A few days ago, I made a couple of comments that in retrospect were hot-headed, and if I am being honest in my accounting, completely and totally wrong. Essentially, I said that it was easy to follow kos’ rules and that nothing had seemingly changed in the days after kos’ March 15th declaration went into effect. And its true, to me, the rules about the ides of March and supporting the presumptive democratic nominee affect nothing. I am a part of the “I-don’t-care-which-one” caucus, I have about had it with this primary fight, and I am ready to take the TrumpCruz monster head on. But honest, this diary isn’t about my personal politics, or even about who I agree or disagree with. This diary is about the community, post primary season. This diary is about our community period.
What I have come to see in the past few days is that, yes, there have been people banned, some without explanation, or warning. I hadn’t noticed, because, quite frankly, my participation has dropped here since the primary began. I have been turned-off by the fighting and bickering and I have all but stopped commenting and diarying, I still lurk but with a full time job, planning a wedding, and living my life, I cannot be here nearly as much as I would like to. It wasn’t until I went over to caucus99percent.com and over to the Kossacks for Bernie subreddit that I realized that many more people than I once assumed had been banned, and even more made and exodus prior to the ides rules coming into effect.
When I went to those sites, I realized just how much this community has lost, and further than that, how much it stands to lose if this is the way that this website plans to run its community pages going into the future past the primary election.
I still contend that it is fairly easy to not get banned from this place, to not get the attention of administrators, in fact, its fairly easy not to get a hidden comment at all (I haven’t had a single hidden in my entire time here, about 7 and a half years). But should we be banning people for what essentially boils down to a difference of progressive opinion? We’re all allies here, the people who think that Hillary Clinton is terrible and wont vote for her will still be allies in ideological fights to come. They will still be the ones that we (partisan democrats) turn to to get parts of our own platform accomplished. They are still the ones we expect to blow up the phones of congress and the white house once something stupid is going down. Should we be alienating these people ahead of a knock-down drag-out fight for the general election, or trying to persuade them to our side with rational arguments about why we think that the democrat is worth coming out and voting for? Should we not be trying to mend fences and not burn down bridges?
And thats just the politics side of this: what happens to the community that all of us have built slowly when all of a sudden those with not-so-popular opinions are being kicked off our blog? Some of the people who were banned are fucking fantastic writers who contributed a great deal to the community before they were banned. Some folks who have left ahead of the rule change I have known for years and their contributions to the kos community were irreplaceable. Am I to believe that we throw the baby that is their entire posting career out with the bathwater that is their opinion about Hillary Clinton? Am I supposed to just ignore their contributions to this site simply because I disagree with their opinion about the frontrunning democratic candidate? I say absolutely not.
I have slowly come to realize that banning people for one hot-headed comment, one diary that may not have been well expressed, is completely and totally wrong, myopic, and is doing serious harm to the fabric of the community we have built over the years, the community we have come to know and love.
I cannot support these rules, kos. And I cannot support your remedy to the pie-fighting. Its wrong. Totally wrong.
I have to work in like an hour so I apologize for not sticking around guys. Have a good day!
Edit: To all that have commented civilly, whether or not you agree with me thank you. I just got home from work and I haven’t had the time to read all the comments yet, but the ones I have read so far were well expressed and made some points that I hadn’t thought of. I will get through the comments, but it has been a very long day and I dunno if I will get to reading all of them tonight.
I am sorry that I threw a bomb and left, I didn’t realize that this would erupt into a nearly 1000 comment diary. My mistake. But I will read all of the comments you all have left.
Thanks everyone.