Fairleft recently posted a piece called Daily Kos Abuse/Censorship of Arabs.
In it, he wrote:
Meteor Blades still refuses to say why he banned Tom J, the secret censorship decision that inspired the Arab Writers Strike at Daily Kos. Weird, anti-openness must an important value for him and/or site property owner Markos Moulitsas, definitely more important than free speech. I mean, what is the problem, even the Daily Kos apparatchiks have lined up massively in favor (64% versus 28% against) of making banning an open process.
This sounds somehow…familiar…to one of the early dKos bannees.
Ahhh, good old Meteor Blades.
And good old dKos as well.
Nothing new to see here…keep on walking, folks.
Or is that wanking?
Daily Kos is, has been and always will be a farce masquerading as a force. If y’all want to really understand the coming election results this year, look no further than the methods that dKos has used to centrify (and thus decertify) the so-called left wing of this country. Make any real waves whatsoever on the site and banning is absolutely, positively going to be the result there.
Not only “banning”, but banning with no recourse except total surrender. Banning with a stonewalling mentality that refuses to clearly state why people are being banned.
A digital 1984.
Read on.
I went through the process early on, during The Pie Fight and resultant July 4th Massacre in 2005. I was one of the early victims…I think that I scared Meteor Blades and the rest of the inner circle Kossacks to death by my refusal to buckle to their wishes…and many more followed.
The short term result?
…by August, traffic at the site, as measured by reach and page views, had tripled what it was in June.
Good for business.
And that’s what really matters at dKos.
Business.
Nothing more.
Bet on it.
The longer term result?
The witchification of Hillary Clinton (and deification of Obama) on the leftiness blogs, something that has been Dkos’s only real contribution to the political life of this country.
The long long term result?
Obama’s…and the Democratic Party’s…current plunge and the Tea Party’s rise to power.
Why do I say this?
It’s simple, really.
The digital Stalinism of the dominant leftiness blog put the lie to everything that “the left” is supposed to represent. Freedom of speech. Freedom of ideology. Freedom of thought. Instead of those things it produced a clomp-clomp-clomping group of mostly white, mostly middle-class leftiness zombies. Left wing like the NY Times and the Washitclean Post. In word only. And this helped to nominate and then elect a talented amateur politician to the most highly pressurized political tightrope act in the world, the Presidency of the United States of America. Now said amateur status is going to take down that presidency.
He blew it.
Sorry, folks, but there it is. All of the Dem “Oh!!! In the long run this will help us!!!” spin in the world will not affect the truth of the matter.
Obama has blown it.
Big time.
How? Why?
He mistook philosophy for politics, rhetoric for power and image for position.
So it goes.
Down like a motherfucker!!!
Watch.
Hillary Clinton might have made other mistakes, but this one? Not taking enemies off at the knees while they were still relatively powerless? I think not.
The comic philosopher genius Lord Buckley once said in one of his pieces “If you get to it and you can’t do it…there you jolly well are, aren’t you.”
Well…here we jolly well are, aren’t we. Centrified, gentrified and decertified right out of business.
I hate to say it, but I will anyway.
I tol’ ya!!!
All of the Daily Kosian-like palaver about the ins and outs of local races, who is “acceptable” and who is not?
Just so much spittle blowing in the wind.
Booman is worried about the fact that Russ Feingold is going down?
I’m trying to adjust to the idea that maybe Russ Feingold, who is probably the most principled politician in Washington DC, is no longer supported by the people of Wisconsin.
Booman still frequents dKos, I believe. He also opposes much of what the only effective truly leftist politician in the US has done in terms of publicly fighting the right. (Alan Grayson) Grayson’s going to lose, too, brought down by the same movement that is going to take Feingold out.
Faux leftinessism is as destructive as faux newsinessism, and the ongoing popularization and trivialization of real left-wing work by people like the Kossacks and the whole MSNBC/Comedy Channel crew…ably abetted by president Obama, I might add…has only weakened the movement over the long haul. An increasing number of voting Americans are beginning to equate the word “Democrat” with the word “lightweight.” With disastrous results, I might add. But “lightweight” is precisely what dKos really represents. Lightweight leftinessism.
Kos himself is a lightweight.
Bet on that as well.
The only thing heavy about him?
His bankroll.
So do not decry dKos banning procedures as something that is somehow new.
It’s what’s for dinner there, and it has been so for over 5 years now.
Deal wid it.
How?
Just walk away.
I often talk about a NEWSTRIKE!!! idea on the web?
Here’s another one.
DKOSTRIKE!!!
Now there’s an idea whose time has come!!!
AG
