shame.
It really is annoying how intensely they are committed to the Democratic party. I hadn’t specifically heard of this type of censorship happening but it really doesn’t surprise me. The worst part will be if the Democrats actually take power–those same “netroots” will be the first ones calling for restraint so that they don’t rock the boat or upset anyone.
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le-enfant-terrible.blogspot.com
Well, I think it will be an ongoing tussle within the netroots between the authentic progressives/populists and the play-it-safe don’t-rock-the-boat or demand accountability so-called pragmatists of the Clintonite triangulating persuasion. I’m not laying any bets on the outcome, and I’m grateful for the efforts of those working within the party to knock some sense and core principles/values into it, but speaking for myself, I can’t identify with or endorse or work on behalf of a party that includes Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, the DLC, etc.–people whose politics do not overlap in any significant way with my own, especially on foreign policy, the area that matters most to me.