Simon Malthus has a great diary on censoring discussions of election theft and conspirarcy theories of 9/11 at DKos.  

I quit participating on DailyKos because of this censorship, and because I believe journalists like Greg Palast and how they have documented Republican election thievery.  I’m also weird enough to have the thought flit through my mind that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were the American version of the Reichstag fire.  Take that for what it’s worth.  The experience of the last six years has simply confirmed for me that the Bush Administration was capable of it.  On the other hand, the incompetence of the Bush Administration puts a big hole in any conspiracy theory.  So wouldn’t it be better to have arguments about this rather than throw people off.  

I made a comment to Simon Malthus’s diary which might be a good beginning point for a discussion of how the blogosphere’s obvious power gets translated into “political power.”  I think that what’s happening at the orange place is a misguided attempt to do something with the “netroots” that may not be possible without destroying thosse very roots.  Here’s my comment to Simon Malthus’s excellent diary.

Re: Censorship and Dkos (none / 0)
I want to do two things in this comment.  Suck up to Booman and offer an idea about the “censorship” on DKos.  
First: sucking up.  I started out in the blogosphere as someone making comments and writing pretty much unread diaries on Dkos.  It was fun to read the few comments about my diaries, and to make comments on other diaries.  I discovered the frog pond through DKos and so I started doing the same thing here: writing and reading diaries and comments.  And then something wonderful happened, I started to see and feel an actual sense of community in the frog pond.  People could still be obtuse or off-putting or out in left field (and so could I) but there was and is a sense on Booman that whatever it is that keeps us participating here is more important that the opinions we express.  Booman has helped to create something precious.

Second, Dkos never had this feeling of community for me.  I think it’s because while Dkos started out as a great forum, as Markos and his blog became more “famous” he came to be seen and perhaps came to see himself as some sort of broker with a base.  And he needs to have his base have a more coherent “message” or he can’t deliver.  This is a complete misunderstanding of the blogosphere, or at least the progressive manifestation of it.  I commented somewhere else about DKos and censorship with regards to the theft of our elections and said something to the effect that Kos and Armando and perhaps others who may feel like they are herding cats over there trying to make sure the right opinions are advanced feel that way not due to “the independence of the cats but to the mistaken self-identity of the herders.”  

There is a less polite way to put this: Markos has been co-opted by the glitter and glamour of politics and the notion that he might be a player in it.  As a political operative on a state level several years ago, I can tell you it’s fucking addictive,  especially when you win, and even if you don’t, because people see you as important, someone who must be reckoned with.  Don’t get me wrong, we have to have people in the game, so to speak, that will express our views forcefully, and Markos and DKos can certainly do that.  But he shouldn’t think that he has to somehow shape the opinion expressed on his site to do this.

On Booman I feel that there are at least a few people who are interested in what I think, and there are people here whose diaries and comments I look for to find out what they think.  What’s so impressive here is that none of us have to be an “elite.”  Booman, while he has “front pagers,” doesn’t make any of us feel that our ideas are not welcome, or that we are simply the raw material for his rise ot media or political celebrityhood.

What do you think?