Stop Me Before I Vote Again

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won too free
won too free

I was wondering where my most recent grumbl-- er, genius utterings had gone... Tsk...

Good to see the comments back.

Kos just purged Chris Floyd.

(Yawn.) So Floyd is proud of the fact that he never votes anything but Democrat, and never will. His fans are aparently wont to insult the Kossacks with such gems of deep thought as "bitches with no lives and no girlfriends." What a classic Animal Farm moment ! Were I to dash off to Kos, doubtless somebody there would be insulting Floyd in exactly the same manor-- er, manner.

Excuse me for not rushing over to EB with condolences and a fresh casserole. :p

But Ms. Xeno! Surely the manliness of the purge is worth remarking?! Kos means business. Besides, I've liked Floyd's writing for a long time. Are you sure he's a diehard donk?

He certainly spent enough time declaring as much in his column, J. Hey, I'd be the first to acknowledge that a lot of these guys can write. Berube, Sirota, etc. They have plenty of sounding boards, NOTA knows. (Also, I've been caught on the good and bad sides of 'net purges before. It's easy to get swept up in the fervor.) But what good does all that knowledge and craft do ? Every sentence the guy uses to deftly dissect everything that's wrong with one Dem or another is instantly counterweighed with another statement insisting that he'd prefer death to even the slightest whiff of disloyalty. The whole gist of Floyd's column, then, is that he loves the DP MORE than the Kozzies, because he's tough enough to criticize them even when their current foremost ward-heeler hasn't given him permission to do so.

I, OTOH, couldn't care less if these guys want to argue on which of them is pursuing a higher form of love. Either type is strictly for suckers.

I have to reread that column (and I can't reach the server right now). I thought he was saying he loved democracy more that the Kozzies or any party, but it wouldn't be the first time I read too fast and too shallow and missed the gist.

Isn't that muscular squirrel impressive, regardless? It's good to see that Democrats have assimilated the lessons in "Why Mommy Is A Democrat". There needn't be any shame to being a chittering, hyperactive critter as long as one is a beefy, scary-looking, chittering, hyperactive critter.

Love the Schwarzenegger squirrel. As for Kos....

Kos has become an institution. The New York Times has noticed it, for Heaven's sake. So now we have a group of subterranean circle-jerkers who have suddenly turned into an official-recognized Phenomenon. If Kos were less conventional and crackpot-realist, this would never have occurred, of course; but even so, a bunch of nobodies are now Somebodies.

It's an old story: as soon as you crash the gates, to use Kos's own very overstated metaphor, your first concern is to close them behind you.

I am no friend of Kos, but I could have wished him no better and no worse.

Kos is fighting for market share in the Democratic follies business. He has a business model, and in the worst possible way. It's the corporate climber, zero sum model. The banning, the delinking, the troll rating and the hyper cheerleading are the equivalent of aggressive PR. You have to be psychic to know what is permitted dissent and what isn't when you go over there.

Ms. Xeno, I did get, finally, to reread the post by Floyd. I would be surprised and very disappointed if he goes for lesser evilism again. I don't think he's awful, the way Berube certainly is. If he endorses a donk for the elections this year, I am prepared to eat any amount of crow you specify.

I hope you're right, J. Alva. Honest. Frankly, I don't even think that Berube is awful. That's the worst part of it. The 'net is teeming with these nice, thoughtful, polished liberals who believe that criticism of individuals is the same as a serious move for systemic change;Or they profess to believe it.

This is a big part of my kiddn'-on-the-square exchange with my husband and others in 2004 when I kept hearing that I shouldn't vote for Nader because he was "an asshole." After hearing this a few times, I arrived at the conclusion that the assholes out there are our only hope. Everyone else is too obsessed with looking thoughtful, polished, reasonable, "nice." Ironically, everyone wants to be the sort of person you'd love to have a beer with. This is alarmingly how Bush was (and is) pitched to his core following. Democrats pretend to prize intellect so they can look down on Bush and his core- but the intellect of guys like Berube is worthless to us because it's placed in constant service of forestalling any real change-- IOW, in the service of "niceness." The intellects who DON'T prize projecting a non-threatening air above all else-- well, we all see what happens to them in the liberal ring year after year, don't we ? How many big-time liberal blogs are following Chretien's campaign, for instance ?

Well, maybe Floyd will grow out of it. That would cheer me up. The non-threatening squads are a dime a dozen. Some novelty would be welcome.